reality-based educator

This Washington Post article says Jason Leopold is a lying, dishonest, drug-addicted crazy person who pursues scoops the way he chases drugs. I am excerpting a good portion of it because a) I'm too tired tonight to rewrite a summary of it and b) given all the attention I gave to both the Rove story and Leopold's indictment "scoop," I feel that I have to blog about this:

My Unwitting Role in the Rove 'Scoop'

By Joe Lauria
Sunday, June 18, 2006; Page B02

The May 13 story on the Web site Truthout.org was explosive: Presidential adviser Karl Rove had been indicted by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald in connection with his role in leaking CIA officer Valerie Plame's name to the media, it blared. The report set off hysteria on the Internet, and the mainstream media scrambled to nail it down. Only . . . it wasn't true.

As we learned last week, Rove isn't being indicted, and the supposed Truthout scoop by reporter Jason Leopold was wildly off the mark. It was but the latest installment in the tale of a troubled young reporter with a history of drug addiction whose aggressive disregard for the rules ended up embroiling me in a bizarre escapade -- and raised serious questions about journalistic ethics.

In his nine-year reporting career, Leopold has managed, despite his drug abuse and a run-in with the law, to work with such big-time news organizations as the Los Angeles Times, Dow Jones Newswire and Salon. He broke some bona fide stories on the Enron scandal and the CIA leak investigation. But in every job, something always went wrong, and he got the sack. Finally, he landed at Truthout, a left-leaning Web site.

I met Leopold once, three days before his Rove story ran, to discuss his recently published memoir, "News Junkie." It seems to be an honest record of neglect and abuse by his parents, felony conviction, cocaine addiction -- and deception in the practice of journalism.

Leopold says he gets the same rush from breaking a news story that he did from snorting cocaine. To get coke, he lied, cheated and stole. To get his scoops, he has done much the same. As long as it isn't illegal, he told me, he'll do whatever it takes to get a story, especially to nail a corrupt politician or businessman. "A scoop is a scoop," he trumpets in his memoir. "Other journalists all whine about ethics, but that's a load of crap."

...

Three days later, Leopold's Rove story appeared. I wrote him a congratulatory e-mail, wondering how long it would be before the establishment media caught up.

But by Monday there was no announcement. No one else published the story. The blogosphere went wild. Leopold said on the radio that he would out his unnamed sources if it turned out that they were wrong or had misled him. I trawled the Internet looking for a clue to the truth. I found a blog called Talk Left, run by Jeralyn Merritt, a Colorado defense lawyer.

Merritt had called Mark Corallo, a former Justice Department spokesman who is now privately employed by Rove. She reported that Corallo said he had "never spoken with someone identifying himself as 'Jason Leopold.' He did have conversations Saturday and Sunday . . . but the caller identified himself as Joel something or other from the Londay [sic] Sunday Times. . . . At one point . . . he offered to call Joel back, and was given a cell phone number that began with 917. When he called the number back, it turned out not to be a number for Joel."

A chill went down my back. I freelance for the Sunday Times. My first name is often mistaken for Joel. My cellphone number starts with area code 917.

I called Corallo. He confirmed that my name was the one the caller had used. Moreover, the return number the caller had given him was off from mine by one digit. Corallo had never been able to reach me to find out it wasn't I who had called. He said he knew who Leopold was but had never talked to him.

I called Leopold. He gave me a profanity-filled earful, saying that he'd spoken to Corallo four times and that Corallo had called him to denounce the story after it appeared.

When he was done, I asked: "How would Corallo have gotten my phone number, one digit off?"

"Joe, I would never, ever have done something like that," Leopold said defiantly.

Except that he has done things like that. His memoir is full of examples. He did break big stories, but he lied to get many of them. He admits lying to the lawyers for Enron executives Jeffrey Skilling and Andrew Fastow, making up stories to get them to spill more beans.

Did Leopold make up the Rove indictment "scoop"? Did he get played by somebody from Rove's side using him as a patsy to send out some disinformation to muddy the story? Did he get the "scoop" from some unverifiable source/sources and went with the story anyway?

It's hard to say, but one thing is certain: Jason Leopold is a liar. Here's a press release from his publisher about his book News Junkie which brags about his dishonesty:

Jason Leopold was a convicted felon when he lied on his resume and landed a job as Los Angeles Bureau Chief at Dow Jones newswires. Using controversial investigative methods, Leopold soon became one of the first reporters to break key stories on the California energy crisis and Enron scandals, winning Dow Jones' 2001 Journalist of the Year award for his stories exposing Enron's now-infamous phony trading floor. As his star continued to rise, Leopold lived in constant fear that the secrets of his own past would be discovered.

If Leopold's press release is to be believed, Leopold's entire journalistic career was built on dishonesty. As somebody with a pretty good understanding of addiction, I can tell you that dishonesty and addiction are synonmous. Addicts lie all the time. Often times addicts don't even know they're lying. It comes naturally, like breathing. Addicts lie to get a fix, addicts lie in order to get money to get a fix, addicts lie to cover up the damage they've done to the people and things in their lives. In order to use and abuse their drug of choice, addicts have to live dishonestly. And right behind that dishonesty is secrecy. Because once an addict is exposed as a liar or an addict, the game's up. Family, friends, co-workers, business partners - whoever is in an addict's life and is enabling in some way - may pull away once the addict is exposed and stop providing the addict with whatever he needs to use. So the addict holds onto his secrecy and dishonesty as closely as he holds onto his addiction.

The first thing an addict learns when he goes to Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous or a rehab center based on a 12 Step Program is that he has to get honest with himself, with others, and with the universe and/or his higher power (however he want to term it.) Holding onto the secrets from the past, holding onto dishonest ways of living, holding onto the lies - for many addicts, these are invitations for a relapse. An addict must make a complete break with the past and living the old behaviors, minus the alcohol or drug, is not breaking with the past.

These quotes in the Post article and the press releases about his book do not make it sound like Leopold has gotten honest with himself, with others or with the universe. Leopold sounds like he is still living an addict's life complete with the dishonesty and the secrecy. As Leopold himself notes in his book, his pursuit of a story is the same as his pursuit of cocaine. And that's pretty scary. Because you show me a guy jonesing for some cocaine, alcohol, speed, heroin or any other fix (a bet, sex, etc.) and I will show you a crazy person who will quite literally move mountains, steal from his dying mother, or commit murder in order to get his next fix. Do you want to trust some journalist who sees his next scoop just like he sees next eight ball? I don't. And Leopold's journalistic ethics do matter, even though he says he is trying to expose unethical criminal behavior and so can rationalize away his own unethical, dishonest behavior. In the end, news reports about liars and unethical people like Karl Rove and the Enron guys based on lies and unethical behavior are not worth the paper they're printed on.

My ethics also matter, even though I am just a small-time blogger with little traffic. So let me do the ethical thing here and say I was wrong to implicitly trust Jason Leopold. I knew a little about him (like he had worked for Dow Jones newswires and the LA Times and had broken some scoops in the Enron story) but not enough to blog his story as if it were gospel truth. I am skeptical enough when I read stories in the NY Times, especially in the post-Jayson Blair and post-Judy Miller era. I am skeptical about stories I read in the Post or hear on CNN, MSNBC, ABC or any of the other networks. I am skeptical of the Associated Press. Why shouldn't I have been skeptical of Jason Leopold?

The answer is simple: I wasn't skeptical of Leopold because he was telling me a story I wanted to hear (i.e., that Rove was going to be and/or had been indicted in the CIA leak case.) I desperately wanted to see Rove go down that I was willing to suspend disbelief even when it became apparent Leopold's story had holes in it so big that you could drive a grand jury through it. I held onto the hope that it might be true long after the critical voice in my head told me "Give it up...the story's wrong." I wanted to believe it was true and my better judgment abandoned me.

So here is my mea culpa. I should have been more skeptical of Leopold's story. From now on, I will try to keep a healthy level of skepticism all the time when I am blogging. These are times when a healthy amount of skepticism seems like a pretty good idea anyway, so why not employ it?