The sourcing charade (continued)

Some newspapers and media commentators belatedly addressed the shortcomings of anonymous sourcing several years ago. But the practice had been all too common for decades before then, and it continues today as if it had never been called into question.

Two stories on the Egyptian crisis illustrate how anonymous sourcing and the measures supposedly taken to correct it actually amount to the same thing. In the Washington Post (February 2, 2011), Will Englund and Leila Fadel write about the counter-protest by Mubarak supporters:

“The Obama administration avoided accusing Mubarak’s government of directly authorizing the attacks, but one senior administration official in Washington described the onslaught as ‘classic ruling-party behavior.’”

Obviously the second half of the sentence is meant — with a wink and a nod — to contradict the first half. That “senior administration official” is, in fact, “accusing Mubarak’s government of directly authorizing the attacks.” He’s just not willing to do so publicly, in order to send a not-so-subtle message (instead of an official proclamation) to the Mubarak government, to anti-Mubarak protestors, to the Egyptian army, and to the American public.

A story in The New York Times (February 2, 2011) by Mark Landler, Helene Cooper, and David D. Kirkpatrick on the White House response to the crisis shows how newspapers’ supposed reform of substantively characterizing the motives of anonymous sources (for the benefit of readers) while protecting their identity (for the benefit of sources and for reporters’ relationship to them) is little more than a token gesture:

“Significantly, during the meeting, White House staff members ‘made clear that they did not rule out engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood as part of an orderly process,’ according to one attendee, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to talk publicly about the meeting.”

Telling readers that an anonymous source “did not want to talk publicly about the meeting” is simply asserting he is unnamed because he wants to remain so.

This is not just tautological — it’s putting the source’s needs ahead of the reporters’, and both of them ahead of the readers’. Once again, it allows an official to say something while pretending he is not responsible for his words.

In both cases, the actual substance of the quotes is rather banal. After all, these are not revelations from WikiLeaks or the Pentagon papers. They’re perfectly ordinary examples of the trial balloons that are constantly floated in public diplomacy. The stakes may be higher here, to be sure — but that’s why candor and accountability are even more important.

It’s one thing for government officials to explore back channels to conduct delicate matters of statesmanship. It’s another for them to state the obvious, behind the cloak of anonymity, and persuade reporters to cooperate in public diplomacy rather than practice journalism. (One thing reporters might have pointed out is that the tough posturing of the anonymous quotes seems like an attempt by the Obama administration to show it is on top of things and considering all of its options — in order to counter the impression that it was caught by surprise and remains far behind events in Egypt.)

The real question for the news media is not what a source gains from anonymity (cover) or what reporters gain (access) — it’s what readers gain. In these two completely normal and innocuous cases, I fear the answer is nothing.