So if you're a responsible reporter and you call up the RNC spokesman and get the response to Gore's speech, you're just going to have to accept that when the spokesman tells you something kinda sorta plausible but fundamentally untrue you're going to attribute it, quote it accurately, and run it. Now you're involved in the propaganda machine yourself, but it happened as a result of trying to be balanced and responsible and 'avoid the impression of...' -- Jay.
Unless, of course, you write the follow-up paragraph, based on a little research easily accessed in these days of digital databanks, which says, basically, "The RNC response is fundamentally untrue."
Now, I grant you, nine out of 10 reporters don't do that -- even though it is not that hard to take that extra step.
I learned that woeful fact in 2004, running Campaign Desk, the predecessor to CJR Daily. And every time we saw it, we called them on it -- usually to no avail.
But my point is, that is the way out of what you describe as Downie's dilemma ... or Sue Schmidt's dilemma ... or Harris's dilemma ... or Howell's dilemma.
What's depressing is that none of them get it.
It's weird that they don't get it because in the mind of readers it essentially makes the reporters liars. Despite how some like to think of themselves, reporters are not passive conduits of information. They choose their sources. They choose the quotes. They decide when a source has been full of shit so many times that, if they care, they stop going to them for information.
More than that, from the perspective of the reader when the journalist passes on the quote without question or any rebuttal or refutation, the journalist is implicitly putting his/her stamp of authentication on it. This is doubly true for those "anonymous senior administration official quotes" where no sensible (hah!) reader assumes that a reporter would pass off information under cover of anonymity without doing at least a modest bit of verification.
This is different from, say, CNN running some of a Bush speech live and not doing an instant fact check. TV news, in part, is a passive conduit for live events. But print reporting should never simply be, uh, what was that word? Oh, yes, stenography.
When a reporter puts the byline on something they own it. I understand that it is actually news when a senior administration official says something, no matter what it is, but it's even bigger news if they're, you know, lying.