Was a Reporter\'s Role in a Government Prosecution a Reason to Recuse Him

It’s a generally accepted rule in journalism that if you’re involved in a newsworthy situation, you shouldn’t cover it. Most of the time that makes excellent sense.

The Times made an exception to that rule on Sunday with Scott Shane’s riveting piece on John C. Kiriakou, the former C.I.A. operative who is facing prison for giving information to a freelance reporter.

Mr. Shane, a national security reporter in the Washington bureau, became a tangential part of the situation when Mr. Kiriakou was also charged with revealing to “Journalist B” the name of a person who had participated in the operation to catch the Qaeda terrorist Abu Zubaydah, which the government said was classified.

Some readers found fault with Mr. Shane’s writing of the story, given his involvement. One was James Savage, a former longtime investigations editor with The Miami Herald.

“There’s an easy way to avoid this glaring conflict of interest,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Assign another reporter to write the story. That reporter could interview Mr. Shane and include his comments, properly attributed, in a balanced story.”

That point certainly occurred to me on Saturday when I first read the story online, and again later when I saw it prominently displayed on the Sunday front page. I was also interested, as I read deeper into the article, to see Mr. Shane writing in the first person - that’s rare for a news story in The Times.

But my overall reaction was sheer fascination with the tale he told â€" an invaluable glimpse inside a secret world, one that provided rare insights into the reporter-source relationship. It also illuminates a troubling subject that does not get enough attention: the Obama administration’s prosecution of government employees who leak information to the press - an effort with major implications for press freedom and the ability to inform the public.

I talked with Mr. Shane and with two editors who were involved in the decision-making. They told me that, after quite a bit of discussion, they decided that the pros far outweighed the cons.

“Having Scott tell the story wasn’t a downside; it enriched the story, by allowing us to give readers insight on how Kiriakou operated,” said David Leonhardt, the Washington bureau chief.

Mr. Leonhardt added, “So long as the story made the disclosures that it did, I don’t see the argument that the reader would have been better served by someone else writing the piece and Scott being quoted in it.”

The piece originally was intended to appear in The Times Magazine on Sunday, but was moved to the news pages to get it published sooner. “We felt competitive pressure,” said Dean Baquet, a managing editor. Editors thought another news organization might be writing a similar story.

The article’s point of view, and Mr. Shane’s writing in the first person, might have seemed more at home in the magazine. But the value remained, despite its change of places. More than 500 readers commented on the story, and it generated plenty of attention on Twitter and elsewhere.

Mr. Shane, who proposed the piece to his editors months ago, saw an opportunity to tell a story from a different angle.

“It was a chance to be more direct about the dilemma involved when we report publicly on the secret activities of government,” he told me. “That involves rather risky relations between reporter and source - more risky now than it’s been in the past.”

I’ve been writing recently about the debate over reportorial impartiality and its role in the truth-telling that makes journalism worthwhile. One crucial element when impartiality comes into question is transparency.

This story is an example of just that. The reporter’s involvement is disclosed, and readers can draw their own conclusions.

“It’s always awkward when you’re a part of it,” Mr. Shane said, “but I thought it was justified.”

I agree. In this case, no one could have told this important tale as well. Those who have read it know more about how government and reporting work than they did before.

It’s the kind of story that makes you think; it may make you question the status quo. That’s a pretty good definition of what effective journalism does.