I remember how indignant several L.A. Times reporters were over a year ago when I did an item for this blog that reported (accurately) that DC media insiders were buzzing about a sex scandal involving a presidential candidate that was being held back by the LAT. I came to believe the LAT never was ready to publish a story, but speculated about the ethics involved and the DC insider media culture which arrogated to itself what it thought the public should know about what they knew.
But the shocked indignation of the LATimers “we’d never sit on a story” pose had a touch of the lady doth protest too much. And now we see, with the refusal to release the so called Khalidi tape demonstrates two things: they are quite capable of sitting on a story. And that sitting on story generates more paranoia and hysteria than releasing it.
Oh and finally one more thing, when the refusal to release the story becomes the story, it’s time to release the story. Maybe it shouldn’t have become the story, maybe those who want it to be a story have an agenda, but that agenda is easily exposed if there’s nothing to the story. I say this as an Obama suporter who doesn’ t think he has a strand of anti-semitic DNA in him.
Yes I believe in keeping promises to sources, but then why were they made? Why can’t more be written about it, most articuarly whether there are incendiary quotes on it. And if a story was written about the tape some time ago and the paper failed to mention some incendiary quotes is the LAT covering up their own agenda, or just their own ineptitude?
That’s the Ron I knew. The book goes back.