Hiding Behind Anonymity
I have a problem, as a journalist and former editor, with unnamed sources.
I have a problem, as a journalist and former editor, with unnamed sources.
They raise credibility issues and leave reporters and news organizations vulnerable to motivations that might be at odds with those of the news agency. Unnamed sources can be a useful tool (especially when covering the national security beat), but they must be used sparingly and the justification for their use must be clear and well considered.
The New York Times has placed itself at the center of a political firestorm, by granting a Trump administration official to write an unsigned essay, publishing it on the paper’s op-ed page and on the opinion section of its website.
President Donald Trump has attacked the Times — the “failing New York Times” — and is now calling for an investigation, saying the op-ed threatened national security.
The gist of the op-ed is this: The President lacks a discernible moral compass, suffers from a short attention span, is impulsive, angers easily, and is prone to overreaction. A “quiet resistance” of principled conservatives has created a dual-track administration with one track carrying Trump’s public pronouncements — his tweets and rants and so on — and the other carrying what essentially is an un-elected shadow government that has taken it upon itself. override Trump.
Let’s call this what it is: an unconstitutional power grab by a cabal of conservatives who, as Charles Pierce brilliantly makes clear in Esquire, were all too happy to ride Trump’s lunatic appeals to the populist right into power. Trump is a monster and, until now, has apparently been a useful monster.
The monster has fulfilled its purpose: poisoned water, more of the nation’s wealth catapulted upwards, and a massive new Navy in case Yamamoto comes back from the dead. Now you all have to help us kill it.
Pierce wants these guys to “shut up or quit,” and I have to agree. This “resistance” — resistance to what, exactly? Not corporate power, not the catastrophic damage being done by climate change, not income inequality — needs to “Stand up in the light of day and tell (its) stories” and not hide behind the bogus excuse that these resisters’ jobs might be in jeopardy.
This might seem like a tangent — this essay is supposed to be about journalists’ use and misuse of unnamed sources — but it’s not. The New York Times, by lending cover to the op-ed’s writer, is complicit in this dangerous effort. The paper doesn’t see its decision that way, of course. It explained its decision in an editor’s note preceding the op-ed, calling the decision a “rare step” made “at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure.” The essay, the editors wrote, was “the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers.”
The New York Times has some basic — and common-sense — rules governing the use of off-the-record comments. The Public Editor, in a 2009 column, explained that the policy “says anonymous sources should be used only as ‘a last resort when the story is of compelling public interest and the information is not available any other way.’” It also prohibited the use of unnamed sources to issue “personal or partisan attacks from behind a mask of anonymity.”
And yet, this is just what the paper did. As Pierce said, it allows movement conservatives to protect their perches of power, while also making it clear they are not responsible for the erratic behavior of the president.
We discussed the op-ed in my intro to journalism class Thursday night, as part of a unit on ethics. The focus was on answering these 10 sets questions (from an exercise written by Bob Steele at the Poynter Institute):
What Do I know? What do I need to know?
What is my journalistic purpose?
What are my ethical concerns?
What organizational policies and professional guidelines should I consider?
How can I include other people, with different perspectives and diverse ideas, in the decision-making process?
Who are the stakeholders — those affected by my decision? What are their motivations? Which are legitimate?
What if the roles were reversed? How would I feel if I were in the shoes of one of the stakeholders?
What are the possible consequences of my actions? Short term? Long term?
What are my alternatives to maximize my truthtelling responsibility and minimize harm?
Can I clearly and fully justify my thinking and my decision? To my colleagues? To the stakeholders? To the public?
I tried not to influence the discussion, letting the students — freshmen, sophomores, and juniors — to come to their own conclusions. Our discussion focused mostly on questions two and eight:
2. Journalistic purpose: a gray area. In the end, my students decided that, while the source was new, the news was not. The purpose might have been to confirm what was known, but the question is whether that is enough.
8. Consequences: Naming the writer might cost him his job, but as a high-level member of the administration, someone likely with a long history in Washington, he almost certain to land on his feet (perhaps with Fox News), granted anonymity to protect his position. That seems fairly standard fare for DC. We’re not talking about a low-level grunt, or someone worried about being stigmatized. We’re talking about someone who wants to use the paper to press a complaint he can’t make otherwise, but without having to sacrifice a thing.
Plus, the response by the administration and both supporters and Democrats could have been scripted ahead of time — Trump and his supporters have another reason to dismiss the press, while many of those who hate Trump see this as vindication.
The Times offers a justification, but it was vague — and its consistent willingness to break its own rules on this does not fill me with confidence. Friday, as the debate swirled, it once again turned unnecessarily to an unnamed source — in a story on former President Barack Obama’s speech criticizing Trump. The paper quoted an unnamed Obama advisor talking about his plans for campaigning. “The advisor was not authorized to discuss Obama’s thinking publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.”
Ethics are about balancing interests. It is interesting to know that Obama will be campaigning through the fall, but it’s not something that needs to be reported. Same goes for the op-ed. Without the “need” or the emergent circumstances — ”journalistic purpose” — reporters have a higher bar to reach to justify anonymity. Essentially, we have to balance the public’s need to know against the dangers that not naming sources bring (in terms of credibility, in terms of the sources’ motives). I think the Times, more often than it should, makes the wrong call on sourcing, and I think it did the same with the op-ed.