What Is The Media Running From? We Need More Anonymous Sources

[Itsthetruth]

CounterPunch
Weekend Edition
June 4 / 5, 2005

What is the Media Running From?
We Need More, Not Fewer, Anonymous Sources
By DAVID LINDORFF

As an investigative reporter who has made frequent use of anonymous sources throughout my career, let me put it bluntly-if Americans want a press that functions even minimally as a watchdog on corruption and abuse of power, they'd better get comfortable with anonymous sources. Toss them over the side and all we will be reading will be official press releases.

The reason the public has such a low opinion of the media today is not that the media uses anonymous sources. It's because the media doesn't tell the truth. The reading and viewing public are savvy enough about advertising and marketing to recognize that most of what they're getting in the "news hole" is just more of the same-official handouts from corporations and government officials, carefully packaged reports aimed at supporting advertisers, and entertainment filler.

If the media gave them red meat, in the form of hard-hitting investigative reports that looked at what government is really doing, how the war in Iraq is really going and how we got there in the first place, what is really happening to the environment, and how we are all being gouged by a tax system that gives away the store to the rich and corporations, you can bet they'd have a higher opinion of them, even if many of those stories relied on unnamed sources.

The Bush White House knows this, and that's why it is coming down so hard on stories that use such sources. They want to nip any chance of a return to Watergate-era journalism in the bud.

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff06042005.html