How do we feel about the Chron guys now?

Yeah, suborning an illegal act and continuing the fraud. Groovy. They should have just kidnapped Bonds and tortured him into confessing. Truth and justice and all. But of course the major league home run record is so sacred to our society...I forgot.

 

tres cynical.
put it this way: government officials are supposed to serve the public interest. defense attorneys are not.
until proven otherwise, i give the government official the benefit of the doubt.
not so with defense attorneys.

a story leaked by a government official is usually a more important and credible story than one leaked by a defense attorney.

and i'm not convinced the chronicle didn't have a government source, to give it the benefit of the doubt. go back and read 'game of shadows' - there are a few hyper-ambitious investigators

 

I signed the petition. I have no regrets about that, because ultimately while this particular source turned out to be an embarassment, the principle of journalists being able to protect their sources is something I support. It is very key to what we do, and there is much precedent for it remaining a rule.

I like to think the Chronicle was seeking a way out after Ellerman began his shenanigans. I like to think they realized they were in it deep and were actively seeking to end the relationship with him. They knew going in he had an agenda; when that agenda's specifics became clear, I like to think the Chronicle was blindsided by Ellerman's sheer gall.

But when he offered the Bonds bomb, they found themselves unable to resist such a story. Because as I said before, such a story would A. do a lot of good, and B. be much too potentially lucrative to pass up.

It woud be interesting to be in that situation, to find out what I (or anyone here) would REALLY do. Because it's easy to be on an Internet message board, or the newsroom, or the classroom, and say "I would NEVER sacrifice MY ethics, no matter what!!"

But much more difficult when you examine what a far-reaching, effective, historic, and career-defining story you have in your lap. That final decision would take some real soul-searching.

And when I look at it that way, I understand exactly why the newspaper made the choice it did.

 

well said.

there's a lot of armchair quarterbacking going on here.

 

That's the thing I was saying at the time... and getting pilloried for.

ALL of what these pricks wrote would have come out into the public record.

They subverted ethics for selfish, selfish reasons only.

I am so glad that the worm has turned in this public way.

Game of Assholes.

 

I mean... seriously.

Putting aside for a second that they were knowingly participating in the commission of a crime.....

If you were in a room with editors discussing this, what possible palatable motive could you come up with to explain a defense attorney giving papers implicating Bonds?

Now, these guys deserve to go to jail. The ironed knee of it all.

 

Bastards!!

 

I like to think that people aren't always trying to rationalize or provide undue credibility to a favored viewpoint when they use the phrase "I like to think..." But usually I'm wrong. The reporters and editors at the Chronicle are presumably professionals at the top of their field. "The temptation was too much to handle" is a really pathetic excuse. The Chronicle either failed to understand the motivations of its source, or worse, willfully ignored them. I wonder if the Chronicle will ever explain how it was duped or just hopes that this will somehow go away?

Meanwhile, the Chronicle is avoiding discussing the grand jury transcript leaks by continuing to protect its source, even though Ellerman has admitted to being the reporters' source for the transcripts. Are they hiding or suggesting there might have been multiple sources?

http://www.sfweekly.com/2007-02-21/news/the-cream-and-the-cake

 

This is what I'd like Bronstein or someone to answer.

"Did anyone ask what possible reason a defense attorney would have to leak the testimony to us, especially after he came out subsequently and blamed the prosecutors?"
AND
"Why, if you knew Ellerman was lying about the prosecutors, did you not write that story?"

 

Bronstein and the boys are going to have to do a better job than they did trying to defend their actions in E&P:

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003548057


Slate weighs in, too:

http://www.slate.com/id/2160217/?nav=fix

 

"I like to think" is actually used when hoping that people had the best intentions and were unaware of the possible chicanery. It's also useful when describing the thoughts and motivations of people in a situation where you haven't actually conversed with those involved. Keeps one from pontificating from on high with self-righteous anger, you see.

I don't need to rationalize anything; THEY do. The way the situation is now, they were either reckless with a likely duplicitous source or showed a total lack of guile. Or most likely, both.

Again, it would be interesting to see how people would really react given a similar chance at such a massive story. Easy to be so high and mighty from afar, but these guys are human and probably would have said the same thing before this story became a possibility for them. The Chronicle had impact and greatness in its grasp; it was up to those involved to decide what the price of those elusive qualities was to them.

The honest truth is, none of knows for sure how we would react, because there is always a chance that ambition - and the rationalization that such a story would be "important!" - would have a major say in how we handle a situation.

 

Uh oh - what have been saying for a LOONG time.

Rok and I got breaking news/info coming where all of the pieces get put together (nice having a lawyer in the fam).

Stay tuned in mere minutes now

JDV