Let's be skeptical of named sources, too

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Anonymous sources must receive heavy emphasis in training programs for editors and reporters as the newspaper industry tries to move beyond the scandals that have damaged our credibility. That much is obvious, but don't forget this: We also need to teach skepticism of named sources.

First some suggestions about anonymous sources: Bob Woodward is playing an important role in advocating for the continued use of anonymous sources. The long-awaited identification of his famed source "Deep Throat" adds some needed perspective to the industry's discussion of what to do about anonymous sources. As valid as the current concerns about anonymous sources are, we shouldn't take extreme measures that keep us from performing our watchdog role. Reporters should always be free to talk confidentially to sources such as Mark Felt who would lose their jobs and possibly even face prosecution if they were identified. Editors should be willing to publish important stories based on multiple sources that reliable. The Watergate stories on which Woodward rose to fame couldn't have been written if the Washington Post had adopted the ban on anonymous sources that Al Neuharth and others have proposed.

Anonymous sources absolutely play an important role in digging up stories that journalists need to tell. But we can't ignore the impact on readers of scandals about anonymous sources, starting more than 20 years ago with the Janet Cooke stories that Woodward edited. The sad fact is that many readers today are more likely to associate anonymous sources with the bogus sources of Jayson Blair and Jack Kelley and backtracking source of Michael Issikoff than they are with Deep Throat.

Even the term "anonymous sources," which we don't use in stories that cite them but critics use in talking about stories, works against us. The truth is that these are confidential sources. They are not anonymous to the reporter, just unknown to the reader.

Anyone involved in journalism training and education must make high priorities of teaching reporters and editors how to be demanding and skeptical of confidential sources (and of reporters using them), how to get on-the-record confirmation or documentation of information received confidentially, how to evaluate sources' motives for remaining unidentified, how to explain to readers why we believe sources are credible.

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Mike McGraw of the Kansas City Star teaches reporters to ask sources, "How do you know that?" Ask that question, especially of a confidential source, as persistently as a 2-year-old asks "Why?" The answers may lead you to documentation or to a source you can get on the record, putting your unidentified sources in their ideal role: tipsters who lead you to good stories but never appear in print, rather than shadowy figures who raise valid questions in the reader's mind.

One standard we should consider is to assess the source's relationship to those in power. Contrast Deep Throat and other Watergate sources with the sources who misled the New York Times and most of the news media in prewar reporting about weapons of mass destruction: The Watergate sources feared what people in power might do if they knew who was revealing their dark secrets. On the other hand, the WMD sources were doing the administration's bidding. What valid reason was there to withhold the names that would let readers assess the credibility of the story? That wasn't watchdog reporting but lapdog reporting.

Robert Novak's source on the column that identified Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA agent had an understandable reason to remain anonymous: He or she was breaking the law by identifying a covert agent. If the source was, as appears to be the case, a member of the Bush administration, the story shouldn't have been the identity of the agent, but the administration's willingness to break the law to punish a critic. Why give that source anonymity? Or why play the source's game? You can tell the story of the administration trying to punish a critic without naming the agent.

Remember how reluctant Deep Throat and other Watergate sources were to talk to Woodward and Carl Bernstein. A reluctant source often is more trustworthy than someone who comes to you shopping an anonymous tip around to a sucker who's willing to do the source's dirty work.

The watchdog standard wouldn't have prevented the current Newsweek scandal, though. Issikoff's source was purporting to reveal an administration secret. To prevent errors like that, we need to teach reporters how to confirm information. Absence of contradiction is not confirmation. We need to teach reporters seeking confirmation to go over every piece of information and ask whether the source knows if that's true and how the source knows it's true. Then you're more likely to get the backtracking during the interview rather than after publication.

We need to teach editors to ask reporters how they confirmed each piece of information. The Newsweek story said the Qur'an-desecration allegation was going to be confirmed in a report. An editor should have asked Issikoff if his "sources" had seen the report or at least a draft and what the draft said about flushing the Qur'an. When the response was that Issikoff's second source was a Pentagon official who had seen a draft and hadn't corrected that passage, an editor then should send the reporter back to ask that source specifically if he or she had seen the report and what it said about flushing of the Qur'an.

We need to teach reporters how to respond to sources who want confidentiality. The first response needs to be that we might not use your information without confirmation if you won't stand behind it. Reporters express annoyance at the administration's off-the-record briefings but say they can't walk out or they could get beaten on a story. What story? Top administration officials have lied (or, in the most charitable description, spoken authoritatively about misinformation) about important matters. What credible story can you write from information that the administration won't stand behind publicly? Don't walk out, but treat these administration briefers like any other unreliable anonymous source. Check out their tips. If you can find documentation or get independent confirmation on the record, you have a story and use those sources, not the unreliable tipster.

While we're teaching this skepticism, let's teach reporters and editors to direct it toward named sources, too. The three best-known soldiers in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been Jessica Lynch, Pat Tillman and Lynndie England, two who came to fame in stories of heroism and one who came to shame in disgraceful photographs. Both of the stories of heroism were based largely on named sources or even official announcements that were fabrications as much as anything Jayson Blair or Jack Kelley ever wrote.

As part of an API seminar last week, I toured the Gettysburg battlefield with historian Carol Reardon of Penn State University. Afterward I was reading her book, "Pickett's Charge in History and Memory." Even the best immediate accounts of the battle, she explains in the book, rely on selective memory, colored by the writer's war experience and limited perspective on the sprawling battlefield. She cites the admission of Confederate soldier D.B. Easley that his own account might not be accurate. In the heat of battle, he said, a soldier "fails to note all he does see."

Yet those are the sorts of accounts on which we gain our understanding of the Battle of Gettysburg as well as today's battles, whether actual combat in Iraq or political battles in Washington.

I learned a valuable lesson about the reliability of eyewitness accounts when I was writing a series several years ago about a girls basketball team that won the Iowa state high school tournament 25 years earlier. I interviewed all 12 members of the team, the opposing team's star and coach, the widow of the champions' coach, several fans of the champions and three members of the news media who covered the game. I asked everyone how the team won the championship and the answer was always the same: The 6-foot-1 star of the other team scored a lot of points early, but the champions' coach sent in a 5-foot-2 player to guard her. The smaller girl drew charging foul after charging foul on the bigger girl, who became less aggressive and the team I was writing about came from behind to win. Some remembered a specific number of fouls (three or four), many said "several" or "a bunch."

I wasn't at all skeptical. The story was unanimous, from a variety of perspectives. The memories were vivid and detailed. I had confirmation from not just a second source but from more than a dozen. Everyone was on the record. I accepted this story as true. When I watched a video tape of the game, seeking some details to use in the story, I thought at first that I had missed something. So I watched again, counting the charging fouls the tiny girl drew against the big girl.

It happened one time.

It really did turn the game around, flustering the bigger girl. But it happened only once. That was one of the most memorable events in the lives of most of these people I had interviewed, but it grew to legendary dimensions in the reliving and retelling, whether by winners, losers or neutral observers. I couldn't trust their memories, however honest and earnest they were in telling their stories and however willing they were to be identified to my readers.

If we have to be skeptical about something as innocent as a long-ago basketball game, how skeptical do we have to be about stories of heroism or abuse in war or reasons for rushing to war?

We never want to reach the point where we can't use modern-day Deep Throats to expose the misconduct of those in power. But we need to teach reporters and editors to be skeptical and demanding of Deep Throat and any source we cite. As skeptical and demanding as our readers are of us.

sbuttry@americanpressinstitute.org

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