Background Briefings
You may have heard about the controversy surrounding Richard Clarke's August 2002 press background briefing. Fox News released a transcript of the briefing after receiving approval from the Bush administration. Clarke's critics, including Republican members of the 9/11 commission, have appealed to the briefing to impeach Clarke's credibility.
Former Senator Bob Kerry attacked the use of the briefing during Clarke's session:
All of us who have provided background briefings for the press before should beware. I mean, Fox should say 'occasionally fair and balanced' after putting something like this out, because they violated a serious trust.
Now if you don't know what a "background briefing" is (and no one I saw on the news shows explained the point), you may have thought Kerry was simply being partisan. But he wasn't. He was making a point about journalistic ethics
The Baltimore Sun's David Folkenflik explains what a "background briefing" is:
But the comments were considered "on background," an arrangement frequently used by the press. In "background" conversations, a source provides information to reporters on the condition that it not be directly attributed to him. At the time, Clarke's bosses at the National Security Council insisted that his quotes be attributed only to an unnamed counter-terrorism official, Angle said yesterday.
So Fox News got approval from the Bush administration to release the transcript but not from the person whose secrecy was being protected.
As for the content of the briefing vis-a-vis his book and private testimony, Clarke answered the charges excellently during the hearing.
Postscript: As Kevin Drum notes, Bush's "principled stance" against press leaks doesn't seem to be so principled.
4:55:57 PM 
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