by Kendyl Salcito
Deep Throat. The pseudonym instantly conjures images of Hollywood-style
reporting prowess, government scandal, and journalistic tenacity.
Watergate’s star whistle-blower is the world’s most famous
anonymous source and somewhat of a watershed in the proliferation
of anonymous sources in journalism. Since Woodward and Bernstein’s
history-changing story, anonymous sources have woven themselves into
every type and every level of journalism.
Anti-globalisation protest at Sydney Opera
House. Photo by Aaron Booth
But when huge stories are broken
that rely on nameless sources, issues in credibility and legality
arise every time. The issues extend beyond the reporters and their
papers to the news media itself. Anonymous sources have helped journalists
catch some of the biggest stories in news (especially in government),
but they have also been responsible for some of the greatest fumbles.
Since the 1980s, complaints have mounted over
the abuse of anonymity in the mainstream press. Some “anonymous
sources” were unable to verify claims, uninterested in the
truth, or dedicated to the demise of an official. In some cases,
the sources did not exist at all.
The list of journalists who have abused anonymity
is neither short nor undistinguished. Pulitzer Prize winners and
“star” foreign correspondents from a variety of internationally
renowned publications wrongly used unreachable, anonymous, or non-existent
sources. (Brad Evanston, Jack Kelley, Jayson Blair, Janet Cook,
Christopher Newton, and Judith Miller to name just a few). Too often,
anonymity is a shield behind which “sources” hide to
take “cheap shots” at their political rivals or to manipulate
journalists.
Most newsrooms dictate that the claims of anonymous
sources should be substantiated by at least one other source, but
in the rush to beat the competition, journalists have ignored those
newsroom rules. (See: CBS Rathergate scandal, Monica Lewinsky scandal,
John Kerry affair scandal).
There are very valid reasons for cloaking sources
in anonymity. Some sources face legal retribution for sharing information
with reporters, some put their lives at risk to tell their stories.
But these individuals cannot be exempted from newsroom rules requiring
verification, especially not in the name of rush. The race to break
stories has proven tremendously problematic for newsrooms using
anonymous sources in the Internet age, because newsrooms are no
longer competing with other news sources – they are competing
with Matt Drudge and a bevy of bloggers. By and large, bloggers
don’t rely on credibility to maintain their livelihood. Matt
Drudge figures that his stories are correct about “80 per
cent” of the time. Journalists are required to be more accurate
than that, because credibility is the foundation of their profession.
If readers and viewers don’t trust the news, they go elsewhere
for information – and they have a wealth of alternatives in
the era of cable, satellite, and Internet.
Anonymity infringements
Coincidentally, at the same that time the demand
for transparency from journalists is paramount, news consumers themselves
have begun to lose their own anonymity. Computer users, who once
felt safe and isolated behind their computer screens, are finding
that they are being “watched”. In the summer of 2006,
AOL released a list of almost 700,000 users’ search queries
to the public. The list spawned some interesting debates about privacy
and an amusing analysis by Paul Boutin of Slate.com entitled “You
are what you search.”
But something more intimately involved with journalism
happened. Individuals became sources in stories simply by virtue
of the Internet queries they typed into the search box. The New
York Times tracked down Searcher No. 4417749 as Thelma Arnold
in Lilburn, Georgia. “It did not take much investigating”
to find her, the Times article reads. Anonymity down the
drain.
Arnold was “shocked” to see her online
activities become fodder for public discourse, but her searches
were relatively innocent. Some of the other 658,000 users searched
for "you're pregnant he doesn't want the baby," “depression
and medial leave,” and “how to kill oneself by natural
gas.” Would the New York Times’ decision have
been less ethical if they had tracked down “you’re pregnant
and he doesn’t want the baby” instead of Arnold? Should
journalists be comfortable with the amount of information they can
gather on individuals completely without their knowing? Is it just
reporting? After all, reporters have long been digging up dirt on
sources before actually confronting them with questions. Is it somehow
different now that those sources are accidental?
Spam-trackers
Anonymity infringements extend beyond AOL’s
ill-thought-out data release. When you write an email from a web-based
address about hiking, all the advertisements on the right column
of the page are suddenly geared towards the Sierra Club. When you
Google-search "Afghanistan", a list of non-profits looking
for your help in the Middle East presents itself in the right column.
Many of us are unfazed by the ease with which our cyber-movements
can be tracked. Journalism wanders into controversial territory,
however, when it follows the path of advertisers, tracking Internet
users’ most frequently viewed websites and tailoring “newspapers”
to individuals.
Findory
is one of the more intriguing personalized newspapers because of
its means of personalization. In the words of its founder and CEO,
Greg Linden: “Findory learns what you like and then arranges
itself to match your interests.” Though the Findory homepage
boasts that the reader never has to give personal information, readers
inadvertently give information just by clicking on links.
Aside from the ethically questionable tracking
of readers’ e-news surfing behaviour, newsmakers should perhaps
be wary of creating a service of hyper-selection. It may be self-defeating
for news providers to turn readers into their own gatekeepers. In
addition, it appears to go against the very “purpose of journalism”
by the standards of Kovach and Rosentiel, co-authors of Elements
of Journalism.
According to their text: "The purpose of
journalism is to provide people with the information they need to
be free and self-governing." Who gets to decide what it takes
to self-govern? News editors used to assume that responsibility,
choosing what stories to publish and what issues to feature on A1.
Editors used to provide all the news they deemed necessary, even
if they knew their readership would not necessarily be interested.
People self-selected, skimming over stories that did not interest
them, but that has changed. By blanking out a large portion of the
headlines, allowing readers to limit what type of news they want
to read, are we risking closing certain doors to our readers? The
news we want to read is not necessarily all the news we ought to
read.
