The latest installment in the media’s long-running series of articles about Rahm Emanuel is also the lengthiest: Peter Baker’s profile of the White House chief of staff in the forthcoming New York Times Magazine runs nearly 8,000 words. But in linking the story when it went live online Monday, the prominent blogger Kevin Drum excerpted barely a dozen words: “Emanuel, who declined to talk to me on the record for this article….” And he asked:
Isn’t this basically a big trumpet that says Emanuel did talk to Baker, but only off the record? Is that kosher?
With respect to the first question: It sure looks like it. As for the second, we’re interested in what you think. On a story like this, should journalists not speak with their subjects off the record, in order to avoid having their views shaped by conversations they can’t share with readers? Or is more information always better? And if there’s some middle ground, where would you draw the line? Also: when journalists do talk to subjects off the record, do they have an obligation to let readers know? Let us know what you think in comments below.
My observations:
First: It doesn't matter what we say, what CJR says, what critics of the practice argument, or even what the policies of the newspapers involved are.
http://topics.nytimes.com/topic/timestopic/subj/a/anonymoussources/index.html
Reporters in DC grant anonymity when sources won't go the record. Period. They will continue to do so. When criticized they will say, "Of course we want them to go on the record, and we press them hard on that, but when they won't...they won't! What are we supposed to do?"
I'm not aware that the professional conversation about confidential sources has ever moved beyond this point, despite all the forums like this one.
Granting anonymity to sources is by definition a decision that bargains away the public's right to know, on terms the public cannot know about. There's no way for the reader of the account to tell whether the bargain the reporter made was a good one or a bad one.
Therefore confidentially sourced journalism is "trust me" journalism, more so that other types of reporting that carry within the account the means for judging whether the account is trustworthy. Thus the opposite of "trust me" journalism is not the untrustworthy kind but "...don't believe me? check it yourself." This is exactly what we cannot do when sources speak anonymously.
Where's the line, you say? (Which, by the way, is the all time, hands down, number one champeeen CJR question, having been asked far more than any other.) I'll bite: When the identity of the source plus the fact that the source can't or won't speak publicly are, taken together, more significant, more newsworthy than whatever information or insight the source provided, then a bad bargain has been struck.
But again, we can't know when bad bargains are struck in our name, so we're back to "trust me" journalism. The one way we could (sometimes) know is if reporters who suspect that a bad bargain was made tried to do some reporting on who the confidential sources were, but this is very hard to do and anyway a gentleman's agreement is in place that says: you don't investigate who my sources are and I won't dig into yours, deal?
Deal!
As an observer of the Washington press, I am not that interested in the "ethics of confidential sources" debate, for the reason I stated. No matter what we say, reporters are going to continue the practice, and when challenged come back with we try to get them on the record but when they won't...they won't! . What interests me more are the psychic rewards of the savvy style, which predispose reporters like Peter Baker and Dana Milbank (they're buddies) to Rahm's point of view. The creeping insiderism is greatly aided by the off-the record discussions Rahm is known to have with many reporters. Why do the savvy look with such contempt on clueless outsiders?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/19/AR2010021904298.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
I'll let you figure it out.
#1 Posted by Jay Rosen, CJR on Tue 9 Mar 2010 at 09:12 PM
recommended reading:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/07/anonymity/index.html
'The greatest blow to the credibility of establishment journalism over the last decade -- especially the NYT and the WP -- was their active, enthusiastic involvement in disseminating outright falsehoods to their readers in the run-up to the Iraq War. So glaring and destructive were their failures that even they were forced to acknowledge at least some of what they did. One of the principal steps they took in assuring their readers that they were determined that this would not happen again was the adoption of clear rules which stringently limited the use of anonymity. Anonymity was a key instrument used by dishonest government officials and subservient reporters to disseminate those pre-war falsehoods.
Despite all that, they continue to violate their own guidelines over and over by indiscriminately using anonymity in the most reckless ways. And they know they do it, because it's been repeatedly documented, even by their own ombudsmen and reporters. Yet they blithely continue. What other conclusion could a rational person reach other than that the publishers, editors and reporters of these newspapers neither care about nor deserve journalistic credibility?'
#2 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 9 Mar 2010 at 09:28 PM
Sigh. I wish this site had a preview button. It would save me from having to say that, sans typos, the first few lines should have read...
First: It doesn't matter what we say, what CJR says, what critics of the practice argue, or even what the policies of the newspapers involved are.
http://topics.nytimes.com/topic/timestopic/subj/a/anonymoussources/index.html
Reporters in DC grant anonymity when sources won't go on the record. Period.
#3 Posted by Jay Rosen, CJR on Tue 9 Mar 2010 at 09:36 PM
Jay,
Thanks for the thoughtful response. As a journalist outside of Washington, our newspaper does not use anonymous sources. You don't want to attach your name to a quote? I'm not going to give you a voice.
In this country we have due process. The accused has the right to hear from his accuser. This practice of unnamed and anonymous sources is sloppy and lazy journalism from my perspective.
#4 Posted by Bobby Warren, CJR on Tue 9 Mar 2010 at 09:41 PM
I have great respect for Prof. Rosen. He's one of the great journalism thinkers of our time. But he couldn't be more wrong about this. Yes, anonymous sources can abuse their anonymity to promote an agenda. But that's what separates the great reporters from the hacks. While some sources may lie "off the record" the undeniable fact is that many can only tell the truth, when they can speak privately. In fact most government lies are told ON THE RECORD, and only by using off the record or background sources can we get the leads that take us to the truth. Can you say Watergate? Bob Woodard argues, and I think he's right, that reporters should use MORE anonymous sources, not fewer. The accountability comes with the accuracy of the reporting which can be judged only after the fact. Truth, accuracy, are the the standards. I care more about figuring out whether what my sources are saying is true than getting them on the record.
More at http://www.lineofdeparture.com/2009/09/23/why-do-sources-leak/
#5 Posted by Jamie McIntyre, CJR on Tue 9 Mar 2010 at 10:31 PM
While some sources may lie "off the record" the undeniable fact is that many can only tell the truth, when they can speak privately.
Hi Jamie: Read my comment again... Did I say anything about the problem of confidential sources lying?
I was trying to point our certain problems with confidential sources that obtain even if they are not lying. For example: Maybe I can't decide what kind of discount rate I want to apply to sources, based on where I know them to be coming from, because when sources are anonymous I can't tell where they're coming from. That's an example of a problem that applies even when the source is not lying. Instead of assessing where they are coming from I have to trust you, the reporter, which is why I referenced "trust me journalism."
Without a doubt many, many valuable sources that journalists learn true and valuable things from can only speak under conditions of confidentiality. I am not disputing that. I also think the practice is abused. You're not going to dispute that, are you? Read the public editor's columns I linked to, if you are.
I also understand that from your ex-reporter's perspective, there's really only one issue: is the stuff accurate? If it is (and reporters work hard to make sure it is) then... no problem. But that's not so. There's still the problem of how much trust you are asking me to have in you and whether that level of trust can be sustained when sourcing is not transparent. Cheers.
#6 Posted by Jay Rosen, CJR on Tue 9 Mar 2010 at 10:57 PM
Confronting the Seduction of Secrecy
http://www.journalism.org/node/140
#7 Posted by Tim, CJR on Wed 10 Mar 2010 at 12:32 AM
None of this is talking about off-the-record conversation. I don't understand why journalists need to have such conversations at all. If you use them to tweak articles, isn't that effectively putting them "on the record"? What I'd like to see a journalist do is have a long, off-the-record convo with someone like Emanuel, then secretly record it and print the whole thing. That would be a slap against the Obama administration's dickish insistence on anonymity.
#8 Posted by Shii, CJR on Fri 12 Mar 2010 at 12:22 PM
Trust-me-respect-the-savvy reporting is the insider trading of journalism, hence Ian Shapira's approval of "media critics looking into whether a reporter is being manipulated by his sources in ways that fail to serve the public good."
#9 Posted by chrisbugbee, CJR on Thu 6 May 2010 at 05:01 PM