One of the first things I do every morning is link to "The Note", ABC's on-line posting of political gossip, news, and data. Its filled with snarky asides, and is very much the fave with bloggers who specialize in snarky asides. However, one annoying habit it has is to play up the Beltway spin about the political drift of the country; much of the time, it reads like a Karl Rove blastfax. In the past couple of weeks, it has hyped "scandals" involving Democratic Senate candidates in Iowa and South Dakota, long after those stories were discredited or minimized. The typical "Note" will usually begin with how Iraq is completely dominating the news cycle, so therefore the American people aren't going to be concerned with the rotten economy, and will elect a GOP Senate.

Nevertheless, I still like reading it, since it does give good gossip, but this morning it did something that I absolutely despise in journalism. It granted anonymity to a source for no good reason. In case you don't bounce obsessively around the internet, or don't subscribe to the Washington Post, the big political story today concerned an article published this morning by Post political writer Dana Milbank, which basically stated that the President is a liar. Not in those words, of course; this is the new, right-friendly, Don Graham Post, but still, saying the Boy Prince has a "malleable" interpretation of the truth is awfully close to the hated "C-word". The story itself wasn't extraordinary for being a scoop, but for the fact that it was published at all.

The reaction by "The Note" was as follows: it quoted a "senior Administration official" who blasted Milbank and took exception to the claim that three of the examples used in the article were dishonest. So why, may you ask, was the source not quoted by name? After all, whoever said it wasn't going to lose his job for defending the President. It wasn't under oath. He didn't defame Dana Milbank. I doubt his life will be in jeopardy.

As I see it, there were two reasons why the "senior Administration official" would be granted anonymity. One, it's Karl Rove himself, and printing the attack under Rove's name would confirm what most of us already believe, that "The Note" is basically his spinsheet (not to mention the fact that Rove does not have the best reputation for veracity either). Or two, their anonymous source is someone with so little credibility that printing his name would diminish the credibility of the assertion. It's kind of like when a sportswriter refers to what "informed sources" say about a player from Georgetown or UCLA around draft time: his informed source could be Jerry West, but more likely it's Donald Sterling, and giving the source anonymity allows him to publish whatever he wants without losing credibility in the eyes of his reader. After awhile, of course, the reader begins to mistrust much of what he reads.

Well, in any event, it's a pet peeve of mine. I just wish the news media would show its cards a little more often. After all, they are in the truth business.