Other Voices: Trust and the Unnamed Source

[cal04]

Re "Briefers and Leakers and the Newspapers Who Enable Them"
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/weekinreview/08okrent.html

It would have been difficult to develop stories like Watergate without anonymous sources. And I don't believe that reporters use anonymous sources as a vehicle to state their own opinions. What I do find objectionable is that anonymous sources often are not being used by the print media, but rather are using the print media to advance an agenda.

Anonymous sources should not be cited when their only purpose is to support an administration's (or a political party's, or a political candidate's, or a corporation's) positions. Why should the news media be complicit in the floating of trial balloons that are deniable because of anonymity? The purpose of withholding a source's name, presumably, is to protect the source from retribution. Anonymity should be denied where retribution is unlikely to occur. It's time that the news media get back in the business of holding those in power accountable, and out of the business of empowering unaccountability.
MICHAEL D. RAMSEY
Michigan City, Ind., May 8, 2005

Most readers understand the need for anonymous sources (or can be reminded of the need when necessary). What bothers me is information that is planted anonymously in an abuse of the planter's political power. Too often a hungry, ambitious press corps is willing to go along with this practice. The outing of a C.I.A. operative and the misinformation "leaked" to support the invasion of Iraq are two egregious examples. Anonymous sources are supposed to help check abuses of power, not aid them.It can't be that hard to distinguish between the two. Anonymity should not be accorded to political operatives who use it to abuse their power.
MELISSA MACAULEY
London, May 8, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/weekinreview/08okrent.html

[bemildred]

1. Anonymous sources aren't worth shit.

That's the deal. Get used to it. The idea that we have to listen
to an unending stream of lies and obfuscations because there might
be some important bit of truth that we would miss some times is crap.

Anybody can say anything they want anytime they want, but its opinion
and hearsay, don't call it "news".