Journalistic objectivity is one of those lofty concepts we reporters like to trot out like a badge of honor, wink-wink, knowing it disappears like smoke when we subjectively decide which angle to pursue. Reading about the defamation lawsuit against the former Pointblank newspaper in the Feb. 2 Des Moines Register through the lens of that oxymoron explains a lot.

From the standpoint that salacious news sells, was it newsworthy that state Rep. Ed Fallon was the apparent source of the rumor printed in a spring 2004 issue of Pointblank stating that Gregory Steward was fired as manager of the now-shuttered Top Value Foods amid allegations – which Steward insists are false – that he had a “fondness for crack cocaine”?

Sure. Fallon wants to be governor and he’s talking a lot about what his refusal to take special-interest money says about his integrity. If he’s reckless with private citizens’ reputations, a solid case can be made for that being information voters should have to gauge whether Fallon is the man he claims to be. The media hold enormous sway over how people view candidates, and the Register’s story raises questions about Fallon’s credibility and judgment.

Fallon, as you might guess, is fuming. Who can blame him? Most of the mainstream media fail to treat his campaign seriously, and putting Fallon at the center of a controversy over a defamation lawsuit reduces it almost to the level of a joke. A television station news crew showed up at a Fallon press conference the day the Register story appeared to do a bit on that, not on the campaign, as the candidate had expected.

The political angle on a story about court proceedings wasn’t as much wrong as it was interesting, and it came at the expense of some facts that might have been equally tantalizing to readers. If Fallon was reckless, he wasn’t the only one. Journalists all over town noticed the bullet in the Pointblank story almost as soon as the ink on the paper was dry. Register columnist Rob Borsellino wrote a column telling Steward’s side of the story a few days after it appeared, yet the objectionable words apparently had slipped past Pointblank’s editor, Jon Gaskell who told Borsellino the item was “just a tidbit.”

Readers might have been interested in knowing that although Pointblank is defunct, it’s been reincarnated to a degree in Cityview, where Gaskell is still the editor. It might also have been interesting for them to know of Michael Gartner’s ownership stake in both papers.

Now, Gartner’s no ordinary Iowa journalist – or ordinary journalist or ordinary Iowan. His long career included stints at some of the best newspapers and news organizations in the country, and he’s earned national respect. As president of the Iowa Board of Regents and former chairman of the Vision Iowa board, he’s arguably among of the most powerful men in the state. Is it curious to readers that a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer owned a paper accused of libel? Some of them will never know because the statewide paper of record declined twice – in the original Feb. 2 news story and another column by Borsellino on Feb. 8 – to give them that tidbit.

There’s also that bit about the media betraying, apparently casually, their sources. We aren’t talking about the “Plame Blame Game” here, but a legal strategy to shave some zeros off a settlement of a lawsuit that originally asked for somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.3 million in damages. It raises the question: If the media would give up a source as a libel defense, what possible assurance could whistleblowers have their anonymity wouldn’t be compromised to avoid repercussions such as jail?

No one’s asking that question, either. It’s just too darned interesting that Ed Fallon can’t keep his big mouth shut.