An MSM story: I think you'll smile.

(Welcome visitors from Betsy's Page and other blogs I may have missed.)

A friend called over the weekend and we got to talking about journalists.

He recalled that some years back The New York Times had run a series of exposes of business companies. For sources, The Times relied heavily on current and former employees of the companies. The Times called it sources "whistle blowers."

Some time afterward, when there was all the trouble involving Times reporter Jayson Blair and executive editor Howell Raines a good number of Times employees complained about standards and practices at the paper.

My friend was talking to a Times editor about that time and decided to do a little needling.

"Looks like you've got a lot of whistle blowing going on in your newsroom," he said.

"Those people," the editor replied. "They're just disgruntled."

And so it goes.

Thank you to Mudville Gazette for an open link

( Reader,

Here's a link to a post that may interest you. It contains the full-texts of two documents.

One is an email a press officer for North Carolina's Gov. Mike Easley sent to a news editor at a major NC paper.

The other is a column the editor subsequently wrote in which she reported at length on matters mentioned in the email but told readers nothing about the email until she characterizes it in the last two paragraphs of her column.

The email was not public at the time the column appeared and normally would not have become public. But in response to a blogger's request, the Governor's office released a copy to him two weeks after the editor's column appeared.

I know of no journalist in NC who has been critical on the record of the editor's reporting.

Again, here's a link to the documents. I hope you read them. Comments are welcome.

John)

Reader note added 10/20/2005 at 12:15 PM Eastern