Armstrong was a hypocritical, stupid, and unethical woman
1. Erica Van Buren's report was insignificant. Van Buren was not a senior intelligence director, she just made a conclusion based on her own. Van Buren is far from the president, and she is not the president's only source of information. The film also does not say what actual information she provided. It's normal for the president not to take her advice. Armstrong felt like she was getting a big conspiracy theory news, but in fact, her story doesn't prove that the president deliberately ignored the facts, it just proves that there was an agent who held a different conclusion from the government, so the public forgets Armstrong It's also normal.
2. Armstrong actually had no solid source of information. She relied on unintentional disclosures to the little Van Buren girls (mum went to work in Venezuela, dad used mum's secret information), guessed that Van Buren was an agent, and then bluffed, as if she really knew Van Buren was an agent, went to a drunk CIA guy has been verified. She was only vaguely aware that Van Buren had a different view of the Venezuela issue, and she apparently did not see the original text of the Van Buren report and could not assess its reliability.
So she didn't talk about this source of information with her spouse and colleagues. In fact, it was because there was no serious and accessible source of information, not because she really intended to protect the source of information. The newspaper colleagues said that "if this source of information is exposed, no one will trust the newspaper", which has become nonsense.
Instead, the tabloid's information authenticity review process is fundamentally flawed. How can a reporter claim to have two reliable sources of information, the newspaper leaders believed it. This gives reporters too much room to manipulate.
By the way, protecting sources of information is not absolute professional ethics. Some confidentiality obligations or rights are mandated by law, such as the exchange of information between lawyers and clients. Some are only bilateral commitments, such as the source of the information telling the reporter the information on the basis of the reporter's promise to keep it confidential, and the reporter is based on the contract (not the law) to keep the other party's confidentiality. This kind of professional ethics is not much nobler than professional killers taking money to do things. The righteous people who really want to leak the secret will not feel at ease using the reporter as a human shield.
3. The only thing Armstrong can hide is that she kept her promise to keep the girl secret, but she didn't keep her promise to the little girl at all, and she seriously hurt the girl.
First of all, the little girl told her to keep it a secret, just not to tell her mother or anyone else what she said? Is the little girl's original intention to agree with her to spread the content of the message all over the world? Isn't this bullying the little girl not to declare off the record in advance?
Second, exposing the child's mother's legal identity as a secret agent is tantamount to destroying the career of the girl's mother. She can no longer serve the country as an agent. The father of the child is an ambassador, a politician, a public figure, and his career can suffer.
Third, exposure destroys the child's family life. It may have been a small accident that Van Buren was killed. But the peaceful life of their family was disrupted, which Armstrong could have expected. After she was in prison, she might not have known that the little girl was being quarantined, but she might not have foreseen it.
Fourth, Armstrong's continued secrecy actually made the girl's parents always bear the suspicion of leaking secrets.
Mind you, she clearly doesn't think Van Buren has done anything wrong. So why did she so recklessly use Van Buren as a torch to try to roast the president? truth first?
When she pretended to protect the source, did she let the underage source know what she was going to do?
4. What should Armstrong do? Since her source of information is a little girl, not a righteous person who is going to jail, she can naturally disclose all this to prosecutors and even the public. At the same time, she should admit the mistake of improperly taking advantage of the little girl's trust, letting herself carry the cross on her behalf, and let prosecutors, judges, newspaper colleagues, Van Buren and even the public judge the ethics here.
Armstrong wants to point out that the little girl unintentionally revealed the source of the information. Although it would be embarrassing for the girl, the girl did not make a real mistake. She just said a couple of family trivia to the mother of her classmate. The error, if it counts as a mistake, is not serious enough in itself to break the cup. It is impossible for girls to suffer at home, and the damage is no greater than the damage of mother-daughter isolation. However, since Armstrong himself can be separated from his husband and son for two years without any regrets, he really does not care too much about the family affection of others.
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