During her sabbatical, USA Today’s diplomatic correspondent Barbara Slavin has promoted her book on U.S.-Iran relations, Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies in which she argues that the U.S. spurned a grand bargain offer from Iran in 2003. Many of her sources, though, had either no first hand knowledge or, like Richard Armitage, disavowed her argument. Her Iranians sources may have played Slavin. We debate the issue here (scroll down).

Slavin has now joined a deeply partisan speaking tour to advocate policy. Many of its backers take a polemical approach to the region. There is nothing wrong with advocating views but, if so strongly held, they interfere with the objective journalism.

It will be interesting to see whether Slavin will recuse herself from reporting the issues for which she seeks to be an advocate and activist and how USA Today’s editors will balance the integrity of the paper with her perspective resumption of the diplomatic beat.