In the Fog of War, A Moral Haze

Sometimes, in the murky maze in which journalists dwell, seeing the right course of action isn't easy.

Should major newspapers and networks have agreed to suppress the news that Christian Science Monitor stringer Jill Carroll had been kidnapped in Iraq? The impulse is understandable, given the Monitor's plea that publicity might endanger negotiations to win her freedom. But since when are journalists in the business of sitting on news? And would they have imposed a 48-hour blackout for a non-journalist?

"It created the appearance of one group of people taking care of themselves above anyone else," says Sig Christenson of the San Antonio Express-News, who once covered the kidnapping of a Halliburton contractor. Christenson, the president of Military Reporters and Editors, says one contractor told him last week "he was mad because there was one rule for us and one rule for everyone else over there."

But New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller told Slate it "was not exactly groundbreaking news that people get kidnapped in Iraq. I think the request would -- certainly ought to -- get the same consideration whether the person abducted was a journalist, an aid worker, a contractor or a soldier." And there's the rub: Who wants to be the one who writes the story that increases the chance that terrorists will murder an American?

On another Iraq-related issue, The Washington Post last month led off a piece about the Pentagon's "increasingly aggressive battle for control over information about the conflict" with the example of blogger Bill Roggio. The computer technician, who was embedded with a Marine unit following an invitation from the military, cried foul.

The Post has corrected three minor factual errors: Roggio was accredited by the Weekly Standard; he had already returned home by the time of the article; and he didn't serve in the military long enough to be deemed a "retired soldier."

But sometimes corrections are too narrow. Did Roggio, who made the trip with $33,000 in reader donations, belong in an article about the military paying Iraqi journalists to publish favorable stories? On billroggio.com, he called the piece "blatantly misleading" because "there was absolutely no association between my embed and any military information operation."

David Hoffman, The Post's assistant managing editor for foreign news, says Roggio has a "worthy argument," but that "the military is fighting an information war and we're covering it. Inviting certain people to come and cover the war is their prerogative, but it's also spin. . . . I don't believe anything in that article misrepresented what he was doing."

In the publishing world, standards can also be hazy. Author James Frey hit it big after Oprah Winfrey endorsed his memoir of a life of crime, "A Million Little Pieces." Thanks to some digging by TheSmokingGun.com, that work has now been exposed as a tangle of fabrications and embellishments. Frey, according to police records and his own admissions, didn't commit most of the felonies he claimed in the book -- including hitting a cop with his car and serving a three-month jail term.

In a painfully weak appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live," Frey acknowledged that he "changed things," but said he has "a long drug and alcohol history," that "everyone's memory is subjective" and that he still "stand[s] by the essential truths of the book." Winfrey, calling in to the show, seemed unconcerned: "Although some of the facts have been questioned," she said, "the underlying message of redemption in James Frey's memoir still resonates with me." So lying is okay if you've got a good "underlying message"?

What about Frey's publisher, which is refusing to investigate? In a remarkable statement, Doubleday said: "Recent accusations against him notwithstanding, the power of the overall reading experience is such that the book remains a deeply inspiring and redemptive story for millions of readers."

Even if it's fiction masquerading as nonfiction? Is that the standard for publishing a memoir? This one doesn't seem quite so murky.