Going on the record about those anonymous sources

I can think of no common journalistic shortcoming that is more threatening to media credibility than the overreliance on unnamed sources. Polls consistently show that people object to -- and are skeptical of -- these “sources said” stories. Almost invariably, they say, they assume that any quote without a name attached to it was made up by the reporter.

That was indeed the case in several stories written by Jayson Blair, who resigned from the New York Times in May amid disclosures that he was a serial liar and plagiarist, and the Blair affair has triggered anew concerns about the use of unnamed sources -- and the failure of his (and other) editors to monitor their use.

But this abusive practice long predates Blair, and while I don’t think most (or even many) anonymous quotes are fabricated -- Blair notwithstanding -- I’ve never understood why editors at even the best newspapers tolerate anonymity so routinely.

Of course, some important stories would never be published if the reporter couldn’t promise anonymity to a source. Certainly, that was true of Watergate and Vietnam.

But despite what some ambitious reporters would have their editors and readers believe, not every story is Vietnam or Watergate.

Unfortunately -- day in and day out, on purely routine stories -- too many reporters are too lazy to press their sources to go on the record. Or they get caught up in the game of inside baseball and think they’re impressing their editors and readers with their ability to ferret out deep secrets from sources so sensitive that they can’t possibly disclose their names for fear of instant humiliation, termination and defenestration.

Many editors like to say they have policies requiring reporters to tell them the identity of any unnamed sources before they’ll publish stories based on their statements. But as a practical matter, that doesn’t really happen very often. “I have asked reporters who their sources are on really dicey stories,” says Dean Baquet, managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, “but there are so many stories that use unnamed sources that you can’t possibly ask for them all.”

That’s precisely the problem.

A few papers -- very few, mostly smaller papers -- prohibit or severely limit the use of unnamed sources, and in the aftermath of the Blair blowup, the editors of several of these papers tried to distance themselves from the mushrooming journalistic scandal by reminding their readers of their own policies.

“As a rule, we don’t use [anonymous sources] ... in our local coverage,” Jeannine Guttman, editor of the Portland (Maine) Press Herald, wrote in a May 18 editor’s note. “In principle, we firmly believe that the overuse of anonymous news sources causes readers to question the accuracy and authenticity of a news report.”

Guttman didn’t say the Press Herald never uses unnamed sources. But the paper does so rarely, she said, and only “when it has been determined that there is no other way to report the story, and when the story is of such weight that we are willing to take this extraordinary step.”

In such cases, she said, “each use of an anonymous source must be approved by the managing editor and me.”

Those are all sound practices. The policy here at The Times, Baquet says, is to “try to avoid using unnamed sources. But to report in the real world, you have to use them sometimes.”

Out in the field

The media use too many of them, though, and while editors set policy and decide what’s published (or not), it’s the reporter who conducts the interviews and makes the preliminary decision, in the field, about granting anonymity (or not).

Too many reporters grant anonymity too easily and too often. I know that not only from reading their stories but also from being on the other end of the interview as someone who’s written about the news media for almost 28 years, often in controversial situations.

I’m stunned by the number of reporters over the years who have called me and, before we could do more than exchange hellos, have offered me anonymity in exchange for answering their questions. I don’t ask for anonymity; they automatically, preemptively offer it -- and my experience is all too common.

My answer has always been the same:

“I try not to use anonymous sources, so I’m not interested in being one. But I’ll be happy to answer your questions on the record.”

How can a reporter “try not to use anonymous sources”?

When a source asks me if we can “go off the record” -- by which most people mean they don’t want their names used -- I try to persuade him to stay on the record. If that fails, I agree, then conduct the interview, try to figure out before finishing what he’s said that’s likely to be useful to me and conclude the interview by saying something like:

“Gee, why would you object to having your name on that quote?”

I explain why quoting him would not hurt him. I might even point out how insightful or constructive the quote is and why it’s important that both it and his name be published. More often that not -- and as recently as last month, in fact -- my source has said, “OK, sure.” Or he’s asked if he could modify a word or two before agreeing.

If this approach seems unlikely to work, I usually respond to a source’s request for anonymity by saying something like, “OK. But on one condition. When I’m done writing this, if your quote and your name seem really important, I’ll call you and read you your quote -- and the paragraphs before and after your quotes, so you’ll see the context -- and I’ll explain why it’s important that I use your name.

“It will be your decision,” I say. “If you say no, I promise to take your name and your quotes out. But you have to promise that you’ll take my call and that you’ll listen to my arguments.”

Many journalists have told me they would never read a quote back to a source under any circumstances, for fear he would either deny having said it or ask that his name not be used or that the quote be dropped or watered down.

But in using this approach for more than 25 years. I’ve never had a single source refuse my deal and -- more important -- only once has a source insisted her name not be used when I called back for what I came to think of as my recitation-and-persuasion sonata.

On one other occasion, when I called back a source, he said we could use his name and his quote only if I would agree to eliminate four of the five pejorative phrases he’d used to describe a rival. I said, “Why don’t you pick the one pejorative that makes you the most uncomfortable and I’ll take it out and use the other four.” We compromised on three pejoratives in, two out -- with ellipses -- and that more than made his and my point. The quote ran, with his name attached.

That’s the sum of my “problems” with this approach over all these years.

Routine request

Granted, it’s difficult to do this on a fast-breaking news story, when the reporter barely has time for the first interview, never mind a callback. But a significant number of unnamed sources show up in long-term investigative projects or other stories that are not deadline-sensitive.

This is especially true in Washington and Hollywood, where asking for -- and granting -- journalistic anonymity is as routine as telling lies. But it happens everywhere. My all-time favorite in this regard was a Page 1 New York Times story on then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani three years ago. The writer of that story quoted someone as saying, “The thing that has been very depressing has been the number of anonymous sources professing to know his mind and his heart, and then expressing that knowledge in an anonymous manner.”

Who said this?

Got me. The reporter didn’t say. The source was identified only as “one of the mayor’s associates.”

I’m absolutely convinced that if reporters pressed their sources harder to go on the record -- and if editors insisted they do so or lose the quotes altogether -- the epidemic of “sources said” and “administration sources said” and similarly egregious constructs would be quickly stamped out, and we’d all be better off.

David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com.