When someone asks to provide information off the record, be sure the reason is not to boost her own position by undermining someone elses, to even the score with a rival, to attack an opponent or to push a personal agenda. Some are willing to provide information only when it benefits them.
The information-gathering business is a give-and-take practice with a lot of public officials. Clarify conditions attached to any promise made in exchange for information. Always question sources motives before promising anonymity. If the investigating police officer confirms John Doe has been arrested, the officer is a source in the police department and not even a pronoun should point to the gender.Ģ. If the only way to publish a story that is of importance to the audience is to use anonymous sources, the reporter owes it to the readers to identify the source as clearly as possible without pointing a figure at the person who has been granted anonymity. To protect their credibility and the credibility of their stories, reporters should use every possible avenue to confirm and attribute information before relying on unnamed sources. If the news consumers dont have faith that the stories they are reading or watching are accurate and fair, if they suspect information attributed to an anonymous source has been made up, then the journalists are as useful as a parka at the equator.
The most important professional possession of journalists is credibility. The public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources' reliability.
The SPJ Code of Ethics contains two pointed statements on anonymous sources:ġ. But sometimes, anonymous sources are the road to the ethical swamp. Politics and ego-stroking seem to dissolve everyone into unnamed. A New York Times columnist arguing about a published article with three senior White House aides even referred to President Obama as one of four senior members of the administration in a subsequent column.Īnonymous sources are sometimes the only key to unlocking that big story, throwing back the curtain on corruption, fulfilling the journalistic missions of watchdog on the government and informant to the citizens. Everyone seems to be an administration or congressional source or a law enforcement or military source. And perhaps none was more infamous than those Janet Cooke invented to concoct her fictitious Pulitzer Prize-winning story about a child heroin addict.Īnonymity is the name of the Washington game. None is more famous and perhaps none was more important than Watergates ∽eep Throat, the FBI source who helped The Washington Post unravel the White House cover-up of the Watergate break-in. Reporting on Grief, Tragedy and VictimsĪnonymous sources certainly have a checkered journalistic history.