The AJC had a story today that smacks of journalist protectionism. The gist of the story is that the Administration and others have been using the story about how Osama stopped using his satelitte phone after reading in a newspaper that the U.S. was wiretapping satellite phones as a reason for the media to remain quiet on certain national security issues. This was obviously in response to the New York Times' frequent felonies in releasing classified secrets. It's not just the Plame affair, but the "secret torture" bases the CIA supposedly has, and the NSA wiretapping. All of these are classified secrets, and Bush and his supporters claim that whoever leaked the information caused more damage to national security by far than the Plame thing, and should be put in jail for felonious treason or something like that. Anyway, the AJC story said the satellite phone story wasn't true, and that Osama stopped using his phone because of cruise missles. They then offered not a single piece of evidence to back this assertion up, not even a quote from a blatantly partisan source, nothing at all. On the other hand, they had multiple quotes and sources in the same article saying the story was true, but all the journalist has to back up his story is that "It's not true."

Is that supposed to be good reporting?