But what I found more disappointing is that their concerns were then mirrored by Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz, who was apparently far less concerned by the lobbyists' ability to manipulate public and political opinion than by my use of undercover journalism. "No matter how good the story," he wrote, "lying to get it raises as many questions about journalists as their subjects."

Kurtz was, indeed, troubled. he fretted that the poor lobbyists were "Stung by Harper's In a Web Of Deceit."

Silverstein wastes no time in firing right back.

The decline of undercover reporting — and of investigative reporting in general — also reflects, in part, the increasing conservatism and cautiousness of the media, especially the smug, high-end Washington press corps. As reporters have grown more socially prominent during the last several decades, they've become part of the very power structure that they're supposed to be tracking and scrutinizing.

These days, Silverstein points out, we rarely see such undercover reporting pieces -- fallout from the 1997 Food Lion case in which ABC News was found liable for a story that exposed gross food safety violations, not because the story wasn't true but because the reporters lied on their applications to get jobs there.

He also mentions one of the greatest undercover operations ever conducted by an American newspaper -- the Mirage Tavern, where "bribes flowed like beer." The aptly named Mirage was a tavern purchased by the Chicago Sun-Times, whose reporters in 1978 (before Murdoch bought the paper) then filmed city inspectors soliciting bribes.

In those days the Sun-Times, having just added columnist Mike Royko, was a kick-ass paper. But those days are long gone -- and not just in Chicago.

Today the press worries about deceiving sleazy lobbyists, with nary a word about how such lobbyists are able to so easily corrupt that same media.

In exchange for fees of up to $1.5 million a year, they offered to send congressional delegations to Turkmenistan and write and plant opinion pieces in newspapers under the names of academics and think-tank experts they would recruit. They even offered to set up supposedly "independent" media events in Washington that would promote Turkmenistan (the agenda and speakers would actually be determined by the lobbyists).

Silverstein's story gets at the heart of how things really work in Washington -- and how the role of the press corps is to ride shotgun.

I'm willing to debate the merits of my piece, but the carping from the Washington press corps is hard to stomach. This is the group that attended the White House correspondents dinner and clapped for a rapping Karl Rove. As a class, they honor politeness over honesty and believe that being "balanced" means giving the same weight to a lie as you give to the truth.

This week, Silverstein has a blog entry at the Harper's website, about the reaction he has gotten to the LA Times op-ed he wrote.

I knew that there was a fair amount of hostility towards the high-end Washington press corps, but until Saturday, when the Los Angeles Times ran my op-ed, I had no idea how deep that hostility ran, and how many people shared it.

He also cites some of the hysterical reaction he got from the "high-end" press corps, notably from CBS' Matthew Felling, who apparently thinks that stories about how lobbyists work are old news. Ho hum.

When you’re going to take the risky step into "Gotcha Journalism," you need to "Get" something. You need to uncover something that either can’t be found out in any other way, expose hidden political corruption or a potential health threat. When you indulge in subterfuge to merely provide the conventional wisdom with a concrete example, that’s when the cost – to the journalist, to the media outlet, to the media at large – isn’t worth the benefit. This is deficit reporting – when the payback is far smaller than the cost.

Felling thinks posing as a client is a far greater sin than a lobbying firm corrupting the media and elected officials to prop up a vicious dictatorship.

And then there is this from Shawn Wertz at Legal Times, which was incensed that Silverstein didn't give lobbying firm APCO a chance to lie some more:

Ironically, for a journalist concerned with the ethics of lobbying firms, Silverstein never told the lobbying firms who he really was, and he never contacted the firms for comment before the story appeared. "They never called us to say, 'You got punked,' "APCO spokesman B. Jay Cooper told Kurtz.

Boo hoo. Howard Kurtz asked Silverstein about that point.

Says Silverstein, noting the magazine's long lead time: "These guys are professional spinners, and I didn't feel like giving them six weeks to lie their way out of the story." He says his piece exposed how lobbying firms try to manipulate public opinion.

Actually, Silverstein should have given the sleazy spinmeisters their chance to lie some more. That's standard journalistic practice. But not doing so was a small sin and doesn't detract from the truth of the article or what it says about the incestuous relationship between lobbyists, politicians and the media.

Lobbyists and Howard Kurtz whining about how Silverstein didn't call to tell them he had "punked" them is the journalistic equivalent of Disrespecting the Bing.

Silverstein gave Wertz a call:

I called Wertz and politely but pointedly told him that he was entitled to his views about my ethics, but I resented that he wrote that I had been "exposed" by Kurtz. I explained that if he had read my piece (and Wertz acknowledged he had not) he would have known that I had freely revealed everything about my "investigatory techniques." Neither Kurtz or anyone else had "exposed" me, as Wertz had clearly suggested. Wertz was very sympathetic and said he would correct the story. And he did—he rewrote the copy and never acknowledged his mistake or that the premise of his original story was entirely false. And that strikes me—even if I did commit the terrible sin of going undercover—as a notable lapse of journalistic ethics.

That's the way it goes these days in Washington. It's all just a Mirage.

UPDATE: To add link to Bill Moyers' interview with Silverstein.