OUTED!! The Beltway Press Corps' Misuse of Confidential Sources

Over at Kevin Drum's Washington Monthly site, guest blogger Michael Hiltzik turns in the must-read piece of the day regarding the role of reporters in the Rove-Plame Episode. Though you should read the whole piece, here's his concluding paragraph:

This episode is part and parcel of the debasement of the confidential source’s role in American journalism. Taking sources at their own level of self-interest is what has given us Whitewater, Wen Ho Lee, and Iraqi WMDs. In Washington, they’re used as social currency; when anonymous “senior administration officials” give their briefings, their identities are known to everyone in the system except the reader. It’s another expression of the elitism that has opened a yawning gap between the practitioners of journalism and the public. Even Hollywood is onto us now; this sign of the zeitgeist is only the beginning.

Sadly, this context was missing in action when Kevin Drum posted this last weekend about the pseudo-controversy at Time magazine. That all important context, however, would have taken away from Kevin's attempt to spin in favor of a broad (if-not-absolute) shield law for "journalists."