I believe fully scrutinizing government and business requires finding and using anonymous sources and protecting their identities even in the face of court pressure. Many important stories would never happen without them.
Said Bob Woodward several years ago: "The job of a journalist, particularly someone who's spent time dealing in sensitive areas, is to find out what really happened. When you are reporting on inside the White House, the Supreme Court, the CIA or the Pentagon, you tell me how you're going to get stuff on the record. Look at the good reporting out of any of those institutions – it's not on the record."
While Woodward is not my favorite journalist, he’s right on that score. Most investigative reporters will tell you the same. And it applies more broadly than Washington. It’s also true, to offer one example, at the municipal or county level when some corporation comes to town and starts talking about development "if only we can get some incentives" from local officials. I’ve had considerable personal experience using unnamed sources to learn that the "incentives" typically flow in both directions.
Without my anonymous sources in the case of Uravan, a highly polluted Union Carbide-owned company town in Western Colorado, lives might have been lost. Thanks to people in government and the company, I was able to expose, in 1980, the workings of Union Carbide’s reckless and potentially lethal uranium mill operations and its control over local politics.
The operating license had expired, a 2 million-ton, radioactive tailings pile sat slumping atop a 300-foot mesa above the town of 600. The company-owned health clinic sat on radioactive fill. The story led to the eventual closure of the mill and the clean-up of the site. Although I did six months of documentary research, those unnamed sources got me started and told me things the documents couldn’t. Had I identified them they would have lost their jobs and been blacklisted. Whistle-blowers aren’t as popular or as protected in real life as in the movies.
Many people think publishing stories based on anonymous sources is a travesty. That they should never be used. I understand this rationale. The practice is abused. The results can be appalling. As when a Pulitzer prize came Janet Cooke’s way after she fabricated a story about an 8-year-old heroin addict. And when Judith Miller did her thing in the run-up to the Iraq war. Given such examples, how can anyone ever trust a story based on unnamed sources?
Two perfectly reasonable, but opposite points of view.
What’s not reasonable, what’s not acceptable, what belies any claim to being part of the reality-based community, is the double-standard seen around these parts lately when it comes to anonymous sources. I’ve got the back of anybody who is skeptical until solid confirmation of any story based on anonymous sources (or any story, period). But there’s a name for rejecting a story based on unidentified sources because you disagree with it (or because it casts someone you like in a negative light), while at the same time accepting a story based on unidentified sources that you agree with (or that paints a favorable picture of someone you like). It’s called bullshit. A grand flow of it occurred this week when stories began emerging about President Obama supposedly having already come to his decision about what to do in Afghanistan.
The original story came from reporters at McClatchy, a media operation, which, as Knight-Ridder, gained a justifiably excellent reputation for getting things right on Iraq that other media botched or missed altogether. McClatchy’s story, based on unnamed sources, said the escalation would encompass three army brigades, one marine brigade, 4000 trainers and 7000 soldiers to run a new command operation in Kandahar, a total of 34,000. McClatchy never said Obama had made the decision, only that he was "nearing" a decision along those lines. CBS then picked up the story, still based on unnamed sources, and claimed Obama had "settled" on a plan to give McChrystal pretty much what he wanted.
The White House via National Security Adviser Jim Jones offered an emphatic Not So! to this. No decision had been made, he said.
The official statement was proof, in the view of some Kossacks, that CBS and McClatchy had fabricated their stories, or, at the very least, had depended upon agenda-driven and unreliable anonymous sources. One more reason, it was said, that nobody should ever trust anything based on such sources.
Subsequently, a story appeared in the Associated Press. If you’re a newbie, you might be unaware that the AP receives frequent, much-deserved pummeling here – on the Front Page and in the diaries – for sloppy, biased reporting. Including in stories not based on unnamed sources.
But when the AP story appeared about President Obama having decided to choose a fifth option for Afghanistan, rejecting the choices given him by General Stanley McChrystal, the response from some of the same people who had objected to the original story based on unnamed sources claimed vindication.
Just one problem. They had to employ a double-standard to get there. Here are all the sources in the AP story about the fifth-option decision:
"...a senior administration official said Wednesday."
"...another administration official says..."
"...according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Obama's thinking."
"Military officials said Obama has asked for a rewrite before and resisted what one official called a one-way highway toward war commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal's recommendations..."
"Administration officials said Wednesday..."
"...according to a senior U.S. official familiar with them who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the classified documents."
"...other administration officials raised the same misgivings..."
"Military officials say..."
"...though military and other officials have said he appears near to approving a slightly smaller increase than McChrystal wants..."
"...senior military officials have pointed out..."
"...a senior military official said."
"...Another official stressed..."
"...the official said."
That’s right, not one named source. And in follow-up stories, other media did likewise. Here’s The Wall Street Journal:
"...according to three U.S. officials."
"A White House official..."
"...the official added,"
"According to officials familiar with the effort..."
"...said a White House official briefed on Wednesday's meeting."
And The New York Times:
"Yet many of Mr. Obama’s advisers said..."
"Mr. Obama, who met with his advisers again on Wednesday, is said to be..."
"White House officials acknowledged..."
"...senior White House officials said..."
"...the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the Afghanistan review is not complete yet, said..."
"One official noted..."
"...a senior White House official said."
"...one official said."
And the Washington Post:
"...senior U.S. officials said."
"Some officials..."
"...said U.S. officials familiar with the cables..."
Cherry-picking which anonymously sourced stories to accept as accurate and true based on agreement or disagreement gets a big thumbs-down in my department. In fact, McClatchy’s story when it was written may well have reflected the President’s thinking. And Eikenberry’s cables may have changed it. So both stories could be accurate. We can’t know. For one thing, no reporter has seen the cables. They’ve only had them described. By unnamed sources.
We also don’t know why they were leaked or who did it. Somebody with an agenda, perhaps? Laura Rozen thinks the White House may have done so. Moreover, we still don’t know what a rejection of the four options will actually mean. Personally, I’ll be ecstatic if the "fifth option" shoots for a near-term de-escalation with clear milestones and heightened civilian aid. But it may not.
To repeat, the use of anonymous sources can be abused. So skepticism is certainly wise. This is so even when there are rules such as the AP has:
Whenever possible, we pursue information on the record. When a newsmaker insists on background or off-the-record ground rules, we must adhere to a strict set of guidelines, enforced by AP news managers.
- The material is information and not opinion or speculation, and is vital to the news report.
- The information is not available except under the conditions of anonymity imposed by the source.
- The source is reliable, and in a position to have accurate information.
Whatever AP’s failures, and they are legion, these are good rules, if they’re followed and enforced. Just as other venues have good rules.
Who you trust is ultimately what following the news means. For me, that trust is built on a record of accuracy. That doesn’t mean an unblemished one. We all make mistakes, sometimes even after extremely careful efforts not to. But a reporter (or a blogger) who usually gets things right – as later confirmed – deserves trust when s/he writes something new, whether that’s based on named or unnamed sources. In the case of the latter, trust should extend to accepting that the reporter uses common sense and good judgment in whom s/he trusts.
Good reporters act in accordance with the knowledge that sources who want their identity kept secret have agendas, sometimes altruistic, sometimes idealistic, sometimes self-serving and sometimes sinister. Those sources may, for example, be eager to bring a President down or bust a colleague or employer who is completely on the up-and-up. So caution is always essential. Any time an unnamed source’s information can be confirmed by documents or named sources, that’s to be preferred. Good reporters do their best to spur unnamed sources to point them toward people willing to corroborate a story or a piece of one on the record.
In all of this it should be remembered that information is not true just because an official source says it's true. I got my first lesson in that when Dwight Eisenhower said the United States wasn’t flying spy planes over the U.S.S.R. in 1960, not yet knowing the Soviets had captured Francis Gary Powers.
Information is likewise not false because an anonymous source said it. Everybody should be skeptical of all sources, and that skepticism should only be reduced when a source (for us, that usually means a reporter who cites anonymous sources) has proved trustworthy in the past. People who reduce their skepticism because a reporter who uses unnamed sources seems to share their ideology aren’t trustworthy themselves.
= = =
Empty vessel’s diary, A Small Proposal on Citing Sources, has an interesting discussion about this.
A good background story on anonymous sourcing can be found at PoynterOnline.