You can get too close to sources p.

By: Earl B. Conn

Journalists offer experiences, advice at ethics conference
WHEN JOHN SEIGENTHALER returned to the Nashville Tennessean after a year and a half with the Kennedy administration, "many in Nashville saw me as a member of the Kennedy government in exile," he told an audience at a recent Media in Ethics conference at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind.
At a session titled "Are Journalists Too Cozy With Their Sources?" Seigen-thaler observed that reporters who get too close "take on baggage that they will have to live with for a long, long time."
He said that when he left the Tennessean to work in government, he was not sure he would later return to journalism.
However, he knows today that he "got too close" when he went to work for the Kennedy administration.
"The culture of the newsroom at every level argues against it," he said about how to discern if the reporter has a problem with getting too close.
Tom Wicker, former New York Times reporter, editor and columnist, agreed.
Reporters are mostly much too close to their sources, he said, so all they really know about a beat is what their sources have let them know.
In his case, Wicker said, he knows now that it was a mistake to accept an invitation to spend a week at the Texas ranch of President Johnson.
At the end of the week, when he was "crowned with an LBJ hat," he realized that Johnson believed he had been bought because Johnson believed anybody could be bought.
Howard Fineman, chief political correspondent for Newsweek, agreed too.
"You can't do your job if you get too close to your sources," he said, adding that reporters are in trouble if they believe they are part of the story.
"We are observers. We're not part of the process," he emphasized.
He said his seven years at the Louisville, Ky., Courier-Journal, with its "almost ridiculous rules," nevertheless were good for him, and he "absorbed the lesson."
Wicker said he thought reporters need to rely on good judgment and character and written rules would not work because "no matter how many rules we have," there will be an unwritten one to violate.
However, there must be differences in how close reporters get to sources, he said.
For example, at the Times, Washington reporters were told to "stay close" to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger because he had the information and would have anyone else's "head chopped off" for talking with the press.
You have to be "neither in nor out," he said. "You shouldn't be in but you can't be out either."
Fineman said it came down to a reporter doing good work. "If you do your job, then you don't need this second level of personal relations."