Reporting shades of truth

Eric,

After three days of breaking new ground in journalistic thought, we're stuck with a clunker of a topic today.

I say there's no one answer to that challenge. Usually the news cycle dictates that you report the dubious assertion and then over time you assess its veracity.

If the assertion is libelous and dangerous, however, then you have to wait and do your due-diligence before publication.

In the Feb. 2 Los Angeles Times, then-City Hall bureau chief Jim Newton accurately reported the mayor's absurd claim that he had stopped wearing his wedding ring because loss of weight was causing it to slip off his newly slim fingers, along with his rebuttal of my report that he and his wife were not living together at Getty House.

Taken together, these claims seemed to indicate the mayor's marriage was stable, but the reporting of these narrow denials prepared the ground for the more thorough reporting of the Beth Barretts and Eric Longabardis of our world.

The traditional Los Angeles Times approach of "do it once, do it right, do it long" is less useful in the age of the 24-hour news cycle.

Most news consumers who are interested in the mayor's marriage will want to know that same day what the mayor said about his love life, even if what he said was false.

If a politician says something dubious but harmless at 9 a.m., you quote him accurately and then you begin to examine what he said.

How people lie is often just as important as the truth. Lying provides a window into the liar's psyche.

Before news organizations can figure out how best to deal with lies by public figures, they must first secure the truth.

I've found that the best way to get this is to have good unofficial sources. I don't care what publicists and spokesmen have to say. They're paid liars.

Professional journalists agonize about using anonymous sources, but I have no such compunction. I want the truth, and usually one well-placed and protected source will give me more of it than all the journalistic due diligence in the world.

I argue that there's nothing wrong with paying somebody for information.

As a professional journalist, you will say that is bad. That paying for scoops gives your subjects incentives to lie.

Poppycock. Information will only earn payment if it is accurate. Publishing bad information brings humiliation and lawsuits.