This is somewhat scary. However, I would hope The Times is aware that if this is not accurate or somehow is NOT a senior official they will be made to look like fools. Trump will have won. I believe this paper stands for truth .I do hope this person will come forward if not Trump will fire his whole staff in a fit of paranoia
Using anonymous sources is certainly understandable. It may make a story less credible, but, there are good reasons for it. That should be their only problem. The Times and many other new sources have diminished their credibility by joining the "resistance."
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@David H. Eisenberg It is never understandable or acceptable to cite anonymous sources...if a person cant use his name, he should just remain silent, until or unless he can...
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The Trump Family can't be covered accurately without use of anonymous inside sources, who would lose their jobs and perhaps even be prosecuted if identified. It is right to use procedures mentioned in the article of having an editor know the identity and ask questions about motivation and access. If possible, documentary and audio evidence would be helpful. It is often an abuse, however, to grant anonymity to an official who is merely parroting the WH line, such as someone from the press office or NSC briefing reporters.
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In Watergate days, Woodward and Bernstein claimed that they would not publish information from an anonymous source unless it was confirmed by another, unrelated source. Does NYT have similar built-in protection against being spun?
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These guidelines were not in play during the Jayson Blair era - glad it's changed.
Repeated questioning about the use of anonymous sources was one of the reasons, I think, that the Public Editor position was eliminated. Management doesn't intend to change practices and doesn't want to hear about it.
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Uh huh. Y'all trotted out some high-minded, serious-sounding talk about all this in the wake of the debacle w. Michael Gordon and Judy Miller -- and nothing changed. Anonymous sources are the norm more than the exception. Philip simply isn't credible.
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Why all the unnamed sources in the Style section? It seems like reporters frequently use "who asked that their name not be used" for pretty light stories - expensive children's parties, for example.
I understand the use for politics and national security, but for culture and trend stories? Less is more.
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Should I be amused that most of the comments criticizing the Times for using anonymous sources are themselves using pseudonyms?
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It's impossible to tell whether one is expressing an ethical concern in good faith or opportunistically trying to undermine confidence in rigorous free reporting.
Anecdotally, I read a piece originated by Bloomberg that relied on an anonymous source. It was juicy and a scoop. It was not echoed by any other origination agency, presumably because they could not independently confirm it.
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We all understand that there are times when protecting a source's identity is necessary. However, The NYT, more and more, is using this cloaking device when it is difficult to see just what the necessity is, to wit, an article about Devin Nunes published 4/23/18 contained 28 unnamed sources (I counted), not one of whom appeared to be in any jeopardy of retaliation.
Here's a partial list:
1. One senior campaign official
2. By all accounts they seemed
3. One Trump transitions official recalls (followed by more references to this official)
4. Transition officials
5. Trump’s circle believed …
6. One former Boehner aid says
7. A fellow congressman remembers Nunes gleefully informing him
8. One former Intelligence Committee staff member recalls
9. One (different?) former committee staff member says
10. According to three people familiar with the log
11. According to a (different?) former committee staff member
12. The former staff member says (after a negative quote about Nunes)
13. Even worse, in the eyes of some of committee members and staff,
14. The former committee staff member says “He wasn’t discerning…..”
15. A former government official recalls
16. According to a source familiar with the investigation
17. According to a person familiar with the conversation
18. According to people familiar with the matter
19. According to multiple sources
20. According to two former government officials
No wonder folks are suspicious of Mr. Corbett's explanation.
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Thank you for this. You've done the homework I didn't have time for. Heck, I had to google Devin Nunes to find out who the guy was, and the NYT uses anonymous sources willy nilly on some story about a California congressman who may or may not amount to a hill of beans when the cows come home.
Disgraceful. I would like to hear from editors about this specific story. I would like hear the justification for the use of anonymous sources in each and every instance.
Lordy, how I miss the public editor.
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Why are you using a cloaking device "Dr. C". Is it so you can deceive and perpetuate untruths? Probably not. I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt; I'm willing to do the same for the NY Times.
I'm sure the editors (and almost all reporters) regard the reputation of the paper as much more important than any one story or a "scoop." They would be stupid to jeopardize it and they don't strike me as stupid people.
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@Laurence Bachmann
Laurence, if that is your real name, you can easily fact check Dr. C's truthfulness by 1. Checking to see if The Times published the alleged article on the date alleged concerning the alleged Nunes. 2. You can also count the number of anonymous sources that Dr. C alleges were used in the alleged NYT article.
If none of Dr. C's allegations pan out to your satisfaction, you can declare the same to be deceitful and untruthful. The facts are a better determinant of truth than ad hominem pronouncements.
Then, you might address your false equivalence. The New York Times [a cloaking device?] brandishes its sanctity under the First Amendment as an excuse for setting its own standards of filtering and interpreting the "news" as it sees fit. It heralds its self-anointed role as the Nation's Newspaper. It acts as its own censor of what is published and even who is allowed to comment on what is published. Dr. C - hardly in the same league.
As for the collective stupidity of The Times, I'll pass. But, there is a collective bias to the entire Times enterprise - ie, there is a decided bias in its coverage.
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All the safeguards in the world are useless if they are used by minds dishonestly interested in furthering a preconceived agenda.
When the NY Times expresses a full-throtade regret about its role in getting us into the disastrous Iraq War and shows it is continuing to look at that regret as a means of being different, then I will begin to trust its coverage of foreign affairs.
We always want to flatter ourselves by diminishing others, and if we do not want to have that in mind then we will always be nothing more than cheerleaders for our egos. The NY Times went along with the war hysteria as to Iraq, and does so now as to Russia-demonizing, because it has excused its past falsity, often by blaming others.
When we most need someone with great influence who we can trust to criticize Trump, all we have is a mainstream media that are his brothers in lying.
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I read the article, then the comments, before I re-read the article in light of the contributors' viewpoints. I see nothing wrong with anonymous sources reviewed by editors who ask pointed questions. Without them, the truth would often stay hidden. I don't know how many of you are old enough to remember Richard Nixon. Without Mark Felt, then an anonymous source, Nixon would not have resigned. I'm bright enough, read enough news sources, and spent enough time consulting and researching to sniff out a rat. You're not? Get your news elsewhere (good luck), do some in-depth research, and apply critical thinking.
I'm more worried about a growing lack of copy editing.
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I'm worried about copy editing, too. But also about anonymous sources.
Felt and Watergate are one thing. Anonymous sources in workaday stories are entirely another thing. And, while I respect the NYT, I think that the paper's coverage is too-often slanted--for instance, the bias against Trump (an awful person, but still) is clear throughout the paper. Adding anonymous sources to the mix merely is gasoline to the fire. It is to the point that when I hit an anonymous source in a news story, I start to discredit the entire piece. Certainly, I would compare it to something in a competing publication before drawing conclusions as to veracity and credibility.
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I want to see a comparison of how often you did this in the Obama administration compared to in the Trump administration.
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@bill t...Obama vigorously went after leaks and anonymous sources. He had the MSM cowed.
As any longtime reader of the New York Times knows, the newspaper uses anonymous sources to an appalling extent and in appalling ways. Anonymous sources are trotted out in stories big and small--you're as likely to see them in rinky-dink news analysis pieces and bread-and-butter government/political stories as you are in truly important Watergate-type stuff.
It's flat-out inexcusable, but the Times, and other media, just keep doing it, to the detriment of the journalistic profession and the public good. Every once in a while, the paper will publish a we-treat-anonymous-sources-carefully bit of tripe, like this one, then just keep doing what it always has done, which has resulted in the likes of Judith Miller and many others.
I would like to see the Times refuse to use anonymous sources unless it's really, really, really important, which would mean we'd see such sources less than five times a year, if that often. What some anonymous person thinks about political stuff or says about what might happen in tomorrow's Senate hearing doesn't qualify. It would make reporters work harder, but it would not, I think, put the paper at a competitive disadvantage. Indeed, quite the opposite. Think of the ad campaign if the NYT posted a "scoreboard" of sorts that compares the paper's use of anonymous sources with its competitors: NYT: 1; WSJ: 82; WaPo: 112, etc. In the best of worlds, that would help convince other papers to get their acts together.
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@August West...Unfortunately, The Times Corporation cannot afford to mount the high ground because the competition for ad click generated revenue has become so debilitating to old school journalism.
Social Media has replaced the WSJ and WaPo as The Times' primary competitors. Channel news and shock tock radio are taking their bites out of the money pie.
The Times has been relegated to a niche publisher that has to cater to its base to survive.
We are all diminished, in my humble opinion, by the graying of the Old Gray Lady.
Too often in the past, anonymous sources have been insiders planting the official story, and anonymity is the hidden hand that helps them do it.
They are not taking risks to reveal things. They are the risk, to the rest of us. And the reporters increases the risk.
The origin of the Iraq War was a masterpiece demonstration of that hidden hand used to manipulate us. That is the method to which I refer.
I realize that we are meant to be reassured the paper will never do that again. But it does, on Syria, on Gaza, on Yemen, wherever the hidden hand has stories to place, they've found reporters (and you say editors) to help.
The paper needs to live up to these find words. Sorry it does not.
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Exactly, exactly right.
While your point is an excellent one, it is not a new one. The NYT can survive, indeed thrive, by rejecting anonymous sources in all but Watergate type situations. But it keeps running with the other media lemmings.
Anonymous sources should be regarded as red flags--if a story contains one, view that story with extreme skepticism and do not trust anything within that story.
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How can the Times consider 1 Editor and 1 Reporter capable of dutifully examining the subtleties of their own source's background? There should at least be some kind of audit role, forcing editors to reveal their sources to people who are unbiased on the topic.
You cite politics, national security and business area's 'sensitivity'. But doesn't this argument cut both ways? The high 'sensitivity' of the area also increases the likely-hood a source/reporter/editor would misrepresent the truth
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Journalistic integrity matters. This is one reason to seek to ensure the prosperity of independent press agencies, especially those with an established history of integrity.
Exponentially so for those who have had reporters go to jail rather than compromise journalism's integrity.
And have stood by them and reported it.
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One of the most egregious ways in which the Times, like other news sources, uses anonymous sources is when they act as a professional snitch. The endorsement goes something like: "The name of the source has been withheld because the meeting was confidential and participants were not authorized to reveal its proceedings." It is as though preserving their anonymity is deemed to be equivalent to carrying out their undertaking to keep the information secret.
Of course, this means that the source has violated a professional trust. He or she is therefore at best a whistleblower. There can be a valuable place for such individuals in the news, but their contribution must be judged in light of an arguable lack of personal integrity. How do readers (and the Times) know that we can trust them if their colleagues obviously cannot?
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Whistleblowers usually resort to such to DEFEND their colleagues. Problem is you lump the actual colleagues they defend with their awful bosses like "covfefe" who attack them.
When workers are forced to politically deny basic climate science, take discriminatory unequal pay, cover up rapists like Weinstein, commit genocide in Yemen or Burma...their fellow worker has a DUTY to "snitch", and you can be certain that the employer has a no-talk policy precisely to stop "snitches" BECAUSE the employer's Up To No Good.
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