Speaking of the Plame scandal, when all is said and done here, I think there are a limited handful of news outlets — starting with Time magazine — that are going to have to explain why they helped keep information from the public.<\/p>\n
Dan Kennedy had a good item<\/a> this week (via Froomkin<\/a>) about Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff’s thoughts on the lack of follow-through from journalists who should know better.<\/p>\n Isikoff followed up his praise [for Time’s Matt Cooper and NYT’s Judith Miller] with exasperation, saying he couldn’t understand why neither the Times nor Time magazine pursued the story of who had revealed Plame’s identity even after those promises of confidentiality were made.<\/p>\n “Our primary obligation is not to protect our sources. Our primary obligation is to inform our readers. And I think in the Plame matter there has been a bit of blurring of that fundamental point,” Isikoff said. “Once you make a promise of confidentiality, you’ve got to keep it. But that doesn’t end the conversation. That doesn’t end the reporting. You’re still a reporter. You can’t use that conversation, because it was conducted off the record and you’re honor-bound to that. But don’t stop your reporting.”<\/p>\n Cooper, Isikoff said, should have kept contacting Rove, attempting to cajole him into going on the record and leaning on him with information gleaned from other sources. Instead, Isikoff asserted, “It seems like Time stopped reporting.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n