The Press Should Name the Whistleblower
Ever since the whistleblower dropped a dime on President Donald Trump’s Ukrainian “drug deal,” the establishment press has tied itself in knots over whether we should publish the whistleblower’s name. While insisting that it is protecting the informant by withholding details that would put him at risk, the press has danced a sloppy burlesque, stripping off a feathered boa here, a slip skirt there to reveal most if not all of the whistleblower’s bare skin to careful readers.
Shortly after news of the whistleblower’s complaint to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community surfaced in late September, the New York Times didn’t name the informer but instead sketched his identity in extremely fine strokes. At least three people confirmed to the paper that the whistleblower was a male CIA officer who had been detailed to the White House but had since gone back to the agency. Furthermore, the context of his complaint indicated that he was savvy about the law, Ukrainian politics and European foreign policy. With identifying details like these, the Times might as well have printed the whistleblower’s face on a commemorative postage stamp and sold it over the counter. The Washington Post and the Associated Press quickly matched the Times’ reporting on the whistleblower’s general outline.
His name, however, was deemed unworthy of public dissemination. “I’m not convinced his identity is important at this point, or at least important enough to put him at any risk, or to unmask someone who doesn’t want to be identified,” New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet told the Washington Post. The Post took a similar position, with spokeswoman Kris Coratti saying the paper wasn’t naming names because it “has long respected the right of whistleblowers to report wrongdoing in confidence, which protects them against retaliation.” In general, the establishment press has limited coverage to echoing, but not expanding, the Times’ scoop. (My first whistleblower piece did the same.)
Although CNN advanced the story slightly on Oct. 3 by revealing that the complainant was a registered Democrat, the establishment has continued to largely avert its eyes from the whistleblower’s identity. Bloomberg News, NBC News, Fox News Channel, and other outlets have issued internal and sometimes public announcements about not reporting the man’s identity. (POLITICO has also limited its coverage of the whistleblower’s identity to echoing the Times’ coverage, but Editor Carrie Budoff Brown has not committed the publication to keeping the whistleblower’s name out of its pages should POLITICO independently confirm his identity.)
By leaving the whistleblower’s mask intact, establishment outlets believe they’ve navigated their way to the right side of the ethical line. But the whistleblower’s identity has become a political issue, and all this press coyness—giving this much information and no more—puts the country’s top publications at risk of losing the trust of their readers. This approach enforces the prejudice that the establishment press is run by a bunch of high-handed, hypocritical elites. It also surrenders a newsworthy story to elements of the right-wing press unencumbered by the Times’ ethical sensibilities when it comes to revealing supposed names of Trump critics and publishing their names.
In an Oct. 30 broadcast, Fox News veteran Brit Hume got it right in his criticism of the press, noting that reporters were under no obligation “legally or otherwise,” to withhold the name if it is newsworthy, which he said it was. A recent Reuters explainer buttresses Hume’s take. The whistleblower laws that apply to the intelligence community were written to protect informants who go through official channels from retaliation by the government, Reuters says. While exposure of the whistleblower’s identity by the president or other government officials could be interpreted as retaliation, the law does little to guarantee anonymity once the whistleblower’s complaint has been processed by the inspector general.
The best argument for the press to cloak a whistleblower’s identity, one taken by the Washington Post, is that it helps protect him from people who might want to harm him. The whistleblower’s attorneys have advanced this position, beseeching the press not to link any name to their client because it would place him and his family in physical harm from extremists. Their worry is not fanciful. Trump seemed eager for direct retaliation in a closed-door talk he gave at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations on September 26. “I want to know who’s the person that gave the whistleblower, who’s the person that gave the whistleblower the information, because that’s close to a spy,” Trump said. “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? With spies and treason, right? We used to handle them a little differently than we do now.”
Without a doubt, the whistleblower deserves physical protection from threat-making nuts—including the president. But journalists would be unwise to award an assassin’s veto to people who might read their stories and then decide to run amok. I’m not dismissive of threats to the whistleblower’s well-being, but that way lies a slick, treacherous slope. In recent weeks, other government officials have given testimony and statements corroborating the whistleblower’s revelations and continue to do so. If the whistleblower faces dire danger for sounding the alarm, what of the other officials who have seconded his information? Should their identities be shielded, too, because a loon might attack them or their family for confirming the Trump-damaging truth? Of course not. Especially at this stage, the only unique thing about what the whistleblower said was not what he said but that he was first to say it.
Is the whistleblower’s identity news? The Times, Post and Associated Press obviously thought so when they wrote their stories about him. Historically, the identity of anonymous and confidential sources have been big news because 1) identity conveys authority and 2) identity often conveys motivation. During the decadeslong effort to unmask Deep Throat—Bob Woodward’s anonymous source in All the President’s Men and perhaps the most famous anonymous source of all time—practically nobody argued that his identity wasn’t a matter of public interest, even though much of what Deep Throat said was corroborated elsewhere. And exactly nobody is arguing today the press should guard the identity of Anonymous—the author of a Trump-critical op-ed in the New York Times and now a book, A Warning—from exposure. Quite the opposite, a press dragnet formed to dredge the data banks for clues to his identity. Although Anonymous’ revelations are almost as damaging as the whistleblower’s, it’s hard to find somebody demanding that the press curtail its efforts because revealing his name might place him at harm from a violent extremist. You could argue that the whistleblower deserves anonymity because he went through official channels while Anonymous went to the Times and a book publisher, but in my mind these are distinctions without a difference.
The establishment press’ decision not to identify the whistleblower didn’t end the search for him. Right-wing journalists at RealClearInvestigations, RedState, Breitbart News, the Washington Examiner, and activists on social media have used their forums to advance a name consistent with the description published in the original New York Times report. Rush Limbaugh has spoken the name on the air as have a Fox News contributor and guest. Donald Trump Jr. has tweeted the name to his 4 million Twitter followers. One conservative news outlet even visited the alleged whistleblower’s home to ask if he was the whistleblower. All of this hot action prompted the Washington Post to report on Nov. 5 and Nov. 7 about the conservative push to publicize the purported whistleblower’s identity. By alerting its readers to the conservative news sites and sources that were publishing the name, the Post became complicit in the effort to expose the whistleblower. It did not publish his name, but it might as well have. (Disclosure: I, too, am having it both ways by writing this story without naming the whistleblower’s alleged name, while signaling where you could go to find speculation about his name. Alas, as long as I work here, I must follow my editors’ policy of not naming the whistleblower without independent confirmation.)
The establishment press’ self-censorship—its view that the whistleblower’s identity is forbidden knowledge and shall not be spoken—has ceded a major, newsworthy story to right-wingers who might not be the greatest journalists but at least have the sense to ask the right questions. Although it’s surely not the intention of the New York Times, the Washington Post, POLITICO and all the rest to direct news consumers to these right-wing outlets for a more complete take on the news, that’s what their no-name policies are encouraging.
I never expected an establishment press that so prides itself on reporting the news without fear or favor would so willingly surrender the role of independent investigators to its right-wing compatriots. But it has.
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