I saw this on Glen Greenwald’s blog on Salon and had to link to it because it pretty much sums up my own feelings on anonymous sources. It is from a Frontline interview with Dana Priest of The Washington Post, excerpted in E&P.
Q. In Washington, people have lots of off-the-record or confidential conversations all the time on all kinds of things, not just secret prisons.
Right. I think the press is guilty of allowing sources to ask for anonymity in far too many places.
Q. To getting spun, you mean, by the sources?Even if the information is not spun, but they just don’t want their names attached to it. You have spokesmen who are paid by U.S. taxpayers to be the spokesmen for their agencies, and they won’t put their name on simple statements.
That’s in part because we’re not calling them on it enough, and I think that we should.Papers and networks are not good at working together, but I would absolutely support an effort by us collectively to say, if you’re a spokesman, you have to have your name on the record. We need to crack down on the use of anonymous sources when it’s not absolutely necessary.And now you’re going to ask me when is it actually necessary. It is all a judgment call, but it has gotten overused, absolutely.
Q. Out of control?
It’s gotten out of control. USA Today stopped using them, and they were successful. They got people to be on the record with things that they initially said they wanted to be on background and not quoted. So I think we should do a better job trying to get people to be on the record.
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Hank Kalet 