MORE ON JOURNALISTIC ETHICS AND THE ATLANTIC’S SALONS, from Mickey Kaus. “The problem with Bradley’s salons, like the problems with WaPo’s similar, now-cancelled events, is that they create two big conflicts: 1) The need to avoid pissing off the corporations who fund (and then some***) the salons in the hope of getting access to influential journalists and administration bigshots; and, even more corrupting, 2) the need to suck up to the administration bigshots to get them to show up at the salons where they can be accessed by corporations who are paying for them.”
Meanwhile, Megan McArdle reports: “I’m not going to comment much on my employer’s salons except to say that I’ve been to them, and there’s no scandal there. At the paid ones, where the journalists talk, the journalists dictate what we say, and the sponsors are told they have no control. At the unpaid salons, it’s–well, it’s an off the record briefing, of the sort that every other journalist is well familiar with. Either way, I’ve never said or done anything that I wouldn’t say at a regular interview, and neither have the other journalists.”
Looks to me like David Bradley is leaving no revenue source untapped. . . .