Here's the Big Takeaway From James O'Keefe's Public Humiliation

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

28 November 17

aving been hired by Marty Baron to work at The Boston Globe, and having worked there for nine years, one thing I learned is that Baron generally doesn’t spike the ball in the end zone. On Tuesday, as most of the country knows by now, Baron and The Washington Post helped James O’Keefe make a really big fool of himself in front of the wide world. (O’Keefe’s real talent seems to be hiring operatives who are dumber than he is. My favorite detail in the Post story is how the emissary keeps moving her purse around.) In announcing the bust, however, Baron did what is for him a very passable imitation of Antonio Brown.

"We always honor 'off-the-record' agreements when they're entered into in good faith. But this so-called off-the-record conversation was the essence of a scheme to deceive and embarrass us. The intent by Project Veritas clearly was to publicize the conversation if we fell for the trap. Because of our customary journalistic rigor, we weren't fooled, and we can't honor an 'off-the-record' agreement that was solicited in maliciously bad faith."

To me, this is the most important part of the story going forward. (Alas, and contra Brian Stelter here, O’Keefe isn’t going anywhere. He’s got rightwing sugar daddies and ordinary suckers a’plenty to keep his operation running. And, personally, he’s beyond shame and/or embarrassment.) By saying this, Baron is setting himself against the cozy Villager ethic that, among other journalistic embarrassments, brought us Judith Miller, Scooter Libby, and the quaking leaves of Aspen. It was how Ken Starr’s sieve of an investigation kept going.

The agreement between a reporter and a source wishing to remain anonymous—or “off the record,” which is not the same thing—is a relationship with obligations in both directions. If an off-the-record source passes you information that turns out to be incorrect, well, mistakes happen and you probably don’t trust that source as much anymore.

However, if a source burns you in demonstrable bad faith, all bets are off. The penalty for that is exposure of the person’s identity, come what may. This is an easy call with ratfckers like O’Keefe and his merry band of incompetents. It’s a little tougher in the day-to-day hurly-burly of political reporting, but it’s not that tough. A source lies to you in order to catapult those lies into the mainstream discussion, then your obligation to your audience is to expose that person. That’s just the way it works.

Oh, and a lot of people—Republicans and, embarrassingly, Democrats—still owe the ACORN people a whopping big apology.