Off The Record: The Press, the Government, and the War over Anonymous Sources

Norman wrote this book as editor in chief of Time Inc in the democracy of freedom of the press. It was interesting to learn from him the role of journalist, government and the confidential source. Readers enjoy news print from officials leaking secrets and breaking the laws. Unfortunately, prospective investigating the government turns their probe on the press. Journalists are known to put in jail for ignoring court demand. This book shows how journalist work and function in our society. What would happen next when media consolidate into a few syndicates in the landscape of you-tube generation?

This is an important book. Part memoir and part explanation, "Off the Record" documents the Karl Rove affair from the perspective of Norman Pearlstine, boss of Time Inc. at the time, who was vilified for turning over records to a government investigation and thus supposedly violating journalism values esteemed since Watergate. Except it wasn't so simple, as this book makes clear in an entertaining and engaging manner. Pearlstine trained as both lawyer and journalist and had a powerful career, including managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, before his 10-year post with Time Inc. At Time Inc. Pearlstine was responsible for major magazines including Time, People, Sports Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly, and Fortune. The Karl Rove affair occurred when someone's wife was "leaked" to be a CIA employee, and a government investigator was assigned to determine if laws had been broken. No espionage law was found to have been violated; but a government employee was indicted for false testimony in front of a grand jury. The case was confusing and involved the minutia of modern politics and the law. Pearlstine reveals how inadequate were journalistic standards of the time for use of anonymous and confidential sources; also how widespread the use of deliberate "leaks". The appendix includes Pearlstine's new standards for editors and reporters for modern media including online as well as broadcast and print. In a brilliant and readable review, the author explains the differences in the romance of Watergate from the issues at play in Plamegate - including criminal vs. civil contempt and corporate vs. personal citations by a ruling court. Until this book, I had no idea of the important connection between legal savvy and journalistic savvy. What seemed to be trivial minutia turned out to be important distinctions, and Pearlstine explains them well. In the aftermath of the Karl Rove affair, more and more journalists came to appreciate the difficulty of the decision Pearlstine faced, and to empathize if not agree with him. I enjoyed this book because it is well written by a man with passion and intelligence. He has a good story to tell and good points to make. I have a new appreciation with which to follow modern political and legal debates being worked out in the public and not-so-public domains. I can't help but wonder what Pearlstine will be up to next: he handed Time Inc. over to his planned successor in 2005 before writing this book.

Norman Pearlstine was until 2005 editor-in-chief of Time, Inc., the entire stable of Time's magazines, from Time itself through Fortune, Sports Illustrated and many others on to People (which Pearlstine says often does the best job in handling sources) and more. As editor-in-chief at that time, he had the ultimate call on how to handle special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's subpoena of both Time writer Matt Cooper and Time, Inc., followed by Judge Thomas Hogan's civil contempt finding when Time, Inc. and Cooper were initially recalcitrant. First, Pearlstine knows his editorial chops. Before moving to the Time stable, he was managing editor of the Wall Street Journal. And, he knows his legal issues, too, having obtained a law degree. As such, he carefully nuanced his company's response to various steps in the legal process before the Supreme Court finally refused to hear the appeal from the appellate court level. At that point, he decided his company and Cooper had to obey the subpoena, even if he didn't totally like it. Immediately, journalistic critics from inside the field descended like locusts, calling Pearlstine a sellout to the TimeWarner board of directors, shareholders, etc. That was in spite of the fact that, when countered what they would do in a similar situation themselves, most the critics either refused to respond or said they would have done what he did. Pearlstine in large part faults reporters and journalistic entities, especially those inside the Beltway, for bringing this problem on themselves. While he doesn't hit it as hard as he could have, he picks up on the issue of journalists running with the Fourth Estate idea to consider themselves stars, and ultimate becoming a quasi-political part of the problem. Beyond that, he notes many journalists are sloppy about granting confidentiality too freely and too quickly, not discussing carefully, and relatively early in the sourcing progress, what level of attributional confidentiality the source wants and the reporter is willing to give, and not distinguishing between confidential sources, and true, reporter subpoena-resisting anonymous sources. (Pearlstine found, independently of Karl Rove's lawyer saying he had never asked for anonymity, that Rove was indeed not an anonymous source, and that Matt Cooper was guilty of some of the errors laid out above.) Short of a SCOTUS revisiting of Branzburg (which, given the current Court, could be disastrous), Pearlstine says the need for a federal shield law is paramount. He discusses various attempts that have recently been put through Congress, and the hostility of the Bush Administration to even a mild, loophole-filled version. Beyond that, Pearlstine is refreshing for his challenge to his own, and my own, profession. He clearly states that a shield law should not be absolute, that reporter-source sourcing agreements are a contract of sorts, that the ultimate call on changing their terms belongs to sources and not reporters, and th