Fucking the elephant

Former New York Times editor Abe Rosenthal once famously said, by way of driving home the point about conflicts of interests: “I don’t care if you fuck the elephant as long as you don’t cover the circus.”

I was reminded of this quote when I read the juicy “Inside Track” items in Newsbreak magazine about congressmen having affairs and trysts with journalists.

Sleeping with a source (or having a “special relationship,” like what Arlyn dela Cruz had, according to her, with Abu Sayyaf’s Khaddafy Janjalani) is nothing new,of course. But I’ve seen and heard quite a number of this happening that I am tempted to call it a trend.

In Manila and in the provinces, there are journalists — most of them from the TV networks — who have relationships with congressmen, councilors, mayors, military and police officials, even boxing champions.

I don’t normally care what journalists or other people do in their bedrooms. That’s their business even if, in many of these cases, these officials could potentially be charged with graft. (Most of these officials are married and would lavish material things on their mistresses using government money.)

What I care about is when these journalists continue covering the activities of their paramours for their newspapers or networks, as if there’s nothing between them.