Crash and Bernstein

Carl Bernstein is becoming as big a hack as his former colleague and co-author, MWO Whore of the Year 2002, Woody Doobush. Here's the story:

Washington - The Illinois journalism program that had students try to find the identity of the Washington Post's "Deep Throat" informant "should be disaccredited" and the teacher who oversaw the project "should be spanked," said Carl Bernstein, one of the reporters whose stories on the Watergate scandal led to President Nixon's resignation.

"The last thing students in a journalism class should be doing is trying to find out who other reporters' sources are," said Bernstein, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine who broke the stories with colleague Bob Woodward. "They should be learning how to protect sources."

Why is the anonymous source of another journalist's story not a legitimate source for journalist enquiry? To take one example: Why are Ken Starr's leaks off-limits? Why are Steno Sue and Spikey Isikoff above criticism when they spread lies or rumors designed to further Starr's adgenda? (And the same questions apply to any other story, regardless of the politics of the writers.) Moreover, don't such investigations keep journalists honest, by helping to ensure that they don't fabricate or misrepresent their sources?

J-school should teach prospective journalists how to protect their sources, but it should also teach journalists how to uncover information for any legitimate source of investigation -- and those legitimate targets include other journalists and publication. And doesn't the Watergate exercise teach journalists how to protect sources, by revealing possible errors (or non-errors) made by W&B which could lead to the discovery of their source?

When large segments of the media, including parts of Bernstein's old paper, have been overrun by agenda-driven whores, isn't critical inquiry into the media's hidden sources an exercise in the finest tradition of a free press?