"Act Like a Drug Dealer"

[madmusic]

Times Studies How to Shake Feds: Disposable Phones, Erasable Notes: "Act Like a Drug Dealer"

By Michael Calderone

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has taken his place among the spirits permanently haunting West 43rd Street. “The basic goal,” New York Times reporter David Barstow said, “is to make it more difficult for a future Fitzgerald to follow the breadcrumbs of phone records and notes and expense slips from reporter to source.”

Mr. Barstow, the Pulitzer- and Peabody-winning investigative reporter, was on the phone Sept. 12, shortly before The Times began this year’s round of legal seminars for the staff.

The sessions, led by Times lawyers George Freeman and David McCraw, have traditionally offered a brush-up on privacy, sourcing and general newsgathering. But executive editor Bill Keller announced in a staff memo that the 2006 version would address “the persistent legal perils that confront us.”

“The main worry these days is not libel, or proving that you actually quoted something accurately,” said Craig Whitney, the paper’s standards editor. “It is being subpoenaed.”

more:

http://www.observer.com/20060918/20060918_Michael_Calderone_media_offtherecord.asp