
The New York Times has decided it is fine to out a confidential source -- provided his name is Tucker Carlson. Its media columnist, Ben Smith, reports that the Fox News star is “the go-to guy for sometimes-unflattering stories about Donald J. Trump and for coverage of the internal politics of Fox News (not to mention stories about Mr. Carlson himself).”
Breaking a cardinal rule of journalistic ethics, Smith identifies Carlson as one of his own “off-the-record” sources. So, too, did “16 other journalists … [who] told me on background that he has been, as three of them put it, ‘a great source.’”