A piece in today’s NYT Sunday Review looks at the practice of even some reputable media outlets paying for news—although they pretend they don’t—and suggests it’s a tough nut to crack. ABC News is the latest to get caught ($200,000 for Casey Anthony, pictured), but the practice goes back a long way, past Watergate and CBS News’ $100,000 dish to Nixon aide H. R. Haldeman, for instance.
Early example: The New York Times itself shelled out $1,000 in 1912 to the surviving wireless operator on the Titanic to get his story.
Noted: Journalism prof Lorna Veraldi at Florida International University says this of the outlets: “They pretend not to engage in it by paying for memoirs or for photographs, but that has made it a subject of more outrage.”
