Journalists are a rarefied breed who live by their own arcane ethical rules well above us the unwashed masses. For instance, a journalist shouldn't be a spy. Or be in bed with the CIA. This, apparently, is a firing offense, at least according to David Ignatius. I'm inclined to take his word for it as he used to be a Washington Post reporter (and is now an editor there).
His novel, A Firing Offense, is a (here goes blur jargon) fast-paced, suspense-filled thriller about a young, ambitious journalist who, in the course of investigating corruption in international trade, gets a little too cozy with the "Agency". This, apparently, is a grave breach of the journalist's credo. Who knew?
A Firing Offense is a good book if you can get past the whole spying plot (I personally have a hard time seeing spying as anything more than a silly game for adult males). There are some fine ruminations on the future of journalism, especially the print, but they feel almost quaint as the book was written in 1997, before the onslaught of bloggers, content-providers, multimedia producers and other sources of mostly insignificant noise. Here's one for the old-fashioned journalism values as celebrated in Ignatius' book.
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