After announcing that its story of ”Jimmy’s World” -about a supposed 8-year-old drug addict – had been based on a nonexistent source, The Washington Post grimly printed two letters from readers that must have hurt:

”Are we to believe that there really was a ‘Deep Throat’? Come, now!” Another reader made the same connection: ”Is it possible that little ‘Jimmy’ does, in fact, exist and is living on the very street with ‘Deep Throat’?”

The difference between these protective-source stories is that many of the Watergate leads supposedly confirmed by ”Deep Throat” turned out to be facts, while the source for the crime supposedly committed against the child turned out to be a fiction. The similarity is that in both stories, one young reporter was so trusted by the newspaper that no editor demanded to share the secret of his source.

The irony is that the young Watergate reporter who kept from …,