] Journalists have long understood confidentiality to exist
] solely between a source and a reporter. If someone speaks
] "on background," the only ethical way in which a reporter
] can divulge the person's name would be if the source
] changed his mind and decided to go on the record.
]
]
] Yesterday, however, the Bush administration gave Fox News
] Channel permission to broadcast remarks from a background
] briefing by former Bush counterterrorism adviser Richard
] Clarke that were originally made on the condition Clarke
] not be identified.
] ...
] Journalists should be reluctant to go off the record. But
] once they do so, the agreement between reporter and
] source must hold. Thus Fox News's choice to broadcast the
] remarks represents an odious concession of journalistic
] authority. By violating Clarke's confidentiality, Fox
] News allowed the administration to effectively recast the
] confidentiality arrangement to be one that exists not
] between source and reporter but between the source's
] employer and the reporter's news organization.

[ As the article goes on to point out, the white house officials who leaked Valerie Plame to Novak did so under the same condition as Clarke. So, what's stopping the White House, in it's thourough investigation of the Plame Affair, from using these same tactics?

I'd say that it's Novak's ethically strong refusal to give up the names, but honestly his journalistic integrity is pretty suspect. I don't believe a person of integrity can say "It's totally ok to out a covert operative based on anonymous information." So there must be another reason he won't release those names... hmmm...

File this one under: "SPINELESS-MEDIA-CONCESSIONS-TO-THE-WHITE-HOUSE." and cross list under "SHHH-WE'RE-NOT-HYPOCRITES,-SERIOUSLY.-W."

Awful, bad precedent. Bad, bad FoxNews. FauxNews. -k]