Very interesting piece. As all involved agree, Wheeler took an extreme action, extreme in descriptive not perjorative sense. We don’t know enough about the details to fully judge Wheelers actions. But I think it is important to recognize that ... washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/styl…
2/ the source relationship is not a one way street. People outside of journalism often throw around the idea that journalists should be burning sources right and left. This person misled you, this person gave you information that turned out not to be true, etc.
3/ In practice it is often very hard to be certain whether someone affirmatively knew something was false or just thought they knew more than they did, or whether the source had themselves been fooled. Relatedly, as a matter of journalistic self-preservation, if you burn a ...
4/ source every other potential source is going to wonder what standard you applied and whether you’re going to apply it to them. ‘You betrayed that source and I heard from her it was a good faith mistake and you were supposed to confirm and now her career is over.’
5/ It’s complicated and there are many equities involved. But if and when it becomes clear (really clear) that a source is not only misleading you but doing so to advance a larger campaign of bad acts, that’s different, especially if that putative source has ....
6/ made you part of committing crimes or simply bad acts against other people. If that is really clear then the obligations of source confidence are really null and void.
