Validating the media's use of anonymous sources

In the days following the revelation, media attention focused on the question of whether Felt was an American hero or traitor. A parade of former disgraced Nixon aides joined the media circus, and in the spirit of Captain Louis Renault, the character in the classic movie, Casablanca, played by Claude Rains, expressed their "shock" that a high ranking member of the Nixon administration (Felt was the number two man at the FBI) would become a snitch and feed the media information about it.

Former Nixon aides like Charles Colson, a hatchet man and dirty trickster for "Tricky Dick" Nixon who now claims to be "born again," told NBC's popular morning "Today Show" that "I never thought anybody in such a position of sensitivity in the U.S. Justice administration would breach confidence." Pat Buchanan, another Nixon flunky who has been a perennial presidential candidate, said this of Felt: "There is nothing heroic about breaking the law, sneaking around garages, putting stuff from an investigation out to a Nixon-hating Washington Post (newspaper)."

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Fortunately, Americans still have some journalists who are able to separate fact from spin. They correctly pointed out that the vociferous utterances of Nixon lackeys like Colson and Buchanan reflected a classic example of the rats coming out of the woodwork to attack the messenger. The rats who had been lying low in disgrace until the godfather of all anonymous sources gave them an opportunity to revise history, expressed indignation that Deep Throat went to the media and not through official channels with his information about government misconduct.

Give history a break! As William Ruckelhaus, a Deputy Attorney General in the Nixon administration, explained to David Broder, a respected American newspaper columnist: "If you see the White House and the head of the FBI (L. Patrick Gray, Deep Throat's boss) interfering with the investigation, what are you going to do ? If you go public with the charges, who is going to believe you?"

So Felt is an American hero and the memory of what he did for the country should be honoured as such. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the dogged reporters who broke the story of the American Century, are also heroes. In this age of media mergers, tabloid TV and superficial reporting, it's doubtful whether Woodward and Bernstein would have been given the time or the company support to undertake such an investigation.

But how they got the Big Story is a textbook lesson for all journalists who aspire to dig for the truth. Deep Throat did not give Woodward and Bernstein information. All he did was confirm information that the young journalists uncovered through hard work and great reporting. They pounded the pavement, so to speak, and found information by knocking on doors, hunting down low level bureaucrats, spending hours on the phone and evaluating the information they found, bit by tiny bit, before publishing it in the Washington Post under their byline. No other newspaper wanted to touch the story until it no longer could be suppressed by Nixon and had become the basis of the very public Watergate hearings.

Woodward's and Bernstein's use of an anonymous source has been vindicated by an investigation that, in essence, protected the U.S. Constitution. It's chilling to think what the Nixon administration might have tried if he had gotten away with covering up the break in of the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate office building.

Yet, in the three decades since the Watergate scandal, the use of the anonymous source in journalism has not faired so well. Indeed, sloppy and often downright dishonest reporting, as exemplified through the work of now discredited journalists, such as Janet Cooke? (Washington Post) Jack Kelly (USA Today, the U.S.'s largest circulating newspaper), Jason Blair (the New York Times)-- has brought the vital journalistic technique into question.

The recent Newsweek magazine story about the alleged flushing of the Koran down the toilet at GITMO is the latest example of sloppy and lazy investigative reporting. I'm not sure that Newsweek's story about the incident was totally inaccurate, but the way the magazine documented the story was. Newsweek used just one anonymous source to support a controversial and explosive claim. The source told Newsweek that a soon-to-be-released Pentagon report would support his contention that guards at Guantanamo had flushed a copy of the Koran down the toilet. But then the source backtracked, telling Newsweek that he was no longer sure he had read about the alleged incident in the still to-be-released report. Relying on a single source meant the end of the investigation and the beginning of embarrassment for Newsweek.

The fact is many American newspapers never permit the use of anonymous sources. Early this month (June), a survey conducted by the Associated Press revealed that one in four American newspapers don't allow their reporters to quote anonymous sources, while other newspapers have policies in place that limit the practice. The newspapers that do allow the use of anonymous sources were mainly located in large cities or operated bureaus in Washington DC or overseas.

I know from my experience teaching journalism workshops in Bangladesh as a Fulbright Scholar in 2003 and talking with local colleagues that the use of anonymous sources is a way of professional life for local journalists. They would simply not get much useful information without them. I also know that giving anonymity to source, whether in Bangladesh or the U.S., is often justified, given that some sources put themselves in danger when they give reporters information.

Still I think we journalists can do much more to protect the integrity of the use of anonymous sources. For instance, we can work harder to get the source to go on the record. We can question whether the quality of the information is compelling enough to justify the use of anonymous sources. We can also scrutinise the motives of sources who desire anonymity to make sure we are not being manipulated. We should not use information that attacks or disparages another individual unless the source is willing to let the reporter use his name.

As Newsweek should have done, we should verify what one anonymous source tells us by using other sources to corroborate, no matter how tight the deadline is. We can let our editors know the names of the anonymous source and the reason why he or she wants anonymity. The editor, moreover, can let the newspaper's readership know its policy on the use of anonymous sources.

What the public may not know is that newspapers are often forced to use anonymous sources by the policies of not their newspapers but of official channels, which force reporters to use anonymous sources. The Bush administration has been known for holding so called "background" news conferences where attribution is not allowed as it tries to spin the news. An American reporter can go to any U.S. Embassy and try to get a State Department official to go on record in an interview. Good luck.

Yet, despite the many challenges in using anonymous sources, the Fourth Estate needs them if it is going to report on what goes on in democracy. Imagine what the course of American history might have been if two reporters didn't use an anonymous source to get the information that spoke truth to power and exposed the dirty deeds of a corrupt presidential administration.

Ron Chepesiuk is a Visiting Professor of Journalism at Chittagong University and a Research Associate with the National Defence College in Dhaka.