Swallow This, Deep Throat

And once you move uptown, what happens downtown — or anywhere else for that matter — becomes less of a concern. Consequently, the advancement of gossip as “newsworthy” and the “outsourcing” of information requiring shoe leather. This isn’t to say that gossip has never played a role, or that serious reporters can always remain above the fray. Seymour Hersh broke the story of the My Lai massacre and Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia, only to stub his toe on a volume on the Kennedys, which was far more reminiscent in tone of Maurine Watkins’ Chicago Tribune items that became the basis of her play Chicago than anything else. Hersh, on his way to Pakistan this week, could not be reached to share his insights. It’s the question of tone that comes most sharply into play with source anonymity — coupled with what should be any attentive reader’s query, “Why are you telling me all of this?” That question has also been asked by veteran reporters, such as Jimmy Breslin of Newsday, who, when challenged on a recent item in a column he wrote regarding anti-gay fundamentalist Lou Sheldon, not only defended himself but in speaking to a writer for the New York Observer struck out at the Times: “These blind quotes — ‘He spoke on the basis of anonymity; we were not to give his name’ — what do you call that? You call that craven,” he said. “What do you mean, he won’t give you his name? On what basis, that he’s not going to talk? You can’t keep him out of your fucking living room! They want to get in the paper!”

Veteran ombudsman Geneva Olverholser, whose Poynter Institute Online column keeps track of all manner of journalism issues, opposes any absolute rule against using anonymous sources. “But we have taken what is an honorable and important tool and rendered it practically unusable because we use it so much. When I was at the Washington Post,I found one instance where somebody at the National Airport was saying it was a difficult day for flying because of the weather, ‘Said so-and-so, who asked not to be named.’ They didn’t want to go on record about the weather! Readers are suspicious of people who won’t let their names be caught anywhere near their statements in a newspaper article. They called me when I was ombudsman and said, ‘Look, you’ve got all these anonymous sources in here — why shouldn’t I assume that you made it up?’ And when I would speak to people like Woodward and others at the Post and say ‘This is a serious problem for us,’ they say ‘Oh you know people know they can trust me.’ Well, people don’t trust them.”

Clearly responding to this lack of trust, several veteran journalists have recently been forced to pay the price, from the News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington, to the Chicago Tribune. Most dramatic of all, however, was when Jack Kelley of USA Today, who resigned in January of 2004 after 21 years when it was discovered that he compromised over 100 stories — far more than Jayson Blair — replete with unverifiable sources and information later proved to be false, including one account of a suicide bombing in Israel that made him a 2001 Pulitzer Prize finalist. His since-discredited words told of the head of a victim, eyes still blinking, lodged in a ceiling.

The New York Times’ policy puts the problem this way: “In any situation when we cite anonymous sources, at least some readers may suspect that the newspaper is being used to convey tainted information or special pleading.” This telling admission appears in the Confidential News Source Policy sent to the Times staff on February 25 of this year. Overall this memo is not all that different from the one released by the Washington Poston February 19. Both memos, while encouraging restraint and caution in unnamed-source usage, are also equipped with enough explanatory loopholes to drive the proverbial truck through. “There are stories where there does not appear to be any great need for anonymity, yet it’s accepted much too easily,” says Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler. “You need to go as far as possible to give the reader some idea of who’s talking.”

This speaks to the “news behind the news” of the sort that surfaced in the Wen Ho Lee affair, in which the noted scientist faced accusations of treason while an apparent double agent named Katrina Leung (currently under investigation) eluded scrutiny while working as a fund-raiser for the Republican National Committee. In the Lee case, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson stingingly wrote: “The court has some doubt that a truly worthy First Amendment interest rises in protecting the identity of government personnel who disclose to the press information that the privacy act says they must not reveal.”

Journalist and former Clinton White House confidant Sidney Blumenthal says the source’s name is common knowledge. “It was Neutra Trulock — who is a right-wing nut. He’s a discredited figure who gave utterly contentious, ideologically driven, partisan and politically motivated information. And everyone knows that’s who they’re protecting by not giving up his name — that person, somebody who lied to them. I believe that if a journalist is lied to by somebody they’re not obligated to protect them. Basically these reporters were used in a political dirty trick. [Jeff] Gerth and [James] Risen [the Times reporters on the Wen Ho Lee story] were manipulated, they were tooled. Why should they turn this into a First Amendment martyrdom case? And frankly these guys also have another obligation, which is to write about — better than Howell Raines did about the Wen Ho Lee case when the Times wrote its tortured mea culpa — to explain their abuse of having been used badly and what they think about having done a story. Hiding behind a journalistic privilege is simply a form of dishonesty and cowardice. Gerth said he would have no comment because of pending litigation filed by Lee against the government.