The LA Times is refusing to release videotape of a 2003 banquet where then-state Sen. Barack Obama spoke of his friendship with Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi. The LAT says the person who gave them the videotape insisted they not share it with the public (emphasis added):
“The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it,” said the newspaper’s editor, Russ Stanton. “The Times keeps its promises to sources.”
While the LA Times is sitting on its high horse in this instance, they haven’t always been so enamored of journalistic ethics. In Walter Isaacson’s biography of Henry Kissinger, there’s an example of the LAT playing fast and loose with sources and ground rules (emphasis added):
At the urging of the embassy’s press officer, Barry Zorthian, he [Kissinger] attended an off-the-record luncheon with eight journalists. But one reporter, Jack Foisie of the Los Angeles Times, arrived late, overlooked the ground rules, and filed a story that ran the next day on the front pages of his own paper and of the Washington Post.