Finally, news from D.C. may start naming names

Background briefings at the White House have long been as much a fact of political life in Washington as lying and lobbying. These briefings -- usually conducted by administration officials before the president (any president) undertakes a big policy speech or overseas trip -- are designed to give reporters information and perspective to help them cover the impending event.

But that’s not why they’re called “background briefings.” In the often arcane lexicon of journalistic Washington, “on background” refers to a specific ground rule for briefings and interviews -- namely, that reporters are free to quote what is said but not to identify who said it.

In the case of background briefings in the White House, that means that when they write their stories, they can use whatever they want from what the briefer says but they cannot name him. Thus, he (or she) can be identified only as “a senior administration official” or “an aide to the national security advisor” or some similarly vague rubric.

Administrations of both parties have long justified this practice -- especially when it involves international trips or initiatives -- as essential to maintaining good diplomatic relations. They’ve also said that allowing briefers to speak on the record before a presidential speech or other initiative might risk “overshadowing the president.” But I’ve never understood why identifying the briefer poses more of a threat to diplomatic relations than publishing what the briefer said. And I certainly don’t think identifying a briefer would overshadow the president.

Washington reporters have periodically made these same points and have objected, strenuously but futilely, to the anonymity conferred by the background briefings. Many are now objecting anew, and for the first time there is a sense that the White House may actually be listening.

Washington bureau chiefs from several major news organizations -- including Associated Press, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times -- met with Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, on April 29 and followed up with an e-mail May 2, urging that reporters be free to identify the briefers by name in their stories.

It’s not coincidental that this latest push to end the anonymity of the briefers comes at a time when public-opinion surveys increasingly show that Americans object to the use of unnamed sources. Based on complaints from readers, I have no doubt that the use of unnamed sources has contributed significantly to a steady decline in the number of Americans who trust the media.

Many news organizations have been pressing their reporters to use fewer unnamed sources, and some have imposed stricter rules on their usage and now require better identification of unnamed sources who are used -- including the source’s affiliation, disclosure of anything that might make the source biased and an explanation of why he is unwilling to be identified by name.

Just last week, an internal committee at the New York Times completed a six-month examination of ways to increase reader confidence in the paper and concluded, in a report titled “Preserving Our Readers’ Trust,” that the Times “must be yet stricter about anonymous sources.”

Two of the report’s 14 pages dealt with this issue, and the committee urged Executive Editor Bill Keller, to whom the report was addressed, to “instruct department heads to put into place editing procedures to keep unidentified attribution to a minimum” and to have the paper “be more diligent in describing sources more fully.”

The problem of unnamed sources has long been under discussion at the Los Angeles Times as well. Managing Editor Dean Baquet says that within the next two weeks, he will lead a group of Times staffers in formulating a new, stricter policy on the use of unnamed sources in this paper, perhaps requiring that a department head or masthead editor approve the use of any such sources.

An outright ban on unnamed sources is unlikely, at the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times or most any other major paper. Some essential information about government policies would never make it into the public domain if whistle-blowers and other sources, especially those working in national security, intelligence and law enforcement, couldn’t speak without being identified and without fear of retribution.

As Baquet says, anonymous sources are sometimes “vital to breaking big stories.”

Sandy Johnson, Washington bureau chief for AP, told me she thinks McClellan “understood where we’re coming from, and we certainly hope there will be change” in the background briefings.

Indeed, Johnson pointed out, Stephen Hadley, the president’s national security advisor, briefed reporters on the record at the White House before the president left on his recent trip to Moscow and the Baltic region. In connection with the same trip, Johnson said, “Scott also put two National Security Council aides who typically would be most reluctant to brief on the record on the White House chat line to ‘talk’ with reporters.”

And how valuable was that information?

“Not very,” she said, “but that’s not the point.”

It’s the principle of having briefers identified by name and thus held accountable for what they say that matters, Johnson and others say.

Even more important, the White House sets the tone for briefings by Cabinet members and their aides. Johnson called the journalists’ pressure on McClellan “an attention-getting device that hopefully will make press secretaries at other agencies around town think twice now before scheduling briefings on background that could and should be on the record.”

Some reporters have talked about boycotting background briefings. That tactic has been discussed periodically over the years, but most reporters are unlikely to skip a briefing their rivals will cover. Moreover, journalists tend to be famously individualistic and disinclined toward collective action.

“It wouldn’t be achievable in the anarchic rubble that is the White House press corps,” says Doyle McManus, Washington bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times.

Journalists don’t want to look like a cabal, especially not now, when they’re already under attack from conservatives for allegedly being biased against President Bush.

The New York Times “is not prepared to start boycotting” the briefings yet, Philip Taubman, Washington bureau chief for the paper, told me last week.

“When we are first informed of a background briefing, we’ll question the necessity of putting that particular briefing on background,” he said. “We’ll object again and ask the question again when the briefing begins. But we won’t walk out. That day may come, but we’re not there yet.”

McManus says that as much as he objects to background briefings, he would also oppose boycotting them because “that would amount to a mis-definition of the problem.

“The problem isn’t reporters attending background briefings but our overuse of unnamed sources in general and our failure to follow our own rules about identifying sources by their agency, political tendency and anything else we can provide that will help our readers evaluate what the source is saying,” says McManus, who’s worked in Washington since 1983.

McManus also says reporters would be making a mistake by boycotting briefings because “we shouldn’t put ourselves in the position of refusing information,” especially not with this administration, “which has been unusually and, in our view, unnecessarily secretive. This administration is extraordinarily stingy with the information it conveys, and what little it does convey it likes to convey on background.”

All administrations try to manage the news. But the Bush White House has been more successful at this than any in memory, and McManus thinks the media have been complicit by being “too deferential and too polite” at times.

“When White House officials refuse to say something on the record, we should say in our stories that they refused to speak on the record and refused to explain why,” he said.

Given the media-averse nature of the Bush administration and the undue deference that McManus says the White House press corps sometimes extends to this administration, it would be ironic if it turns out to be this White House and this press corps that finally ends the charade of the background briefing. But it would be most welcome, ironic or not.

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David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com. To read his previous “Media Matters” columns, please go to latimes.com/shaw-media.