Poynter Online, the daily blog from the journalism school Poynter Institute, alerts readers to an interesting article posted at Slate online yesterday. Editor-at-large Jack Shafer muses about The Washington Post’s new guidelines on the use of anonymous sources.
I think newspapers sometimes unwittingly becomes the White House’s outside public relations mouthpieces when they carry stories of dubious news value. I recall once when a Post front page story announced that the White House was going to launch a PR campaign about something or other. Having pitched stories myself, it’s quite a coup to get any publication to announce not only what your PR campaign is about, but the mere fact that you have a campaign.
But Shafer’s story is more about how newspapers play into the administration’s hands by thinking every anonymous source must be offering a good story. He writes:
…what would be lost if the Post and the [New York] Times turned their backs on [the White House’s] worthless background briefings and stopped barking like terriers for table scraps from administration officials? Not to disparage the fine work of Post and Times reporters, but how great a tragedy would it be if they gave the official agenda a bye and stopped reporting the incremental changes in White House policy that pass for news?
Recall yesterday I posted a link to another blog about reporters always calling the “usual suspects,” those pundits who are quick-tongued and always available. Are reporters missing something when they don’t look beyond the well-known and well-worn spinmeisters? Shafer continues:
For one thing, it would free up staff to cultivate sources outside the corridors of power. There’s plenty of news to be gotten further down the pecking order, as Michael Massing explains in his recent New York Review of Books feature “Now They Tell Us.” http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16922 Massing found that the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, which relied on “blue collar” sources to report the prewar WMD threat rather than high-level ones, captured a more accurate picture of Iraq’s capabilities than did the New York Times’ Judith Miller, who had numerous high sources feeding her.
Another interesting idea Shafer discusses: reporters saying “this is true” (or isn’t) instead of just giving us a “he said, she said” regurgitation:
Perhaps the Wall Street Journal, an extremely accurate newspaper, points the way out of this morass. The Journal relies on confidential sources, of course, but it also allows its reporters more latitude in asserting what they know to be true. The paper encourages reporters to incorporate analysis into their reporting rather than compose a stenographic procession of facts, quotations, and official denials, allowing it in many cases to get closer to the truth than its rivals.
Shafer asks readers to watch closely to see if The Post and the New York Times adhere to their stricter policies on anonymous sources. If you find the papers caving in, write to pressbox@hotmail.com. Slate says “E-mail may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.”