Donald Trump is still seething over that Atlantic story in which anonymous sources said he belittled soldiers killed in battle as “suckers” and “losers.”
But journalists have relied on “anonymous sources since about the time the ink was drying on the Declaration of Independence,” said former Louisville Courier-Journal editor David Hawpe. “It’s a bad habit that Washington reporters and commentators are reluctant to break. That won’t change until Mr. Lincoln gets up from his chair and strolls along the Mall.”
Key parts of the Atlantic story have been confirmed by The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, and even by a Fox News reporter.
While sometimes unnamed sources are needed to get at the truth, Hawpe added that there have never been clear-cut rules on when or how to use them. He said that anonymous sources “should be avoided if possible” but that “once a newspaper or broadcaster promises anonymity, nobody at that institution can break the agreement.”
CNN reported that Carl Bernstein, of Woodward and Bernstein, told the network’s Reliable Sources that anonymous sources are often critical in newsgathering. “Almost all 200 of our stories about Watergate were based on anonymous sourcing,” he said, adding that throughout Trump’s presidency, “reporting is almost uniformly based on anonymous sourcing in part because that’s the only way we can get to the truth.”
Hawpe explained that in the Courier-Journal newsroom “for most of my career…we needed at least two unnamed sources in order to justify running something of that kind, and then only if a top editor knew who the reporter’s sources were, and only if every reasonable effort had been made to confirm a story on the record, and only if the story was of exceptional importance. Notice the weasel words there: ‘reasonable’ and ‘exceptional.’ Those are judgment calls. There are no rulers, gauges, meters, or tapes with which an editor can measure such things.”
Hawpe’s anonymous sources checklist
Hawpe said he devised a “mental checklist” for using anonymous sources:
(1) What else could we do to confirm this on the record?
(2) Do readers really need to know what’s in this story?
(3) What is this reporter’s track record?
(4) What has our experience been with these sources in the past?
(5) Do the sources have valid reasons for requesting anonymity?
(6) Will we strengthen or weaken our credibility if we use this?
(7) How will I answer the inevitable charge that there were no actual anonymous sources or that using such sources wasn’t justified?
“No decision of this kind should ever be made without invoking some sort of process such as this.”
Make your own checklist
Hawpe suggested that consumers of print, broadcast, and electronic news stories use their “own checklists in judging stories, which includes deciding whether (1) the information in the story from unnamed sources is of major importance, (2) the stated reason for granting anonymity to the sources sounds plausible and persuasive, (3) the newspaper or broadcaster has a track record that justifies our trust, (4) the critics of an anonymously sourced story have a track record that makes their complaints credible.”
Trump called The Atlantic, one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious publications, “a failing magazine.” (Politicians are known to chuck brickbats at the C-J, too.) The story’s author, Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, is a top-flight journalist.
Moreover, the magazine’s fact checkers are famously relentless. “Seems like a good time to remind everyone that @TheAtlantic’s fact checkers once challenged my belief that Lorne Michaels [of Saturday Night Live fame] was eating snow peas during a meeting and later verified that he was, in fact, eating edamame. They are extremely thorough,” writer Chris Jones tweeted.
I’d bet the farm that The Atlantic operates on its version of Hawpe’s rules. Anonymously-sourced stories require more than one source. Sources must be revealed to editors, who judge them for reliability.
In turn, editors and/or fact-checkers go over stories with a fine-toothed comb to make sure reporters have their ducks in a row – if for no other reason than big-time CYA.
In short, it all “goes to credibility,” as the lawyers say on Law and Order. Goldberg and The Atlantic’s credibility are on the line.
Reporters know the score. If they really write “fake news,” they get exposed, get fired, and see their careers ruined.
“Journalism should be based on a relentless resort to fact, but at every step along the way it requires subjective judgements,” Hawpe said.
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