PressEthic

In a column posted yesterday on the Harper’s magazine website, writer Ken Silverstein defended his publications decision not to run the news of the Mark Foley scandal months ago. He argued that because information of the inappropriate emails Foley sent to a young page was made available to media outlets months ago, there is little weight to the conservatives claim that the scandal was over-hyped and well-calculated by Democrats and, of course, the so-called liberal media.

“The Republican leadership is lying when they claim that Democrats have engineered an ‘October Surprise’; there was never a plan to undermine the G.O.P. or to destroy Hastert personally, as the speaker has vaingloriously suggested. I know this with absolute certainty because Harper’s was offered the story almost five months ago and decided, after much debate, not to run it here on Washington Babylon.”

On the contrary, Silverstein argued that the reason that he and other journalists held back on a story that could have broke months ago, way before November elections, is that they did not yet have the hard evidence to make break it as news:

“We decided against publishing the story because we didn't have absolute proof that Foley was, as one editor put it, ‘anything but creepy.’ At the time I was disappointed that the story was killed—but I must confess that I was also a bit relieved because there had been the possibility, however unlikely, that I would wrongly accuse Foley of improper conduct.”

But Silverstein also acknowledged that the decision to hold back on such a scandalous story, though admirable, conflicted with the basic journalistic responsibility to report breaking news, especially one that involves the safety of children. He wrote:

“While Harper’s decided not to publish the story, we weren't entirely comfortable with the decision. A few weeks later I passed along the emails and related materials to several people who were in a position to share them with other media outlets. I subsequently learned that other people had the same information and were also contacting reporters. (By this point, my original source apparently had given up on getting the media to cover the story.)”

While Silverstein’s arguments work well in defending he and other member’s of the “liberal media,” he shouldn’t be surprised by the accusation. Even though the information of the scandal was apparently made available to several media outlets over the summer, official word didn’t reach the American public until just weeks ago, and it all seems to have blown up at once.

I do however respect the decision made by many in the media to use caution on perusing this story, since both the accountability of journalism and a man’s career are at stake.