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MANNING & ASSOCIATES HNANCIAL SERVICES A homegrown Texas firm, Manning & Associates is a fee-only financial planning and investment management firm that specializes in socially responsible investments Our advice is tailored to meet your needs and your values. What we do: Wealth Management Asset Allocation Gifting Strategies Estate Planning Miscellaneous Issues 1200 Smith Street, Suite 1600 Houston, Texas 77002 tel. 713.621.6646 I toll free 877309.8248 [email protected] www.manning-financial.com one another. Pearlstine was excoriated by major journalists such as Frank Rich and the late David Halberstam. Accused of craven corporate caving when he gave up Cooper’s notes, Pearlstine’s defense boils down to this: As a megamedia corporate chief, Pearlstinewho has a law degree unhappily contemplated a contempt citation, a move guaranteed to produce dyspepsia in CEOs and stockholders. He argues that journalists are not above the law. When you lose in the courts, you have to obey. Time Inc. spent millions battling for Cooper in the courts, “and we lost every round. When the Supreme Court refused to hear our pleas, I folded our hand and turned over our notes to the grand jury.” It was “dispiriting” that the Supreme Court refused to take “our case, as is the resultant mess the press and prosecutors are left with.” Pearlstine has taken it from both sides, also drawing criticism for pursuing the case through the courts and losing. “By pushing a test case through the federal court system in which the underlying facts offered little chance for success, Time Inc. and the Times company generated legal precedents that have damaged the institution of journalism,” CJR wrote. 13 earlstine is rough on Cooper’s use of confidentiality and discusses the confusion regarding source anonymity. “Ask a group of reporters or editors to tell you the difference between ‘confidential’ and ‘anonymous’ or between ‘not for attribution,’ background,”deep background’ and ‘off the record’ and you will get a lot of different answers. As screenwriter William Goldman once said of Hollywood, `Nobody knows anything.’ Cooper characterized by his former boss as “the very model of the ‘Washington insider’cited a unique category in an e-mail to editors. Sounding like he was ordering a Big Mac, Cooper stated that he spoke to Rove on “double super secret background.” Pearlstine knocks Cooper for deciding “unilaterally” that Rove “deserved confidential source status.” Instead, Pearlstine regarded Rove as an “anonymous” source, meaning in his estimation Rove’s name would not be in print, but could be disclosed if a reporter were subpoenaed. In the aftermath of the case, Pearlstine, like many in the media, champions a federal shield law to protect journalists from an intrusive government, but admits that versions being considered in Congress are watered down and offer little protection for the new face of journalism, bloggers. There was a time when Pearlstine, as a principled Wall Street Journal editor, was a mentor to great reporters. But he always had an affinity for the boardroom. “I became comfortable socializing with my sources, including many CEOs,” he writes. In early years, he babysat Ross Perot’s children while doing a profile on him. He established a 35-year friendship with Lee Iacocca. While writing from Hong Kong, “some of my best friends were at Coudert Brothers [an international law firm], representing corporations that were trying to crack the China market?’ \(To be fair, he championed aggressive coverage of Wall Street and went against a Dow Jones advertising executive who protested Pearlstine’s willingness “to wash our dirty laundry In the Plame affair, the corporate lawyer in him won out over the journalist. Today he is a comfortable company man as a member of the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm specializing in the acquisition of corporations. In this role, Pearlstine recently championed Rupert Murdoch’s further gobble-ization of the media. Murdoch’s purchase of the Wall Street Journal begins an “exciting chapter” for Dow Jones & Co. and the field of business news, Pearlstine told a group of business press editors. Inside Chatter blogger Donna Bogatin reported Pearlstine’s enthusiastic speculation that “by leveraging the excess printing capacity of the Journal,” Murdoch might launch a national edition of the trash-and-slash New York Post. Ethical journalism, anyone? Journalist and author Myra MacPherson’s most recent book is All Governments Lie! The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I.F. Stone OCTOBER 5, 2007 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 23