Journalism Professor Talks on Leaks, Panama Papers, and Trump.

by Jackson Davey

Award-winning journalist, and distinguished professor, Cheryl Carpenter asked her audience, in regards to confidential sources, “why would you want us to give up those tools that serve those ideals to sort though face and fiction?”

On Monday night, Carpenter gave a lecture titled “Confidential Sources: Can Journalism Live Without Them?”

Cheryl Carpenter has worked for McClatchy, a newspaper group that owns papers in Idaho all the way to Miami, Florida, and she’s worked for the Charlotte Observer, serving as the managing editor, copy editor and page one editor.

Carpenter’s work with the international team of journalist that managed reporting on the leak known as the Panama Papers won that team a Pulitzer Prize.

Carpenter drew on experience as a beginner journalist, working on the Panama Papers, and developments behind the scenes on the leaked Donald Trump dossier to answer the question her lecture proposed.

Her lecture is a part of her role as the T. Anthony Pollner Professor for the University of Montana’s School of Journalism.

Carpenter started her professional career at small paper at her hometown in North Carolina, where she needed to start paying off her student loans and drove a used, yellow Ford Pinto something she thought was expensive at the time.

When Carpenter started out she said she believed she was “an unguided missile, a lot of spunk, a lot of questions and a lot of energy, all unfocused.”

Carpenter remembers a reporter there, Dan, who wore a rumpled corduroy suit and kept a “very ugly” soiled tie in his desk.

When Carpenter started out, she asked Dan a lot of questions, and, occasionally, she asked about the rules.

“You keep asking about the rules,” said Dan. “There aren’t any.”

At the time, Carpenter thought Dan didn’t like the rules, and so he wasn’t planning on sharing them.

Carpenter, at that small paper in her hometown, had her first leak.

Carpenter was covering the mental health program, and it’s a new director who, according to Carpenter, “was always in some sort of trouble.”

Carpenter wanted to dig deeper into the story, so she befriended one of the program’s psychiatrists.

One Sunday, that psychiatrist invited Carpenter to speak with him while enjoying a bit of “down-home tin can target shooting.”

Over the day, Carpenter learned about single malt scotch and this psychiatrist’s extensive collection of firearms.

“That was the first of my mistakes, just so you know,” she jokes.

Then, Carpenter was given the alleged leadership file on the director for the mental health program she was covering, and psychiatrist who leaked it to her believed the director was a liar and a fraud and wanted his exposed.

However, the psychiatrist wanted to remain anonymous and would deny ever talking to Carpenter about the leaked document on the director.

“It felt pretty good. It was a big deal,” admits Carpenter.

“As an editor now,” Carpenter confesses. “With years of experience in handling other reporters and dealing with sensitive stories, I would’ve been tempted to fire that younger me.”

As a younger journalist, Carpenter knows she took unneeded risks and should have looked for guidance and advice.

Carpenter now has guidelines she gives her reporters to follow when working with anonymous sources and leaked documents.

Authenticity, the leaker’s intention for the documents, and what is withheld from the document are all questions Carpenter believes journalists should ask when handing anonymous sources and their leaked documents.

Even with her decades of experience in journalism, Carpenter said she, and her team, felt “daunted” by the initial leak of the Panama Papers.

This is leak was two terabytes worth of information from a Panamanian law firm, which helped wealthy people of every background create offshore companies to hide wealth off the books.

This leak contained emails between clients, notes made by the lawyers, and even photos of passports.

It was originally given to two German journalists, who then contacted the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Three hundred seventy journalists were covering 80 countries.

All were told share and share lot, report in secrecy for months, and to report the story at the same time in April 2016.

Carpenter’s team found, relevant to the 2016 election, donors to both Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns.

Carpenter says the work between her team of four and staff at the Miami Herald was “a bit of a miracle.”

Carpenter noted the lack of Americans found in the Panama Papers, proposing they could have used “another law firm that didn’t get leaked.”

While reporting still continues on the Panama Papers, Carpenter and her team have turned to a leak that she believed “haunts our president even today.”

A dossier revealed to her team opposition research, collected by a former MI6 spy, had been created and alleged connections between Donald Trump and the Russian Government.

According to Carpenter, this dossier claims, “Russia has been cultivating Donald Trump for years.”

While it was never intended to go public, many claiming it was an early draft of information, Buzzfeed News published it for the public to see.

“I would have never published that document,” argues Carpenter.

Carpenter concluded her lecture, returning to the question of confidential sources.

To Carpenter, any answer is “a simple answer at astronomical cost.”

In approximately 200 people attended Carpenter’s lecture, and 11 people asked questions.

When asked about what is one transcendent rule that governs reporting, whether dealing with confidential sources or not, Carpenter simply said: “don’t lie.”