Journalism, Ethics, and Lawrence O'Donnell

One night on his MSNBC show, Lawrence O'Donnell rather suddenly disclosed something a source had said to him.

This was, he said, only a single source, whose name he could not disclose, and there was no confirmation of the statement, but he was going to tell us, anyway.

Loan documents from Deutsche Bank, which has had complicated relations with the Trump family business, indicate (according to this unverified source) that there were loans made to Trumpworld on the basis of documentation with co-signers. And that the co-signers were "Russian oligarchs."

O'Donnell later apologized for telling us this. I have just re-told it, in the course of saying (as I am about to) that O'Donnell was wrong. But he was working as a representative of a news oriented cable network, as a company man on the job. I'm blogging and on my own time. So I am for the moment free of the sort of responsibilities he violated.

Trumpets have seized on the apology as a vindication. Since O'Donnell should not have told us about this source, it follows that there is no such source, or the source was lying, or ... something.

Well ... no. What it tells us is that O'Donnell screwed up. MSNBC has rules -- analogous to the rules of essentially every news organization. One anonymous source is NEVER enough to run with a story. Why? Well, because as a general rule-of-thumb requiring two sources helps protect the publishing/broadcasting organization from tort liability. Even public figures (like, say, Carol Burnett) sometimes win libel suits against those who forget that rule.

O'Donnell's offense, then, was not so far as I know against Trump or the Trumps collectively but against his employer. Since they haven't fired him, I'm not going to get too worked up on their behalf.

Meanwhile there is the possibility that his source was onto something. Let's hope that better information on point shows up.

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