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press box: Media criticism.

Bartiromo InnuendoWhat exactly is the Wall Street Journal trying to say?

By Jack Shafer
Updated Monday, Jan. 29, 2007, at 6:02 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

Delineating a friendship that includes a trans-Pacific flight alone in a corporate jet, an apparently significant sighting in an expensive restaurant, and a dressing down in which a corporate executive is told to reduce his contact with his friend of the opposite sex, all but draws the doughnut and tosses the hot dog through it. On Jan. 26, the Journal rehashes some of the Thomson-Bartiromo story, referring to their jet trip home from Asia, their "friendship," and their "relationship" (twice). The story breaks new ground in reporting that Thomson tried and failed to get Bartiromo on his jet more than a year ago, while entertaining clients in Montana.

You can almost hear the Journal reporters snicker when they write that CNBC insisted that any jet trips taken by Bartiromo "fell under the 'source development' section of its code of ethics." Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more!

Having dumped the compost, planted the seed, and fertilized and watered the earth, the Journal leaves it to nobody's imagination what species the flowering Thomson-Bartiromo friendship, relationship, and contact is without actually coming out and writing anything that 1) they can't prove and 2) invites a libel suit. This is the sort of copy a clever lawyer directs reporters to write when they "know" something but can't prove it. Leave it to the reader to assemble the meaning of the facts in their minds, the wise libel attorney tells his clients.

The Jan. 26 New York Times also walks the cow around the barn by noting that both Thomson and Bartiromo are married. Or maybe I'm reading too much into both that story and the headline to David Carr's Jan. 29 column in the Times: "Citigroup and CNBC Cozy Up."

Today's Newsweek takes a more disingenuous approach than the Journal, employing the old trick of citing sources in no position to know the truth. "The mainstream press is questioning Bartiromo's journalistic ethics," quoth Newsweek, "while bloggers are insinuating that the Banker and the Anchor may have had more than just professional ties." Newsweek would never do anything so irresponsible as that!

Is Newsweek reading the same Wall Street Journal I am? The most extensive mainstream coverage to appear is the Journal's, and it has brushed so many coats of innuendo onto the story that there's no need to cite blogger naughtiness to speculate about Thomson and Bartimoro's romance, or lack thereof. At least Britain's Private Eye magazine accepts responsibility for its own impiety whenever it wants to imply an unprintable intimate relationship by referring to a "Ugandan discussion" or "Ugandan relations." (See the warring etymologies on Usenet and UgandanDiscussions.co.uk.)

Sometimes reporters write around the subject they want you to pick up on. Other times they just buzz over the subject, as did three top Washington Post reporters on Jan. 10, 1989. Their tiny story—just 245 words—announced that Jennifer Fitzgerald was about to be appointed chief of protocol by the new administration. As you may recall, it was widely rumored during the 1988 presidential campaign that Fitzgerald had gone Ugandan with Vice President George Bush, for whom she had worked many years.

The rumors were without foundation, as the late Ann Devroy, one of the three authors of the infamous Post story, would acknowledge in 1992 to the Post's Howard Kurtz. "I spent two solid months looking into this in the early 1980s and I never found any evidence of it," said Devroy, who worked for Gannett News Service in those years.