When a source asks to go on background - that is, when you can report what he says, but not who he is - ask yourself this: is his boss, or his boss's boss, and so forth, going to be mad when he sees these words in the paper?  Is this guy going to be in trouble, maybe even lose his job, if I were to name my source?  Or are his employers perfectly happy to see these words make it into the news, but they simply want to blur the fingerprints a bit?

I'm not a reporter; far from it.  And I may not understand some of the dilemmas imposed by your profession.  But you know what?  I bet this will give you a pretty good clue, the vast majority of the time, about whether you ought to be giving a source the protection of confidentiality.

Because if his bosses are happy that he's saying what he's saying, then there's no need for him to be saying it on background.  Maybe he, and they, are just using you.  Just a hunch, Bob. And all you and your buddies are doing is carrying their water, doing stenography for them as they write anonymous letters to the public.

This is especially obvious in its truth when you aren't meeting with the source in some quiet corner, but rather in a meeting room or auditorium with half the Beltway press corps present, and copies of prepared remarks being handed out.  If it's no secret to the whole damned press corps who the "senior Administration official" is, then what's the justification for keeping the rest of the country in the dark, other than to feel like you're 'in the know,' as they used to say in my dad's time?  You aren't getting at the truth; you're doing a favor to a big-shot.

And one final hint on an unrelated matter: if a well-placed source tells you something "in an offhand, casual manner," as if it was "almost gossip," you might not "attach any great significance to it," but he might.  After one-third of a century in the game, how is it that you're this easily played?

One of the things that made it possible for Woodward and Bernstein to break open the Watergate story was that they were not part of the Washington Establishment -- neither the entenched powers-that-be in public office or its media auxiliary. They were just hungry reporters who saw a good story that could promote their careers, and weren't deflected or biased by prejudices and preconceptions about what was possible or impossible to have occured. They weren't connected, nor did they have an axe to grind -- they just chewed away at the story because it was their lifeline and they needed it to work for them.

Well Woodward's not in that position any more. Now, he's part of the DC Media Establishment, which itself has moved much closer to and intertwined itself with the city's Political Establishment, to the point where it can become pretty damn hard to tell one from the other. There's now a commonality of interest between folks like Woodward and folks like Bush and Cheney, reinforced by an interlocking nexus of connections, and that means there's no longer any real push for the Woodwards of the world to hold the feet of the Bushs and Cheneys to the fire of public exposure, not when a darn good living, and a lot of ego-boosting public renown, can be had from shilling for them from a supposedly adversarial position.

It wasn't so much that Woodward's been co-opted, as much as he's been seduced away from journalistic principle by the ease of going along with the prevailing cultural norms -- the same norms which prevailed back during Watergate, and which held back established reporters from pursuing the story, giving Woodstein their opening.

Addenda: These days, Woodward's not a journalist, he just plays one on TV.

Update (11/21): Digby's got the rule of thumb for journalists:

Don't shield powerful government officials who use the press for sleazy partisan activity they know the public would disapprove of. Oh, and write the real story, not the sleazy partisan smear job your valued "sources" are feeding you for the privilege of future access. It will pay off in the long run. You'll find yourself facing subpoenas and jail time far less often.

Yep.