For those of us who think (for professional, not ideological reasons) the national press often does a lousy job, it’s been amusing to watch the media reaction to the General Stanley McChrystal affair.

There’s been a great deal of stuck-like-a-pig whining among other reporters over the conduct of Michael Hastings, the reporter who wrote the Rolling Stone story that got the general fired.  What they’ve basically said is that Hastings broke a sort of unwritten rule that reporters don’t report things that sources say casually, when they’re just hanging out.

Many of the beat reporters who cover people like McChrystal have been complaining that Hastings in effect burned McChrystal by reporting things he might have said, but didn’t intend for publication.  Now, the beat reporters are saying, nobody will talk to them for fear of having the same thing happen.

To which any real reporter would reply: Boo-friggin’ hoo.

From a sort of overall perspective, it’s pretty obvious what has the other reporters bent out of shape.  They’re engaged in one of the most common human activities, making excuses for their own failings.  The fact is, they got beat on a story.  It’s a pretty safe bet that Hastings wasn’t the only person McChrystal ever said those things in front of.  Hastings, however, was the first to report it.  If the other reporters had heard McChrystal say the same or similar things, and if Hastings was the first to report it, he simply scooped everybody else.  He won.   National reporters aren’t accustomed to losing and when they do they suddenly become 5-year-olds.

And to say they lost because Hastings broke some nebulous, unspoken agreement isn’t just silly, it simply doesn’t wash.

It’s a bit of mystery how McChrystal could’ve been so stupid as to say what he said in front of a reporter.  Anybody with half a brain – especially somebody in McChrystal’s position – knows they’re fair game when there’s a reporter in the room.   It’s a poor, cowardly reporter who lets a source come to him after the source has put his foot not just in his mouth, but halfway down his throat, and say, “of course, you can’t use that.”  One of the first things a novice reporter learns is that what goes into a story isn’t up to the source.  It’s up to the reporter and his editor.  Otherwise, the reporter is serving as a public relations person, not a journalist.

The whole question of when something is “off the record” is a delicate one.  Reporters often keep things off the record, but the important thing is that the reporter and source agree to that in advance.   And the onus is on the source to make sure that happens, although a good reporter will make sure both sides understand each other.

In my experience, about 75 percent of the time whatever a source wants off the record isn’t even something I would have reported.  I wish I had a nickel for every time a source wanted to go off the record for a statement like “the sun comes up in the east.”  Most people get so flummoxed dealing with a reporter that common sense pretty much goes out the window.  (My other favorite reaction is when I’ve conducted the entire interview and at the end, the source asks, “Is this going in the paper?”  My first reaction is always to think of telling them, “No, I was just bored and thought I’d call you up and ask you about those photos of you and the sheep.”)

But even when it comes to sensitive information, an honorable reporter makes sure there’s a bright line drawn between on- and off-the-record comments.  A reporter doesn’t have to do that – as I said, the onus is on the source to say when they’re speaking for publication and when they’re not – but it’s simply the decent thing to do.  Personally, if someone’s gone off the record with me, when the conversation is back on the record I state that explicitly.

As far as Hastings’ burning of a source and its effect on other reporters’ ability to do their job, well, life sucks.  Hastings had a job to do and whether what he does affects other reporters’ work day wasn’t his lookout.

To be fair to the beat reporters, we’ve all had out-of-town journalists come in, screw over a source we regularly deal with and thus make our jobs harder.  But if you have a decent relationship with a continuing source, a reporter can deal with that.  More importantly, any reporter worth his notepad can find another way to get the story. An old source of mine once pointed out to me that no reporter ever finds out anything unless somebody somewhere wants him to find it out.  The trick, often as not, is to find that person who wants you to know.  That’s basically a description of a reporter’s job.  You can be the best writer in the world, but if you can’t find a source, you’re a crappy journalist.

It’s true that what happened to McChrystal is going to make many people much more cautious about talking to reporters.  It’s probably going to be a while before anybody with any sensitive information sits around over drinks with a reporter in the room.  And if those people do, they’re going to make sure they don’t acquire the kind of verbal diarrhea that got McChrystal in trouble.  They’re going to shut down, at least for a while, and that’s going to make the reporters’ jobs harder.

Maybe that’s as it should be.   We reporters don’t like to work any harder than anybody else;  we all like to have stories handed to us in nice, neat, tidy packages, so we can pound out the story, go home and take a nap. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work like that much of the time.  And complaining because somebody else actually put some work into a story and thus beat you to it is just plain silly.