RealClearInvestigations: The NY Times Used to Correct Its Whoppers. But Not These Two. Here’s Why

#JOURNALISM: RealClearInvestigations: The NY Times Used to Correct Its Whoppers. But Not These Two. Here’s Why.

A fuller accounting by the Times is especially necessary because the media’s pushing of Trump-Russia conspiracy theories was central to an unprecedented and possibly criminal effort to subvert or remove a president under false pretenses. Unless the Times and other sources come clean about who was feeding them misleading and partisan information, we may never understand this momentous chapter of history.
Protecting confidential sources is, of course, one of the bedrocks of journalism. The free flow of information depends on people being able to share hard truths without jeopardizing their careers or lives.
But not when sources lie or mislead. When that happens, the confidentiality deal is off and “your responsibility would be to set the record straight,” Lynn Walsh, ethics chair of the Society of Professional Journalists, confirmed to me recently in a general conversation about SPJ’s standards for anonymous sourcing.
When sources engage in gross deception on a matter of such import, even committing national security crimes in the process, the news media involved should honor their higher duty – to their readers or viewers – to expose the malfeasance and correct the record.
There’s a less exalted incentive for the Times to revisit its reporting: damage control before the Justice Department releases the findings of prosecutor John H. Durham’s criminal probe of Trump-Russia’s origins.
The auguries, however, are not good.

Think of them as Democratic Party — or perhaps Chinese — operatives with bylines and you won’t go far wrong.

17 by Glenn Reynolds

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/369223/