Under what rules was Harry Reid operating under when he gave an interview to one of the authors of Game Change?
Heilemann and Halperin - journalists! - won't respond on the record. Greg Sargent notes:
To be clear, there may well be an explanation for what happened with Reid. And producing narrative histories with unclear sourcing in the text is a grand D.C. tradition (see Woodward, Bob). But what’s mystifying is that virtually none of the media figures lavishing attention on this book have broached the sourcing issue, something you’d think would merit a bit of discussion among professional journalists. Discussion of this has been left almost entirely to bloggers.
I cannot square this story with the principles of ethical journalism as laid out by the authors themselves. But once again, the MSM protects itself. My own view is that journalists who will not respond to good faith questions about their ethics have abandoned the responsibility of journalism.
(Full disclosure: I am an old friend of Heilemann and like and respect him immensely. But it's my role to ask uncomfortable questions.)