The Editor's Desk

Steve Chapman over at Reason Magazine has a piece analyzing the media’s abuse of anonymous sources to protect people in the government from being held accountable for inappropriate (even illegal) behavior or incompetence.

In short, a gentleman named Steve Hatfill was identified (through anonymous government sources) as the man behind the anthrax mailings following the Sept. 11 attacks. He was completely innocent and was never so much as even charged in the case.

A judge has ordered a former USA Today reporter to disclose her sources or else face fines for contempt. News organizations are defending her right to keep the information a secret.

The media, in general, does have an ethical right to keep sources a secret in a number of circumstances. In its role as a government watchdog, the media sometimes needs to depend on whistle-blowers providing them information about wrongdoing. Whistle-blowers, of course, may face retribution for revealing inappropriate activity and the media has the ability to reduce the risks by providing secrecy. The government, with its ability to create laws, has a tendency to abuse this authority to protect itself.

However, obviously some people in the media have forgotten exactly why it is we protect sources. In this case, the media is trying to protect the identity of government agents who, either out of incompetence or maliciousness, damaged the reputation of an innocent person. This entire case turns the whole point of protecting sources on its head. We’re supposed to be protecting the innocent from the government, not the other way around.

To me, as an editor, the larger question is, why on earth would a newspaper allow government officials to anonymously name a suspect in a crime in the first place? The legal and ethical risks are obviously high, as we’re seeing here with Hatfill proving to be completely innocent. If a reporter came to me and said we were given the name of a suspect in a crime but couldn’t reveal the source, I absolutely wouldn’t allow the name to be printed. If law enforcement officials don’t have the confidence to publicly state their suspicions, it’s completely irresponsible for a newspaper to risk its own reputation by putting the name out there. Why is it that I can immediately see this problem, but the larger media companies cannot?

I put up a new poll question this week asking folks what they’re going to do with their stimulus checks. It seems as though, so far, we’re not interested in the task of allegedly stimulating the economy with new purchases. Instead, most of the voters so far say they’ll use the check to pay down their debts and to pay for basic necessities. This is amusing in the sense that if the government hadn’t taken that money away from us in taxes in the first place, we might not have had the debt to pay down.

I too will be using the check to pay down debt, which will put me at 0-for-2 in using this money in the way the government wants me to. When we got the last “stimulus check” in 2001, I spent it all on a trip visiting some friends in Toronto, Canada, so all that money went to stimulate another nation’s economy.

I just can’t do anything the government wants me to do, can I?

A commenter on Jason Smith’s story about the financial problems of the Barstow Humane Society mentioned having a negative experience with the staff there and said others have reported the same.

I’ve heard this as well, but I have to say they were pretty accommodating to me when I adopted my dog, Xander, from there a little more than a year ago. They were no-nonsense about the whole thing, but I wouldn’t call them rude. I have a reputation for being pretty blunt myself, though, so it’s possible I just am not sensitive to that sort of behavior.

They were also very helpful when, not two weeks after I adopted Xander, he figured out how to unlatch the gate and escaped from my backyard. One of the employees recognized him a couple of days later out on the street, brought him back to the shelter, and I was able to bring him back home.

I’ll have an editorial in tomorrow’s paper about the Humane Society’s issues, but it should pop up online after 5 p.m. here in the editorial section if you don’t want to wait.

Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, died Tuesday morning at 69.

I was a big Dungeons and Dragons nerd up until I graduated college and became a journalist. I have no regrets and am not at all embarrassed by saying so. The game fostered the kind of creative activity that was unmatched by the card and board game culture it preceded to the point that some adults felt threatened by the concept. I still remember laughing at certain religious critics who believed that gamers were actually trying to cast magic spells in the real world as though they would actually work. As there were no reported increases in school bullies evaporating in a beam of green light, we now know that’s simply not true.

Dungeons and Dragons’ influence on the future of fantasy culture is obvious. It pushed forward a revival in the fantasy genre, in books first, but eventually on film as well. Its influence on the gaming culture that exists today cannot be understated.

But there’s more. Any psychologist can explain the importance of “play” on the development of a child — developing physical and mental abilities that will eventually help him or her overcome barriers in life. So how does Dungeons and Dragons fit in?

Well, consider that when us Generation X gamer nerds reached adulthood, the job market didn’t quite know what to do with us. There was a lot of press in the late ‘80s and ‘90s about Gen Xers having to work a succession of horrible, dead-end jobs to make ends meet.

A lot of that has changed, now, but why? The answer is that there is an entire business and commercial culture based around computer and communication systems that didn’t exist back then. And this culture was built largely by those former Generation X youths. The experience of creating new worlds and challenging our intellect and creativity helped foster a generation comfortable with creating new systems and changing dynamics in the real world.

Gary Gygax’s influence spread much further than even he probably realized. So much technological innovation in the world has come at the hands of those who spent hours, days, weeks, even years, crafting entire imaginary systems, cultures, and worlds. It should not have come as a surprise that ultimately such creativity would push out into the world of business and commerce as we grew older.

So rest in peace, Gary Gygax. By influencing a generation to create worlds of their own, you have ultimately contributed to significant, invaluable creations in the world we actually live.

Dear Desert Dispatch,

i appoved this message. (sic)

Sincerely

Micu Finkelstein
[Address redacted]
Mojave, CA

I finally figured out where these letters are coming from. They show up in waves whenever something about the conflict between Israel and Palestine shows up in the L.A. Times. There’s clearly a Web site out there allowing visitors to write up letters and spam SoCal newspapers with them. None of them will ever run. I wonder if these folks realize they’d be better off just sending letters directly to the newspaper involved and not spamming newspaper editors across Southern California, most of whom are angrily deleting them out of their inbox.

Some of them even try to pose as “subscribers” of our publication, unaware that we’re hours away from the Los Angeles area.