Washington Post destroys Jason Leopold

Okay, I'm not amused. What this story says about this guy has nothing to do with the kind of journalism I practice. The Internet is just another means of getting your message out - to me at least. Your ethics, and the law, don't stop being important at the click of the mouse.

Having said that, there is certainly a current of crazy running through the Internet, as much as there's a current of crazy running through American life and mankind (Jerry Springer, anyone?). We all got crazies. But where the crazies used to be stuck in some backwater part of the country, never to be heard from other than the occasional ransom-looking-pasted-together note sent to a Senate office, now the crazies, and the less-than-ethical, and the too-big-for-their britches all have the ability to broadcast to the entire world.

That still doesn't make the rest of us like them. It simply makes it harder to distinguish us from them.

PS Then again, the Post had next to no problem with what Bob Woodward did hiding his involvement in the Plame affair while trashing the prosecutor for two years. This doesn't excuse Leopold, but he's in darn good company.

And another thing. It's ironic that an article about 'Internet ethics' - put aside for a moment that the guy is a traditional reporter who is now writing online - contains a big factual error. Namely, claiming "the blogosphere went wild" over Leopold's Rove story. Well, if by "went wild" the Washington Post means that only one - count 'em - one top lefty political blog reported on Leopold's story (and actually followed up with his sources and partially debunked his story) while the rest of us totally ignored his story and refused to link to it because we didn't believe it (and Peter Daou even publicly criticized the story) - then yes, the blogosphere went wild.

Ironic, isn't it. A story about journalistic ethics just making shit up. Ah to be the Washington Post.