The Outrage!

What a traveshamockery. WaPo staff are outraged...OUTRAGED, I TELL YOU, that some of their internal discussions have been... [gasp!] leaked to the NY Times.

How can this be, I ask you? Is there no honor among thieves?

Revel in le snitte journalistique:

"I hardly see any point in having critiques and comments if they are to be publicized outside the paper. How can we write candidly when candor merely invites violations of confidentiality? Many readers say they distrust us. Well, now I find myself wondering if we can trust each other," the Post's Jonathan Yardley writes.

Betsy Newmark comments:

Savor the moment. Someone leaked an in-house discussion at the Washington Post about Bob Woodward to the New York Times. And they're very upset. How dare someone leak about them? Maybe they have an inkling how countless politicians feel every day when they read the Washington Post.

Exactly. What is even more funny: these were professional journalists commenting on an electronic bulletin board. There was no illusion of privacy or confidentiality.

It would be lovely if we lived in the kind of world where people always respected a confidence, but even if you are sitting in a room talking with a few close friends, once words leave your mouth, anyone can repeat what you say to anyone else and there is nothing you can do to stop them. It's worse with email, chat rooms, and the Internet because your words have a physical representation and they can be gunned out to thousands of people in an instant. This is why, if a friend or business associate sends me something truly sensitive, I generally delete it from my machine as soon as I've read it. I don't even keep a list of email addresses in Outlook. I don't want to be responsible for the chance that someone else might gain access to my machine and its contents.

It is literally stunning that a group of "professionals" who constantly insist on transparency in both private and public institutions and assert their "right" to squeal on literally everyone around them would get on their high horse when the tables are turned on them.

You know what they say about payback, don't you?