On Journalistic Ethics

Stalking an Oxymoron?

I probably wouldn’t be telling this story if former SecDef Robert Gates hadn’t told it first, in his memoirs. It happened in 2008. Barack Obama was running for President. In a late summer—I think—interview, I asked Obama if he would keep Gates as SecDef if he won. Obama said he would. Gates was a man I admired immensely: unlike his predecessor Donald Rumsfeld, he really felt the war in Iraq in his gut. He’d brought David Petraeus in to manage it and Petraeus was having an impact. (I had opposed the war, but believed that Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn Rule—you break it, you fix it—applied. We had a moral obligation not to leave the place in chaos.)

So, I called Gates and told him that Obama had just said, on the record, that if elected, he’d like to keep the Sec Def. I asked, Would Gates consider staying? “Not if he says that,” Gates said. Why not? “Because I would never say anything that compromises my commitment to President Bush.” Or something to that effect. Thus, a dilemma: I thought the nation—and the Iraqis—needed Gates to stay on. But the laws of journalism, such as they are, required that I “break” the news.

So, I called Obama and told him what Gates had said. “I’d like to take it off-the-record, Senator,” I said. “But only if it’s okay with you.” It was. Obama was an honorable man who put the country’s security above his own need to seem bipartisan during a presidential campaign. I didn’t report the story. And I am absolutely convinced that I did the right thing. I put the country before my Time Magazine employers and readers. Obama retained Gates, and Gates and Petraeus managed to calm Iraq enough that we were able to leave. Lives, I believe, were saved.

Similar things happened in my career. Other politicians “consulted” me on difficult stuff, especially after I’d been someplace difficult—and reported on it—and they had questions about what I’d reported. I usually cooperated, especially if I’d already written my story. By that time, I’d had a belly full of journalistic ethics. I had been targeted as a “liar” for writing an anonymous novel, Primary Colors, inspired by Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. I hadn’t broken any rules: My editor at Newsweek knew I was writing the book and read it before publication. “This is really great Joe,” he said. “But books like this never sell.”

It sold. A lot. And my fellow journalists took me to task—one Newsweek colleague who had made a fool of himself in the search for “Anonymous” tried to get me fired. The charges against me were: I had used off-the-record reporting to write the book and then lied about being the author. But there was no “reporting” involved in Primary Colors: I had taken some characters inspired by real-life people, and made up others, and thrown them into every last crazy situation I could imagine. All the dialogue was mine. None of it was “reported.” And as for “lying” about my authorship: Arguably, I should have copped to it when, after a couple of months, the mob figured out my ruse. Then again, the point of anonymity is, you don’t cop to it. Others—Henry Adams, Benjamin Disraeli—had done the same. In most anonymous cases, no one cared. But Primary Colors was selling like hotcakes. I got called every name in the book when my identity was revealed. “Is Joe Klein Evil?” New York Magazine had bannered on its cover. (Not so much, was the writer Rich Turner’s answer.)

I was suspended by Newsweek, even though my editor had been completely aware of the situation and never asked me to “come out.” After a few days, the great Katharine Graham called and asked how I was doing. “Well, I’ve spent years writing about welfare reform. Clinton’s gonna make a decision on it this week—and I should be writing about it.” Within the hour, I was reinstated.

But it was a searing experience—and I began to get phone calls from politicians, ranging from Newt Gingrich on the right to Paul Wellstone on the left, saying: Now you know what it’s like to be one of us. Here’s how you deal with it: Put your head down and keep working.

I did that, and something more: I created a “no gotcha” rule. At the start of every interview, I would tell public figures that if they said something really stupid that didn’t involve national security, they could take it back, retroactively. I’d never gone in for “gotcha” journalism, I was primarily interested in the policies and personalities of our grand national drama. Over the next quarter-century, the “no gotcha” rule was invoked only once by a politician, on a very minor matter, an unfortunate locution. Eventually, when I began to embed with the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, I expanded the rule to my own discretion: If a field officer or trooper was risking his life for our country, I didn’t want to get him fired for a stray slur, no matter how colorful. (The irony was, the ‘no gotcha’ guarantee got politicians to open up more than they would have.)

Was that wrong? Maybe, when it comes to the ethics of journalism…but I have no trouble looking myself in the mirror. I had one basic rule: I never printed anything that I didn’t believe to be true.

And now, with the juicy emails between Michael Wolff and Jeffrey Epstein, we are in the maw of journalistic “ethics” once again. I suspect other journalists will be caught up in the mess when all the dirty laundry is washed. I can’t say I wouldn’t have done what Wolff did, especially if something really important was at stake; but if I knew what Epstein was doing—pimping children—I would not have allowed myself to be complicit. That is, I’m afraid, a smudgy line.

The truth is, there are few fixed ethics in journalism. You want to behave honorably. You want to tell the truth. But that’s the Big T Truth. It isn’t lying or dishonorable to treat your sources as if they were human beings, or even to give them advice—which often leads to conversations that reveal deeper truths and insights about the way politicians think. I would guess that the very best journalists—the people I read with trust and respect—have made compromises similar to the one I made with Gates and Obama. I hope they have.

Ahh, holiday season approaches and it’s time for gift-giving. What better than the Gift of Sanity? Especially at a discount! It comes with two—count ‘em—podcasts: Night Owls with John Ellis…and Two Joes, with Joe Trippi. Here you go: