Consider the source. That’s a common reaction when something unpleasant or unwelcome is said to us. Knowing who says what gives us context to consider the remark, and how much value to attach to it.
But considering the source is more difficult for readers of newspapers or magazines when that source is unnamed or anonymous.
The use of anonymous sources is one of the many issues kicked up by the continuing discussion and repercussions generated by the Jayson Blair scandal at The New York Times. You may recall the reporter left that paper under fire because of numerous offenses.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about an apparent system failure at the Times because more than one thing had to go wrong, or be wrong, for Blair’s journalistic transgressions not to be effectively detected or deterred before so much damage had been done.
As Joe Strupp wrote last week in Editor & Publisher, ”In the uproar over the Jayson Blair fiasco, newsroom sins ranging from fabricated quotes to falsified expense reports have sparked a flurry of self-examination. What caught the eye of some, however, was the shocking revelation that The New York Times’ editors had allowed Blair to use anonymous sources on several occasions — including in major Page One pieces — and not even ask who they were.”
Again, that lax practice flew in the face of the Times’ own ”Guidelines on Our Integrity,” which clearly state, ”The use of unidentified sources is reserved for situations in which the newspaper could not otherwise print information it considers newsworthy and reliable. When possible, reporter and editor should discuss any promise of anonymity before it is made, or before the reporting begins on a story that may result in such a commitment. . . .”
Guidelines are only helpful if they’re known and abided by — and flexible enough to be stretched when a story rises to that rare occasion.
That’s why I want to give you a look at what’s in place here at The CourierJournal regarding anonymous sources, when we use them and why.
Anonymous sources are rarely used in locally written news stories. That practice dates to at least 1976, when guidelines for this newspaper’s reporters were gathered in book form. Though committed to paper almost 30 years ago, the first concern mentioned on the page headlined ”Guidelines for Using Anonymous Sources” is timeless: ”The practice can be unfair to the reader. He doesn’t know how much faith he should put in what an anonymous source is saying. One possible result of this is the erosion of our credibility.”
Gannett newsrooms have been operating under a shared set of principles adopted by the newspaper chain, which owns the Courier-Journal, since 1999.
The section on the use of anonymous sources is extensive (and very similar to the one from 1976). It can be read in full by visiting our Web site at www.courier-journal.com, scrolling down on our home page until you see the Customer Service heading in the left margin, and clicking on ”Newsgathering Guidelines.”
Briefly, the document states, ”We will use unnamed sources as the sole basis for published information only as a last resort and under specific procedures that best serve the public’s right to know.”
I asked Bennie Ivory, the executive editor of the Courier-Journal, what that means to the journalists and readers here.
My questions, his answers:
Q: What are The Courier’s standards and practices for using unnamed sources (in local stories)?
Ivory: ”We use unnamed sources only if we can’t get the story any other way, and the story has to be important enough. We also require that we confirm the information with two other sources. Even then, I must approve it and I will want to know the names of the sources. In my absence, only the managing editor has authority to approve publication of stories with unnamed sources.”
Q: How often are they used in locally generated stories?
Ivory: ”Unnamed sources are hardly ever used in local stories.”
Q: What is done to ensure the motives and veracity of unnamed sources?
Ivory: ”We try to confirm the information through other independent sources, who usually also are unnamed, and written documentation. We were able to break the University of Kentucky story involving Claude Bassett through documentation provided to us by an unnamed source.”
Q: Do editors know the reporter’s sources, and do editors ever talk to those sources?
Ivory: ”When we use unnamed sources, editors are required to know the names of sources.”
Q: Why is this important to us? Why is it important to the reader?
Ivory: ”It’s about credibility. If we are going to put our credibility on the line, we must do everything possible to establish the truthfulness of something before we publish it. There are some stories that are absolutely true, but people are not going to talk about it on the record for a variety of reasons. But again, a story has to rise to a high level of importance before we even consider using unnamed sources.”
The issue is a little trickier when it comes to our use of wire services. We subscribe to several, including those of the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. Their use of anonymous sources in national stories is much more prevalent than The Courier-Journal’s is in local coverage.
I asked Ivory and Alan Player, the newspaper’s wire editor, about The Courier’s standards and practices regarding anonymous sources in wire stories.
Ivory: ”We have no control over what the wire services do. But we edit wire stories judiciously. We don’t put a wire story in the paper just because we have it and we can. Our wire editor is one of the best at spotting things in stories that don’t quite ring right.”
Player: ”When I come across a story with anonymous sources I try to evaluate whether the sourced material is truly important to the story. If it’s not, I take it out. If it is, I go to Bennie (Ivory) or Ben (Post, managing editor) and ask him to make a determination. We’ll usually debate the merits of the information — whether we think it’s true and whether we can get it somewhere else, for example — and then he’ll make the call. If neither of those two is around, I go to the highest ranking editor I can find. If they’re gone, I make the call myself.
”We’ve acted on the safe side in some notable recent examples, deciding against The Washington Post’s heroic story about Jessica Lynch continuing to shoot Iraqis despite battle wounds, playing down the multiple claims that Americans had found chemical weapons in Iraq, and playing down the claim early in the war that the Shiites had risen up against Saddam in Basra.”
Meanwhile, back at the Times, a veteran Times editor and style/usage guru named Allan M. Siegal is heading a group to conduct ”a comprehensive review of the way we work together in our newsroom, examining many of the issues that were dramatically brought forward in the aftermath of the Jayson Blair episode,” as Siegal noted in an e-mail to the Times’ staff.
Among the topics the Siegal committee — made up mostly of Times staffers, but including a few members from outside the newspaper — is reviewing: Hiring practices, assignments and career tracking, accuracy controls, detecting errors, whether the newspaper should have an ombudsman or public editor, and ethical issues . . . including several key questions about the practice of using unidentified sources.
The committee’s final report is due in early July.
