Recall the New York Times‘ publication of an article slandering Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh with an unfounded accusation of sexual misbehavior toward a young woman decades ago at a college party.  Recall further that the NYT later “corrected” its claim with an “Editor’s Note” buried in the original smear piece instead of placing its Note prominently.

There’s more to this story.  The smear piece, excerpted from a forthcoming book as part of a marketing effort for that book, was written by the authors of the book.  They excerpted their own book.

They omitted the key information themselves.

That’s the headline of Walter Hussman’s piece in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal.  Impartiality certainly is a contributor, but the Critical Item for a newspaper’s credibility—for any journalistic entity—is integrity.

To set themselves on the path back to honesty, and so to believability—not just credibility—members of the journalism industry must address these items:

1. identify at least some of their sources
2. if an anonymous source refuses to be identified, show two things

-the source actually exists
-why the source should be believed

3. if the anonymous source is a whistleblower, show that the source has exhausted all internal whistleblowing channels before deciding to leak