Dan Froomkin writes in his White House Watch Column about the cynicism of a former New York Times editor who defends the behavior of elite (i.e., well paid) journalists while at the same time trying to have it both ways by claiming not to be cynical. Froomkin also links to Brad DeLong; check out both his entire entry and the accompanying comments.

Frankel on Libby and Journalism
Former New York Times executive editor Max Frankel weighed in this weekend with a major retrospective of the Scooter Libby trial and Washington journalism in the New York Times Magazine. He concludes “that the compelled testimony about reporters and their sources [will] end up doing more damage than even the reckless violation of a C.I.A. agent’s cover. For given the cult of secrecy that enveloped our government during the cold war and the hoarding of information that always attends the lust for power, a free, unregulated and unpunished flow of leaks remains essential to the sophisticated reporting of diplomatic and military affairs, a safeguard of our democracy. . . .

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But liberal blogger Brad DeLong takes exception to Frankel’s argument, pointing out that “most reporters to whom people like Scooter Libby leak do lazily regurgitate such leaks, and they certainly do not use them to pry out other secrets. If Scooter Libby had thought there was any chance that Judy Miller would have used his leak of the N.I.E. to expose it as deeply flawed, Scooter Libby would have kept his mouth shut. Only confidence that the reporter will be a complaisant tool of the source’s purposes induces the leak in the first place.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/03/27/BL2007032701000_pf.html