The Corporate Brush-Off

" Speaking by phone, AP executive editor Kathleen Carroll told The Chronicle, 'The cartoons didn't meet our long-held standards for not moving offensive content. The AP is not just an indiscriminate warehouse for information. We put a lot of care into what we put on the wire.'

"The AP cared enough to put a photo of Jackson's malfunction on the wire, just so, you know, we'd understand the context of the fuss. But, of course, that was then."

By the way, there's a cartoon out there, by Mike Luckovich, that pictures wounded soldiers -- but no protest from the Joint Chiefs. Maybe because the butt of this one is not the military but the media.

Louisville Courier-Journal cartoonist Nick Anderson says by e-mail: "I'm waiting for the Joint chiefs to protest 'using such a callous depiction of those who volunteered to defend this nation and, as a result, suffered traumatic and life-altering wounds.' I am also waiting for the right-wing punditocracy to express horror that injured troops are being exploited to score political points. . . . Perhaps it depends whose ox is being gored?"

Geoff Dougherty says (via Romenesko) he was working for the Chicago Tribune last year on a piece about executive compensation and that Tribune Co. CEO Dennis FitzSimons loomed large:

"As I crunched the numbers, it became apparent that FitzSimons' pay would figure prominently in the article. It seemed like an article we needed to publish, even if it would reflect negatively on the Tribune's top exec.

"So I wrote it. My editor signed off on it. The copy desk cleared it and slated it for publication last May.

"And then, 36 hours before the article was to appear, it was killed. Tribune editors ducked questions about why they hadn't run the article, and declined to schedule it for publication."

Here's an interesting debate, from L.A. writer Cathy Seipp , on what you should or shouldn't do when a reporter calls you for information:

"David Cay Johnston, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times tax reporter and self-styled press critic, is not pleased with the journalistic ethics I displayed in my pundit-payola column the other week. Although in that piece I described turning down a $1,000-cash-for-comment bribe, apparently I'd still violated some sort of code by relating that story here before the Times had a chance to get it into print.

"The 'Cathy Seipp anecdote,' as I heard it became known in-house, seems to have been ruined for the Times by Cathy Seipp having the gall to use it in a Cathy Seipp column first; their story was evidently supposed to run about three weeks ago and so far has not. Johnston hadn't been one of the reporters working on the piece, nor, as far as I know, did he have anything to do with it.

"But apparently his status as a press critic -- Johnston has written for Columbia Journalism Review, and is a frequent crank on the Romenesko letters page -- obligated him to weigh in. So he felt moved to lecture me via e-mail (subject line: 'Gosh, Catherine'), press-critic-to-press-critic, that my scooping his paper by using an incident that had happened to me , in my own column, was 'not honorable.'

"As a press critic myself, Johnston told me, I should have known this. Also, I'd better not tell anyone about his unsolicited opinion. That was a secret.

"I have no patience for these imposed confidentiality deals. Over the years, various journalists besides Johnston have sent me e-mails that basically say this:

" Hello. Although you have not asked for my opinion, I would like to tell you what I think of you. But I suspect, on some level, that this makes me sound like a pompous git. So you are hereby ordered to keep my insults to you secret. If you disobey, you have violated our non-agreement and are therefore unethical .

"So I put my e-mail exchange with Johnston on my blog."

Fair or unfair? You make the call.

Runaway groom? It's bad enough when you call off your wedding a week before the event, but if you're a TV reporter, you wind up in the gossip column .