The Times’ skepticism should have been aroused by the fact that its sources turned over only six — six! — heavily edited minutes of roughly three hours of recordings. What’s more, it was Burkle, not Stern, who asked, “How much do you want?” Throughout the snippets reported in the Times, it is Burkle who tries to put into Stern’s mouth the magic words signifying extortion. But Burkle never quite succeeds, since Stern was not threatening Burkle but trying to enlist him as an investor in Stern’s clothing line and to convince the supermarket mogul to hire him as his media adviser. Stern did not threaten to retaliate should Burkle turn him down.

Also recall that Stern was only a twice-a-week contributor to Page Six, so it’s virtually certain he did not have the power to deliver on any promises about Page Six coverage. More important, in additional transcript excerpts published by Post archrival the New York Daily News last Monday, Stern makes reasonably clear that he is not seeking to extort Burkle: “It is not a stickup,” Stern assures the mogul at one point. Stern’s attempt to become a media consultant to Burkle is suggested when he offers to “help you when it is needed.” When Burkle, obviously at the suggestion of the feds monitoring the conversation, tries to get Stern to adopt the description of “protection” for the service Stern is offering, Stern demurs, saying that he is offering “help” and not protection. “Protection,” Stern admonished Burkle, “adds overtones.” When Burkle suggests that maybe he should pay the Page Six editor $100,000, Stern again demurs. “Well, I don’t think you want to do that.” Instead, lectures the would-be media consultant, “you need a strategy,” not protection. Stern offers to show Burkle how to become “a friend of the paper” rather than a subject of its gossip pages. If Burkle can ingratiate himself with the Page Six editor, in particular, he could become an insider rather than an outsider. And what if Burkle refuses to pay Stern for these services? the mogul inquires. “We can still be friends, but we’re not going to be as good friends.”

What we’re seeing is the kind of pitch that PR men and women make every day in the Big Apple and elsewhere. The only difference is that Stern, by playing on both teams, engaged in a nasty conflict of interest that should get him fired, but not indicted.

To anyone experienced in criminal law, it is all too obvious what was going on here: Burkle was instructed to try to put certain words into the target’s mouth. Just as obviously, the sting failed: Stern resisted the bait and stuck to his proposal rather than adopt Burkle’s suggestion of a “protection” arrangement. The real story here is the collaboration of the businessman, his private henchmen, and their federal prosecutor and FBI allies to try to set up a sleazy but not criminal gossip columnist for a federal bust. They failed to euchre Stern, but they seem to have succeeded with the Times. Whether the feds decide to bring criminal charges will likely depend on whether they feel they can spin the encounters much as Burkle’s team spun the scenario to the Times. It would not be easy to find a jury of 12 ordinary citizens as gullible as the Times’ editors.

Why, then, the leaks from the investigative camp? The likely aim was to put sufficient pressure on a ruined Stern to force him into a plea bargain so that a court would never be asked to rule on whether the tapes show an extortion or simply a sleazy gossip columnist making a fool of himself. For another thing, the ruse would likely scare other columnists away from reporting on Burkle’s activities. I’m betting that if Stern holds firm and makes clear that he would go to trial rather than cop a plea, the feds would back off.

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The kindness of strangers
It would be tempting to be less harsh about the Times were it not for a slew of recent stories in which the paper, gulled by government leaks, did more to manipulate readers than to inform them. Consider the Wen Ho Lee fiasco, in which the Times fueled speculation by declaring that the Los Alamos scientist had given the Chinese nuclear secrets and that the Clinton administration could have, but chose not to, stop him. The only problem, as Eric Boehlert noted on Salon, was that the Times “reporters relied on slim evidence, quick conclusions and loyalty to sources with an ax to grind.” Despite the Times’ sensationalized coverage, Lee ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of improperly downloading classified material — a far cry from the original 59 charges.

Or the Times’ coverage of the Enron scandal. After reading it, one would never know there is a genuine debate over whether the techniques used by Enron to enhance its bottom line were criminally fraudulent tactics or legal-accounting gambits that stretched but did not break the law.

In a more visceral example, consider the scandal currently engulfing Duke University’s lacrosse team. The alleged victim, an “exotic dancer” hired to do a strip routine at an off-campus party last month, claimed she was forced into a bathroom and abused and sodomized by team members, who denied the accusations. When DNA tests came back negative, failing to link any of the men to the alleged attack, the Times, instead of focusing on whether the alleged victim was lying and the local North Carolina prosecutor had been fooled, actually bought the misleading line of the district attorney (currently running for re-election) that DNA evidence is not present in every sexual-assault case.

And who can forget the extent to which former Times reporter Judith Miller carried the administration’s water by publishing leaks about Saddam Hussein’s supposed “weapons of mass destruction” on the basis of which the Bush administration tried to justify going to war?

Surely there comes a time in the life of a newspaper, after repeatedly making bad calls, when it must question the motives of government leakers and spinners. These stories often lead to big headlines, but the disappointing aftermath too often leaves the newspaper with egg on its face. It’s a good bet that the story of Jared Paul Stern’s “extortion” of Ronald W. Burkle will be the latest Times rush to judgment by welcoming too heartily the proverbial Greeks bearing gifts.

On the Web
Bowdlerized Snippets of the Stern Transcript:  //www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/407340p-344863c.html
Definition and explanation of "extortion": //www.answers.com/extortion
The Times' gossipy graphic: //graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/04/09/weekinreview/09gossip_graphic_lg.gif