Jack teaches a Journalism 101 lesson

New Year's Eve socializing allowed us a little more insight into the Jack Abramoff situation. We were already familiar, of course, with the payoffs to members of Congress and their aides, the "free" fundraising events, golf games, and skybox seats. We knew that reporters had jumped on the skybox bandwagon. But it turns out that his wooing of journalists went further, with offers of meals at his favorite (wildly expensive) sushi restaurant as well as at his own place, Signatures.

Then there's his work for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. It's been reported that he wined and dined a posse of earnest conservative opinion journalists on lavish trips to the Marianas. (The Commonwealth has a special status as a U.S. territory where labor laws don't apply, resulting, reportedly, in horrific human rights abuses. But readers of conservative media will know the territory better as an idyllic capitalist success story.) Now our source says he also tried to persuade mainstream reporters to join these free "fact-finding" missions. As this Washington-based reporter with a major news organization described it to us, Abramoff appealed to these journalists' professional standards: How can you write about a place if you haven't actually walked its streets?

Touché, Mr. Abramoff!

Still, this all leaves us wondering whether any reporters learned from Jack's interpretation of "journalistic ethics", too, and took him up on the offers. Anyone have any ideas?