Journalism Murdered, Killer Wishes To Remain Anonymous
By Mike Hachey: Mike is a graduate of Emerson College. His future is uncertain.
What will journalism look like when our generation seizes the reins of responsibility?
It’s impossible to know! We barely understand how it functions now, with the Baby Boomers still safely holding all positions of power.
What we do know is that the traditional authorities who have been the final arbiters of what is worthy of investigation – that is, newspapers – are in serious trouble. Their counterparts in broadcast are also facing some fearsome demographic shifts.
According to some analyses, the median age of cable news viewers hovers somewhere around 60—hardly the symptom of a thriving medium.
It seems obvious at this point that the Internet is poised to become the one source of news that really matters. Can we make any predictions to the future of journalism without splashing into wild speculation? Perhaps not. But we can hope for improvements.
It is my ardent hope that Internet journalists will abandon one of the more noxious habits of print journalists: that is, the widespread misuse of anonymous sources.
We’ve seen a lot of anonymous sources lately, especially in the debate on health care reform (a hot topic for many millennials who are just now entering a jobless economy and are largely uninsured).
The Washington Post and HuffPo Square Off on Anonymous Sources
For example, this much-lambasted article came out of the Washington Post last August. In it, a pair of Post staff writers rely on an unnamed “senior White House adviser, who spoke on conditions of anonymity” to heap scorn on “the left” for having the unmitigated gall to pressure their elected representatives on a popular piece of social policy (in this case, a government-run health insurance program, or “public option”).
Judging from the way the article is framed, we are clearly supposed to take from this piece that disdain for the public option and “the left” radiates from the very highest offices of the White House all the way down. Since we don’t know the name of this adviser or exactly how “senior” or influential he is, there is no way to be sure. Nevertheless, from the word of this one unnamed staffer, we are supposed to believe that the White House as a whole “never intended to spotlight” the public option.
Jason Linkins, a Huffington Post reporter (and presumably a beneficiary of Arianna Huffington’s venture to support web-based investigative journalism) attacked the Washington Post article right away, asserting that the newspaper deployed a favorable anonymous source in order to further its own ideological ends–namely, framing support for a public insurance plan as a pet cause of the fringe left, when the plan in fact enjoys mainstream support. We really have no way of knowing if Linkins’s charge of bias is accurate, because the Post’s behavior makes a positive defense of its objectivity impossible.
Without knowing the source’s name, it is much more difficult to tell whether the reporters cherry-picked a favorable source or actually pursued persons of knowledge and influence within the White House. In fact, we can’t even tell if this source exists at all! For all we know, these Post reporters merely took their own ideas and attributed them to someone else. It is impossible to tell.
That is the problem with this use of anonymous sources: it replaces evidence with an appeal to authority, accountability with a smug “trust me.” Instead of having to prove the merit of their story, these reporters hide behind the credibility of the paper they work for. They hope that the big gothic letters spelling The Washington Post at the top of the page will silence any embarrassing questions.
Bloggers Gain Trust By Disclosing Sources
It’s not hard to see why condemnation for newspapers’ use of anonymous sources has been coming mainly from bloggers. Bloggers don’t have the benefit of institutional approval. Anyone, anyone, can start a blog, so when a blogger first starts writing he knows he has no more inherent credibility than a screaming vagrant on the street corner.
The handful of bloggers who have found influence and a following, such as Glenn Greenwald or Digby, have done so by consistently showing that they can be trusted to, among other things, actually cite their sources. This is as much a matter of necessity as it is integrity. If they couldn’t back up what they say, they would be rightfully relegated to the vast garbage heap of infamous internet lunatics. They are the pioneers of an age of journalism in which nothing the journalist says will be accepted unquestioned.
So Why Hide The Cake?
Perversely, I think that mainstream media figures are overusing anonymous sources as a ploy to somehow strengthen their credibility. The New York Times public editor says that anonymous sources are permissible in the Gray Lady so long as they are a “last resort when the story is of compelling public interest and the information is not available any other way.”
When we the readers come upon an anonymous source in an exalted print source like the New York Times, then, we are supposed to rest assured that the intrepid print journalist responsible has exhausted every other possible avenue to bring us the vital information we are now in receipt of. We are supposed to be impressed, then, that this Very Important Print Reporter has the kind of access that others—like those unwashed bloggers—don’t.
Irresponsible reliance on unnamed sources is a way for mainstream journalists to remind us that they are connected, on the inside, and that we must depend on them to know what the powerful are thinking.
Of course the reality is that knowledge from the mouths of the anonymous is not knowledge at all, and if newspapers think that they can rely on their credibility to save them, they have it all backwards.
This is because news readers of the millennial generation and beyond are becoming increasingly accustomed to viewing journalism as part of a larger conversation. A conversation in which readers are also participants. In an age when an unschooled amateur can use an article’s comments page to point out flaws in the work of professionals, there is going to be a greater burden on reporters to show their work. Journalists working today will fail to hold the attention of millennial readers if they shut them out of the conversation. Resorting to unverifiable evidence does just that.
Photo Credit:applejan
Mike:
I think there are two sides to this. One, the web and transparency have led us to expect more in the way of access to sources of information. The difference, however, is that professional journalists (and yes, some bloggers share the same qualities) who, at least in the best cases, are trained, experienced, objective, and forced to submit to diligent editors, are able to get at the truth only through anonymous sources. In my lifetime, the best example is Watergate. Nixon would never have been revealed without Deep Throat and any newspaper worth the paper it’s printed on would have been crazy not to go with the story. So, depends on who is using the anonymous source and whether we trust them. It can make for lazy journalism, but without anonymous sources there are too many secrets, some of them to the public’s detriment, that may never get revealed. In other cases, there is great courage in being a source. Not unlike being a protected witness. Think organized crime, drugs, government abuse, etc. Without some protection for those sources they may never be willing to talk.
Yes, there’s a certain amount of “clout” that accompanies established newspapers that makes their use of anonymous sources more-or-less trustworthy. Many reporters feel an inflexible commitment to the facts, IE they have journalistic integrity. But the rise of cable heralded a huge spike in the number of biased journalists–of pundits–who already have a point of view, and simply frame the facts selectively around that view. The death of these news giants doesn’t bother me per se, except that I worry how much journalistic integrity can be found on the web, when everyone is self-published, self-regulated, and cheap as all hell. There’s no way to “punish” an internet publication for incorrect or even falsified reporting, short of re-reporting it, which denigrates it to the level of a flame war.
My prediction is the “youthification” of an existing cable network. Look to ABC. There’s something brewing over there.
I staunchly believe that the future of news lies in blogging. Almost all of the news is boring, but I am happy to read it from someone who has a distinct personality and preferably a sense of humor. And, of course, someone who has reliable sources.
I agree with Edward “So, depends on who is using the anonymous source and whether we trust them. It can make for lazy journalism, but without anonymous sources there are too many secrets, some of them to the public’s detriment, that may never get revealed”
Picture this: I live in Panama (Central America) a small country next to Colombia and the drug traffic is becoming a HUGE thing here. We are surrounded by drug mafia and this mafia is buying the silence of authorities, gangs, reporters, young people, etc. If the sources reveal openly what they know their life is in risk. In this situation…Who wants to be identified?
It’s more often a right-wing tactic to invoke the founding fathers, but we tend to forget that they were liberal revolutionaries. Here in Boston, the Revolution was promoted through anonymous (often pseudonymous) leaflets. Using real names would have led to Adams, among others, being strung up for treason to the Crown.
Bloggers also often need anonymity, around the world – even here im the US. No less their sources.
A brief visit to http://rsf.org will document a strong history of the persecution of risk taking journalists and bloggers.
Condemning anonymity is not the answer. Perhaps condemning lazy investigation is. But to deny anonymous sources entirely, is to shut out every whisleblower who ever approached a journalist with hope of preserving his/her personal safety.
Would you insist that sicial media sources out of danger zones such as the Iranian election protests be revealed, and put sources (and, in some cases, journalists) at risk of torture, jail, or death?
The most common use of anonymous sources in traditional journalism (and blogging) isn’t touched on here – which is the aonyous source who points the writer at a story, but is never cited because other sources corroborate the tip. For transparency in government and industry, for transparency *itself*, we can’t afford to institutionally condemn the anonymous source. Anonymity primes the truly free flow of information.
Yes, there's a certain amount of “clout” that accompanies established newspapers that makes their use of anonymous sources more-or-less trustworthy. Many reporters feel an inflexible commitment to the facts, IE they have journalistic integrity. But the rise of cable heralded a huge spike in the number of biased journalists–of pundits–who already have a point of view, and simply frame the facts selectively around that view. The death of these news giants doesn't bother me per se, except that I worry how much journalistic integrity can be found on the web, when everyone is self-published, self-regulated, and cheap as all hell. There's no way to “punish” an internet publication for incorrect or even falsified reporting, short of re-reporting it, which denigrates it to the level of a flame war.
My prediction is the “youthification” of an existing cable network. Look to ABC. There's something brewing over there.