Journamalistic principles
Why'd New York Times reporter Judith Miller go to jail rather than give up a source? So we would still be free to continue reading news like this, apparently:
A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House now says its official position is not to comment on the case while it is under investigation by a federal special prosecutor, said Mr. Rove had gone about his business as usual on Monday.
Can you imagine what would have happened to the country if the Times hadn't used an anonymous source to provide that information??
Comments (7)
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Point taken. Dumb graph.
Still, let's not give any more ammunition to the morons who have been spouting off for the last few weeks about how anonymous quotes and guarentees of protection for sources aren't important to journalism.
All of these people never having reported a day in their lives, mind you.
Posted on July 13, 2005 4:11 AM
Well, gratuitous and dumb use of anonymous quotes like this (in the New York Times, no less) makes life harder for all of us. If we're calling them out on it, we bring more cred to the table at the time when we have to use them.
Posted on July 13, 2005 9:14 AM
"A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity"
Lex, not much anonymity there with the exception of the name which is in this case would only be a formality. It would not take much to determine the anonymous spokesman in this case since the quote was probably given after a news conference with loads of reporters about. Also a good chance that this source is on film somewhere even if in a background shot.
Can't say much for my journalistic abilities, but I was one heck of an investigator. BTW, we didn't give up sources easily either so I suppose we have something in common.
Posted on July 14, 2005 4:16 PM
I know, mrproduce, but my point is: Why is such a predictable, banal, uncontroversial comment anonymously sourced? Why does the reporter allow it? Why, for that matter, does the administration official even ask for it? I don't see that anonymity serves anyone's purposes here, not even the administration's.
Posted on July 14, 2005 4:42 PM
That was the exact point I was making Lex.
Posted on July 14, 2005 6:48 PM
Ah. Yes. Duh. [slaps head]
My bad. I apologize.
Posted on July 15, 2005 9:28 AM
No need to go slapping yourself on the head. My writng is not as clear as yours, my not being a journalist. I am more use to giving my reports orally and having someone else type them up for me while making the grammitical and spelling corrections needed.
Posted on July 15, 2005 5:40 PM