For days now, Fox News, conservative bloggers and the McCain campaign have been accusing the Los Angeles Times of “intentionally suppressing” a 2003 videotape of then-state Sen. Barack Obama attending a banquet honoring Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi. On Tuesday, the Times said in a statement that it would not release the tape because “it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it.”
In a blog post at 4:38 PM yesterday, Bill Sammon, the deputy managing editor of Fox’s Washington Bureau, said that “the newspaper is on firm journalistic ground in refusing to make the tape public”:
To me, it’s pretty simple. Reporter Peter Wallsten made an agreement with a source to refrain from publicly disclosing the tape. Unless that source lets Wallsten off the hook, the reporter is journalistically bound to abide by the agreement, regardless of how much heat his newspaper takes from pundits on TV.
Indeed, Wallsten has little choice in the matter. If he were to cave in to mounting public demands for the tape, no self-respecting source would ever give him another shred of information. Nor should they.
But the declaration by a top Fox News editor that the decision by the LA Times is non-controversial hasn’t stopped the network’s anchors and guests from giving the paper “heat.” On nearly every Fox show that aired after Sammon posted his opinion, Fox’s pundits have attacked the LA Times as being “the subsidiary of a campaign” and “an example of journalism losing objectivity in this election.” Watch a compilation of Fox’s obsession:
Some Fox pundits like Sean Hannity and Bernard Goldberg have accused the Times of “lying” about their agreement with the source. “I’m not sure the LA Times is telling the truth,” said Goldberg. But Sammon addressed this point as well, saying, “Unless we have evidence to the contrary, I’m afraid we have to take The Times at its word.” (HT: Michael Calderone)
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