The abuse of journalistic anonymity depends on the practice not being taken seriously from on high

"[T]oo often it seems The Post grants anonymity at the drop of a hat."

-- Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander, in a report

today, "For The Post, anonymous sources remain a problem"

by Ken

It was only Friday that I quoted Glenn Greenwald's excellent point about the "senior White House official" who fed Politico's Ben Smith that famous bitch crack about labor flushing $10 million down the toilet in support of Blanche Lincoln primary challenger Bill Halter: Why on earth was the White House whiner granted anonymity?

That there is no remote journalistic justification for granting anonymity for these kinds of catty comments is self-evident, but that's not worth discussing, since the Drudgeified Politico has long ago established that they operate without any ethical constraints of any kind when it comes to such matters. The only anonymity standard Politico has is this: we grant it automatically the minute someone in power wants it (though on some level, in a warped sort of way, that's almost more admirable than what the NYT and Post do: pretend that they have strict anonymity standards while basically handing it out as promiscuously as Politico does).

Today Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander revisited that promiscuous granting of anonymity.

Alexander leads off with a source who was granted anonymity, in a story about conflicts between parents and childless adults, for "an anecdote about an unleashed puppy pestering a toddler in a District park."

After the child's father complained, the dog's owner told The Post that parents of children can be "tyrants" and she urged them to keep their kids inside the park's fenced-in play area. "I think children are fine," she was quoted as saying, but "I don't think they own everything."

For this, The Post identified the woman only as Linda, a veteran journalist, "because she didn't want to be seen as hostile to children."

Even the reporter, it turns out, now agrees with a Post commenter who wrote that if the woman "didn't want to share her name, she shouldn't have been permitted to share her point of view." "It wasn't exactly about state secrets," [reporter Annys] Shin acknowledged. 'In the end, I should have insisted, or we should have just not used that anecdote.'"
Alexander recalls that the Post has a fairly strict official policy on the subject.

The Post's internal policies set a high threshold for granting anonymity. It "should not be done casually or automatically." Further, "merely asking should not be sufficient to become anonymous in our stories." If sources refuse to go on the record, "the reporter should consider seeking the information elsewhere."

But too often it seems The Post grants anonymity at the drop of a hat.

And he goes on to cite sources granted anonymity:

* to be able to be "candid"

* "because he is reluctant to have his name in the paper"

* "in order not to offend"

* to be able to "speak more freely"

This last was a lobbyist who --

told The Post that the provision in the [financial overhaul] bill would have a 'chilling effect' because "Markets crave certainty. All this does is introduce a comic amount of uncertainty."

Reader Jonathan Wood of London objected. "The utterly banal remark that 'Markets crave certainty' certainly did not require granting anonymity to 'speak more freely,' " he e-mailed. "This article essentially gives a platform to someone actively lobbying to weaken or kill the bill to make an unattributed criticism."

It's getting worse, reports Alexander.

The phrase "spoke on condition of anonymity" has appeared in an average of 71 stories a month through May -- slightly higher than in the same period a year ago. This year, it has appeared more than 450 times (stories often include multiple anonymous sources). And that doesn't include all of the anonymous sources described in other ways. For example, those ubiquitous unnamed "senior administration officials" have been quoted more than 130 times this year. Post rules urge that when sources are granted anonymity, readers be told why. But in more than 85 stories this year where sources "spoke on condition of anonymity," there was no explanation. In many others, where a weak rationale was offered, readers protested.

"[B]y casually agreeing to conceal the identities of those who provide non-critical information," says Alexander, "The Post erodes its credibility and perpetuates Washington's insidious culture of anonymity." And the problem, which he concludes is "endemic" at the paper, goes way up. "Reporters should be blamed. But the solution must come in the form of unrelenting enforcement by editors, starting with those at the top."

I assure you that if the paper's higher-level editors demonstrated that they care about abuse of anonymity, the abuse would stop almost instantly. But granting anonymity is a lazy paper's way to get juicier, sexier copy into its pages. Reporters pay close attention to behavior that is sanctioned or even encouraged from on high, and that which is frowned on or actively policed. There's no doubt a lot of bureaucratic inertia in a news operation like the Post's or the New York Times's. But as with so many other aspects of the operation, when the people at the top make clear that certain journalistic standards will be enforced, chances increase greatly that they'll be honored.

And vice versa, of course.

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