The Hit-Job Mentality

¿ The Los Angeles Times quotes an "aide" to Mike Huckabee saying that Mitt Romney's Mormonism "is definitely a factor in the race. . . . To a lot of people, [Mormonism] is a strange religion that they don't understand." This is a twofer: The aide gets to demean not just Romney but also an entire religion. In 1987, John Sasso was forced to resign as campaign manager for Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis after admitting that he gave the New York Times, Des Moines Register and NBC a videotape showing that Joe Biden had plagiarized language from a British politician. But the tape simply contrasted publicly available speeches. These days, campaign operatives don't need such "evidence"; they simply whisper unflattering remarks to favored correspondents.

Some news organizations, including The Post, have policies against allowing unnamed sources to denigrate others, but exceptions abound.

Last spring, New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney expressed regret for having quoted an unnamed "Bush associate" in 2004 describing John Edwards as "the Breck girl of politics," and another unnamed Bush adviser as saying of John Kerry, "He looks French." To his credit, Nagourney owned up to his role, with a colleague, in "not only previewing what the Bush campaign intended to do, but, by introducing such memorably biting characterizations into the political dialogue, helping it. Was that a mistake on our part? Perhaps."

Political reporters, as a rule, are an industrious band of road warriors who work hard to get people to speak on the record. But under deadline pressure, they sometimes succumb to the lure of the juicy quote dished out by operatives trying to damage rival candidates. Perhaps it's time to rethink the practice.

Mormons and the Media

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Newsweek correspondent Elise Soukup was happy to be asked to contribute to the magazine's recent cover story on Mitt Romney. It was headlined "A Mormon's Journey."

"When I saw the cover line, I kind of groaned," she says. "I do think it's unfair to put so much emphasis on his faith. I asked, 'Would we write "A Jew's Journey"?' "

Soukup is the only Mormon reporter at Newsweek. In fact, she is probably one of the few mainstream journalists outside Utah to write about the Republican presidential candidate who also shares his faith. And that, some Mormons say, is in part because people reared in their religion tend to shy away from the news business.

A handful of Mormon journalists has risen to national prominence, from the late muckraking columnist Jack Anderson to former CBS "Early Show" co-host Jane Clayson. And Mormons make up a majority of the staff at Salt Lake City's Deseret Morning News, which is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Ron Scott, a Massachusetts author who writes a blog called Catching Mitt -- and who says he and Romney share the same great-grandfather -- says most of the country's 5.5 million Mormons are wary of joining the media world. "It's so easy to get yourself in trouble with church members who will be critical of you," he notes.

The University of Utah graduate says his mother "wasn't thrilled" when he was part of the team that founded People magazine because "writing about lifestyles of the rich and famous" was seen as a frivolous pursuit. "It's tough enough being a journalist without a mother and father and 15 brothers second-guessing whether you're being a devout member of the church."

Stephen Stromberg, a church member who writes for the Economist, says, "Mormons often have large families to support, and journalists' salaries aren't as high as what you might get doing something else."

In reading coverage of Mormon matters, says Stromberg, a former Washington Post editorial writer, journalists "get details wrong all the time, to make the church look totally nuts. It seems like the writer might be trying to hint, 'My gosh, look at these crazy people.' "