I would like to pose a bit of a hypothetical, however, to people who take Jonathan Alter's position:
“This makes it very difficult for the rest of us to do our jobs,” Jonathan Alter, a columnist and political reporter for Newsweek, said in an interview. “If you don’t have trust, you don’t get good stories. If someone comes along and uses deception to shatter that trust, she has hurt the very cause of a free flow of public information that she claims she wants to assist.”
“You identify yourself when you’re interviewing somebody,” Mr. Alter added. “It’s just a form of cheating not to.”
What if, instead of Fowler having been affiliated with Off the Bus, she had approached President Clinton with the exact same question and no intention of doing anything with his response. He gives exactly the same answer and she, shocked, writes down as much of the exchange as she can remember as soon as he leaves. (The words "sleazy," "slimy," and "scumbag" are not likely to escape you when they've just been uttered by a former President of the United States.) She then walks over to Jonathan Alter, or some other reporter, with a friend -- or even stranger -- who corroborates every part of her account.
Now, if you think what Fowler actually did was wrong but you're the journalist in my hypothetical who she approaches, can you honestly say you wouldn't write Clinton's comments up? If not, why not? More importantly: If so (as I expect most reporters would tell you in all honesty), why is that okay?
To make things even more tricky, you can strip the hypothetical of any assumptions about Fowler's intentions when she approaches Clinton. After all, for all Alter or the hypothetical journalist knows, hypothetical Fowler was out to goad Clinton but is lying to you when she says she wasn't. In the real world, when reporters write about people at campaign events, they know nothing but what they're told by those subjects.
Again, I don't have a definitive position here. I think Jay's comments indicate that even he recognizes this is a bit of a messy situation. But it's hard for me to shake the feeling that a lot of what's driving the criticism of Fowler from professional journalists is some annoyance (conscious or not) that they're being cut out of the process. No longer does someone have to come to you with their story and hope you write it up. Today, it's all too easy for them to work around you.
*I do think we should stipulate that Clinton didn't know Fowler was reporting. She told the LA Times that her recorder was in plain view, but she told the New York Times that “I think we can safely say he thought I was a member of the audience.”
