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Protecting sources vs. airing the truth: journalist’s dilemma
Chicago Sun-Times - Thursday, July 23, 1987
Author: Michael Briggs
Is journalist Jonathan Alter the kind of reporter his mother would trust?
Joanne H. Alter is a trustee of the Chicago Metropolitan Sanitary District, a reformer who, sometimes as a confidential source, has tried to draw reporters’ attention to what she regards as “creeps” in public office.
Jonathan Alter writes for Newsweek magazine. In this week’s edition, he wrote a piece that fingered Lt. Col. Oliver L. North as a confidential Newsweek source for a blow-by-blow account of the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro and subsequent capture of terrorists who murdered an American tourist on the cruise ship. The story painted Col. North as a double-talker because he had blamed Congress for leaking about the same subject.
Reporters have gone to jail to protect sources. So Newsweek’s exposure of Col. North as a source touched a journalistic nerve.
(snip)
In Chicago, meanwhile, Joanne Alter said she has had her own misadventures on leaks. “You take your chances when you talk to the press,” the Newsweek reporter’s mother said. Information she has tried to slip secretly to reporters has come out in stories that don’t exactly pin the information on her, but “they’ve phrased it so it’s unmistakably me.”
So does Jonathan Alter think Mom would leak a story to him?
“That’s an interesting question. I hope so,” said the reporter
and media critic, who apparently had anguished about divulging that
Col. North was a Newsweek source. “Look, it’s not easy. I’m not saying it’s something one does lightly.”
How about it, Mom?
“I would trust Jon with anything. He’s one of the most honorable people I know,” she said
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Better safe than sweaty - for $850,000
Chicago Sun-Times - Friday, August 30, 1996
Author: Michael Sneed
EXCERPT
John-John & Maria miaaaaaaa . . .
Kennedy rejected the suggestion of bodyguards for his George magazine party, but George hired a bodyguard anyway, provided by the Security Professionals. . . . Maria Shriver Schwarzenegger accompanied cousin John to a party at Joanne Alter ‘s house Wednesday night wearing something resembling big black square-toed Mickey Mouse shoes with white ribbons.
//
Jonathan Alter
Chicago Sun-Times - Wednesday, April 15, 1992
Author: Bob Herguth
HE IS At 34, a senior editor at Newsweek. He writes a column about the media and politics and handles the Conventional Wisdom watch. He’s covering his third presidential campaign for the magazine. PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY “Stay skeptical but idealistic.”
(snip)
A 1968 FIRST “The 1968 Democratic convention was my first. I was 10. My mom was working for Humphrey, my dad was working for McCarthy. And I was running back and forth, underfoot, between headquarters. And I can remember fleeing Michigan Avenue with my parents just as it was getting pretty hot.”
WHITE HOUSE AT 20 “I had kind of a Walter Mittyish experience when I was 20. I went to work in the Carter speechwriting office in the White House. I did write some speeches for Carter, one of which John Fischetti did a cartoon about. I have the cartoon hanging in my kitchen.”
LEARNED FROM FAMILY “My faith in politics, as the only answer we have, comes from my mother. And the writing ability comes from my father.” And, “We have an old family saying from my grandmother: `You’re never sorry for what you do.’ It means don’t pass up opportunities because you’re afraid.”