Jack Shafter, Slate’s indefatigable press watchdog, has come up with a new theory as to why reporters, especially Washington reporters, are addicted to anonymous sources as thoroughly as any junkie is addicted to his substance of choice.
Noting that both the New York Times and The Washington Post recently issued edicts to the staff trying to curb the reliance on anonymous sources — and that both policy statements utterly failed to stop the tide — Shafer says he has decided that “[a]nonymous sources appeal to those reporters and readers who believe–perversely–that anonymity conveys truthfulness. In their minds, the further a source distances himself from the information, the more honest he’ll be.” That attitude, he says, is the flip side of the widely-held (and correct) viewpoint “that most official, on-the-record comments are bull. Nearly all speeches, press conferences, press releases, interviews, and all other formal presentations are now thought by the press to be clever lies. Meanwhile, back-corridor whisperings are considered to be candid, spontaneous, surreptitious, and therefore true.”
Shafer suggests that if the day ever came when officials spoke more honestly when on the record, that might reduce the number of them going off-the-record — but as long as the Bush White House is with us, he observes, that ain’t gonna happen. (That may be a cheap shot at the administration; anonymous sources and the reporters that they cultivate have thrived in Washington ever since Woodward and Bernstein glorified Deep Throat.)
In an earlier essay on the problem of over-reliance on anonymous sources, Shafer theorized that Washington has too many journalists and too few knowledgeable sources — an imbalance that assures that sources will “pick the rules of engagement.” After all, if a reporter who is a stickler for his own editors’ rules has the temerity to insist that a source go on the record, the source can blow that reporter off and peddle his information elsewhere. Given that reporters live in fear of being scooped by other reporters, that’s a powerful weapon in the hands of what Shafer calls the “anonymice.”
At that time, Shafer urged reporters to follow the example of the Wall Street Journal. The Journal hasn’t eradicated anonymous sources, but it keeps them down to a dull roar by “giving reporters latitude to assert the truth on their own authority.” That’s close to the approach that New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent endorsed last Sunday, as reported earlier this week by Campaign Desk.
But it’s Shafer’s new theory that intrigues us — that reporters, by nature suspicious to the bone, come over time to automatically assume that no one is telling the truth unless and until he is cloaked in anonymity.
What dismays us is the hunch we have that Shafer is more than a little right here — and that so are those reporters so disdainful of any “official” announcement.
–Steve Lovelady
Steve Lovelady was editor of CJR Daily.