The story inspires me to propose this ironclad rule of journalism ethics: It’s always OK for a journalist to change a light bulb for a source. (Read the piece; you’ll understand.)
Leland wrote at one point:
Once, when Fred started crying in the middle of an interview we were videotaping, I didn’t hug him, even though I wanted to. Some boundaries held.
I, too, have resisted the urge to hug when someone cried during an interview. Sometimes what the person says while crying or after the tears stop is an important part of the interview. But I did put my arm around a woman who was crying and embracing a huge portrait of her dead daughter during an interview about the girl’s suicide. At that point, the woman needed an arm on her shoulder and needed someone to steer her back to the couch, and I was the only person around.
I think I have otherwise refrained from initiating hugs with sources. But I have interviewed people about a lot of intimate topics. If a source wants to end such an interview with a hug, I join in the embrace.
Reporters get some of our best stories when we ask people to cross the boundaries they usually maintain around personal matters. That’s no time for the reporter to get fussy about boundaries.
Some of my earlier pieces on objectivity and humanity:
The memo outlines which editors need to sign off on different types of uses of unnamed sources. As a frequent critic of the Times’ overuse of unnamed sources, I applaud the effort to be more demanding of reporters seeking to use them. I agree with Sullivan’s assessment:
This is a sensible, moderate and necessary plan. The devil, of course, is in the enforcement. The Times often has not done an effective job of carrying out the policy it already has, one element of which states that anonymous sources may be used only as “a last resort.”
If the Times editors uphold high standards in approving use of unnamed sources, the new process will be a huge step forward, ending the frivolous and needless use of confidential sources while still leaving the Times positioned to deal with informed source who sometimes are the only way to tell important stories on such matters as national security and law enforcement. (more…)
I’m disappointed that the New York Times screwed up again in its over-reliance on unnamed sources. But I’m pleased that this screwup finally appears to have prompted a Times examination of this biggest weakness in our nation’s most important news organization.
Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan, who has been a more persistent and effective critic than I of the Times’ promiscuity with unnamed sources, reported today that mistakes in the Times reporting on the visa screening of terror-attack suspect Tashfeen Malik finally drew a commitment to act:
I talked on Friday to the executive editor, Dean Baquet; to one of his chief deputies, Matt Purdy; and to the Washington editor, Bill Hamilton, who edited the article. All described what happened as deeply troubling. Mr. Baquet said that some new procedures need to be put in place, especially for dealing with anonymous sources, and he said he would begin working on that immediately.
“This was a really big mistake,” Mr. Baquet said, “and more than anything since I’ve become editor it does make me think we need to do something about how we handle anonymous sources.”
First I’ll note that Baquet visited LSU this month and addressed the use of unnamed sources in his Q&A with students and faculty after an address in the Holliday Forum.
.@deanbaquet agrees w/ me: Unnamed sources should be used only on important stories.
Of course, that tweet oversimplifies what Baquet said in response to the question, but it was not a detailed response. He cited national security reporting as an area where using confidential sources is essential to the excellent reporting the Times has done through the years.
This was an important national security story, but those stories demand not only greater use of unnamed sources but greater insistence on documentation and verification from those sources and others.
I’m in the hospital and don’t have the strength to say much new about this. Sullivan covers it better than I would if I were at full speed. I’ll just quote Sullivan again (but you should read her full post), then link to previous posts about this persistent problem at the Times (followed by a late-Friday update and some Twitter response):
The Times needs to fix its overuse of unnamed government sources. And it needs to slow down the reporting and editing process, especially in the fever-pitch atmosphere surrounding a major news event. Those are procedural changes, and they are needed. But most of all, and more fundamental, the paper needs to show far more skepticism – a kind of prosecutorial scrutiny — at every level of the process.
Two front-page, anonymously sourced stories in a few months have required editors’ notes that corrected key elements – elements that were integral enough to form the basis of the headlines in both cases. That’s not acceptable for Times readers or for the paper’s credibility, which is its most precious asset.
If this isn’t a red alert, I don’t know what will be.
About the same time that I was posting this, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Eric Nalder replied on Facebook to my post about Sullivan’s original post (I hadn’t yet shared this post there). His advice on vetting investigative stories is helpful and important as the Times reassesses its use of unnamed sources and its verification of what they tell you. With Eric’s permission, I am adding his comment to this post:
Nalder absolutely nails the Times’ failure here. The reporters should have been demanding of the sources and the editors should have been demanding of the reporters: Show me a tweet. Show me a screen grab. If we’re reporting that our visa screening process missed her open embrace of jihad, we need to show that threat, even if it’s in a foreign language. We’re the New York Times, we can find translators.
I have cited Nalder before on his effective use of “ratcheting” to persuade reluctant sources to go on the record. It’s a technique that probably wouldn’t work on a national-security story like this, but it illustrates the sophistication of his experience and technique in this area.
If I were Dean Baquet, I might start addressing this topic by asking Nalder if he’s available to do an investigation of Times’ reporters dealings with unnamed sources and the vetting by Times reporters and editors of the information that sources provide.
Margaret Sullivan: Sullivan also told Poynter today that she will complete her run as public editor when her second two-year contract expires this September. On this issue and more, she has been far and away the best public editor the Times has had (and the others were all good). We first met nearly 10 years ago when she was editor of the Buffalo News. I don’t know what her next step would be, but if I were hiring a newsroom leader, journalism dean (or endowed chair), media critic, columnist, media organization executive or almost any other journalism job, she’d be at the top of my list of people to talk to. I’ll be interested to see where she goes next and wish her well in whatever lies ahead.
My hospital stay. This is my first blog post here in 13 days. I’m not sure if that’s a record hiatus since I started this blog, but if not, I bet it’s close. My stem-cell transplant has been a rough experience, with more than a week where I could barely muster the energy for a few emails or social media posts a day, if that. But the cells are making new, healthy blood. I may be home next week, and I’ll definitely be blogging again before the end of the year.
As LSU’s Director of Student Media, I occasionally fire off messages to student editors and station managers with suggestions that I usually expect them to ignore. They are independent and they are rightly in charge of their newsrooms, and I didn’t follow a lot of faculty advice when I was their age either.
I sent this message to the editorial board of our newspaper, the Daily Reveille, on Oct. 1:
I just checked. I didn’t carbon anyone from the New York Times on the message. But the Times ran a front-page editorial this morning, calling for an end to “the Gun Epidemic in America.”
My students sort of followed my advice (or moved that direction on their own), running some opinions on the front page but more frequently than I suggested. That’s OK, too: The Reveille’s front page and editorials should reflect their judgment, not mine. I’m proud of their work, which has included excellent opinion pieces by columnists and the editorial board on page-one this semester, about such topics as mental health and racial discrimination at bars near campus.
As Kristen Hare’s Poynter piece that I shared with the student editors indicated, newspapers are increasingly responding to important issues by stating opinions on newsprint once reserved for “straight news”: the front page. The New York Times is following this trend, not leading it (nor am I, obviously). Hare’s piece was prompted by this Chicago Sun-Times cover: (more…)
Dean Baquet addressing students and faculty at LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication.
New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet, a New Orleans native, visited LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication Monday.
In an afternoon address, the Q&A that followed and in an informal chat with the staff of the Daily Reveille, Baquet expressed excitement about changes in journalism and stressed that our mission as journalists is more important than the platforms we publish on.
These tweets from Manship School students best summarize some of his key points:
.@deanbaquet; find difference between mission and tradition
A comment from New York Times Standards Editor Phil Corbett struck me in an email this week:
I hope you don’t despair of The Times as a whole.
I don’t despair. But I’m troubled by some things I see at the Times, and I do blog critically occasionally about journalism’s most important newsroom.
That’s not just my opinion that the Times is journalism’s most important newsroom. Our Path Forward, an 11-page strategy document published Wednesday, makes clear that the Times regards itself as the pinnacle of journalism, not just in the United States, but in the world.
I had written most of this post before reading Our Path Forward, and briefly pondered blogging first about that document. But my plate is too full right now, and I’m just going to acknowledge it here and dig into it in more depth later, maybe next week. But the opening paragraph of the document explains why the Times warrants the scrutiny of everyone interested in journalism:
From our earliest days, The New York Times has committed itself to the idea that investing in the best journalism would ensure the loyalty of a large and discerning audience, which in turn would drive the revenue needed to support our ambitions. This virtuous circle reinforced itself for over 150 years.
Another Times editor suggested earlier this year that I was singling the Times out for criticism. That suggestion came in a private email, so I won’t quote it or name the editor here, but some of this post was edited from one of my messages in that exchange. After reading Corbett’s comment, I thought I should elaborate on my view of the Times and its place in journalism and why I blog about it frequently.
No organization enjoys a loftier perch in journalism than the Times, or is watched more closely for its business strategy. Those facts demand that I comment on it more frequently than any other news organization. If you boast that you’re producing “the best journalism,” you invite scrutiny and I’m happy to oblige.
Most of my criticism of the Times comes in the context of topics I address frequently, targeting a variety of news organizations: (more…)
I invited responses from Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet and other Times staffers mentioned in the post. None of them responded on the record, except an email from Public Editor Margaret Sullivan, who said she “may respond later.” She had earlier told me on Facebook that she was considering another post on unnamed sources, an issue she has addressed multiple times. Yes, it did amuse me that the only other response I received on a post that dealt with anonymous sources* started with the words “off the record.”
I followed up the next day with another post on linking. I wasn’t planning a follow-up on unnamed sources, unless anyone from the Times responded.
Does that sound familiar? Where have I heard that before? From another Times staffer, actually. Remember who said, “If your sources are wrong, you are wrong”? That was Judith Miller.
I won’t elaborate here on Judith Miller, but if you’ve forgotten about how she damaged the Times’ reputation, I have several links at the end of this story. As I’ve said repeatedly, journalists, not sources, are responsible for the accuracy of our stories.
We don’t try to persuade sources to go on the record or find other sources who will speak for the record as a courtesy to the curious. We do it for credibility, accuracy and accountability. Sometimes people with valuable, accurate information have valid reasons (fear of losing their jobs or because they are breaking the law by telling us, for instance). Other times, reporters are being manipulated by liars with agendas. Or sort-of honest people who don’t really know the facts are telling reporters what they think they know, but demand confidentiality to avoid accountability.
I don’t expect anyone from the Times to respond to me on this issue. But someone at the Times should reconsider whether that newsroom has grown too trusting of unreliable sources. The “senior government officials” cited didn’t deserve the Times’ trust. So why does the Times deserve ours?
Corrections on the New York Times’ coverage of Hillary Clinton’s emails.
The New York Times often and flagrantly violates its own standards for attribution.
Executive Editor Dean Baquetignored my call earlier this year for him to lose his famous temper about the Times’ casual and inexcusable promiscuity in the use of unnamed sources. I will try again (and invite him to respond), only this time I’ll include another issue of attribution: linking to digital sources.
First two disclaimers:
I’ve written a lot about these two subjects before, both regarding journalism in general and regarding the Times. I apologize for any repetition. I will try to minimize and include links to previous posts at the end (and sprinkle them where relevant in this post).
The Times is unquestionably, in my view, the most outstanding organization in journalism, with some of the highest standards in journalism. That’s what makes its daily disregard of its own standards in these two important areas so maddening.
I am writing about these attribution issues because they collided this week in two outstanding posts by others: (more…)
I offer mostly curation, rather than fresh commentary, on the New York Times’ move from a daily page-one meeting to a daily meeting focused on digital platforms:
I don’t say this to criticize Baquet or the Times, just to note how deeply entrenched meetings are in a newsroom culture and how hard it is to change them: The Times Innovation report, recommending a digital focus to the meetings, was completed last March. The change is now being implemented 11 months later. Of course, many other changes recommended in the report have already being implemented.
I’m not banging on the Times for taking 11 months to change its morning meeting, just saying this is a big and difficult change. I wish Baquet and the Times well in executing this change and in using it to continue culture change in the newsroom.
I’m not going to go through the note in detail. It’s a comprehensive look at the year past, the Times priorities and the business and journalism challenges facing the Times newsroom. Baquet covered them all well in the note. Read it and you can understand why he leads journalism’s most important newsroom. This point particularly resonated with me:
Don’t allow the turmoil in the news business make you forget just how good we are, and that we are here to break big stories and ask hard questions of the powerful.
The message didn’t address unnamed sources (and perhaps that wasn’t the place to address it). I still hope Baquet will address that issue, which Sullivan has documented extensively.
But since this strong leadership statement became public so soon after my call for stronger leadership, I wanted to share my applause for Baquet’s vision for the future of the Times. I wish him success in leading the Times in pursuit of that vision.
I have more advice for Dean Baquet: It’s time to pound a wall again. You need to get angry about the promiscuous use of unnamed sources by the New York Times staff and let your staff know that the practice is hurting your organization’s credibility and it has to stop.
The use of unidentified sources is reserved for situations in which the newspaper could not otherwise print information it considers newsworthy and reliable. When possible, reporter and editor should discuss any promise of anonymity before it is made, or before the reporting begins on a story that may result in such a commitment. (Some beats, like criminal justice or national security, may carry standing authorization for the reporter to grant anonymity.) The stylebook discusses the forms of attribution for such cases: the general rule is to tell readers as much as we can about the placement and known motivation of the source. While we avoid automatic phrases about a source’s having ‘insisted on anonymity,’ we should try to state tersely what kind of understanding was actually reached by reporter and source, especially when we can shed light on the source’s reasons. The Times does not dissemble about its sources – does not, for example, refer to a single person as “sources” and does not say “other officials” when quoting someone who has already been cited by name. There can be no prescribed formula for such attribution, but it should be literally truthful, and not coy.
That’s a sound policy (though I’ll comment on it in more detail in an appendix at the end of this post).
A 2010 reminder to the staff from Standards Editor Phil Corbett demanded better explanations of the reasons for granting confidentiality to sources and reminded Times staffers of the policy about informing editors about who sources are.
The Times problem is not the policy, but the fact that the newsroom’s common practice doesn’t follow the policy. The Corbett note acknowledged that problem, and it continues egregiously, as Sullivan’s AnonyWatch posts this year have documented. In her Oct. 18 post, she wrote:
I launched a feature this year called “AnonyWatch,” intended to draw attention to the gratuitous use of unnamed sources, and I’ve written on this many times, to little apparent avail. The overuse of anonymous sources still flourishes in The Times.
Her year-end AnonyWatch roundup, published last week, should be embarrassing for the Executive Editor and his staff. Sullivan’s post says Baquet had planned to deal with the issue:
The executive editor Dean Baquet told me last fall that he was about to urge his department heads to quash such quotations, in keeping with the Times policy of using anonymous sourcing only as a last resort.
In that Oct. 18 post, Sullivan had this to say about that conversation:
I talked to the executive editor, Dean Baquet, about this subject last week, asking him why Times editors and reporters don’t follow the paper’s own written rules, which allow granting anonymity only as a last resort. He agreed that editors need to tighten up on this: “It is something we need to be more vigilant about.”
Mr. Baquet said that, until that point, he had not spoken forcefully to department heads about the practice but that he intended to do so at their next meeting. He said that the use of confidential sources is sometimes necessary and important. “They’re never going to go away,” he said, “but we need to limit it more than we do.”
Baquet took some heat, probably deserved, for a wall-slamming temper tantrum recounted by Politico in 2013, and I’ll bet he’s been practicing anger management pretty well, including probably at that department-head meeting, because the Dec. 29 Sullivan post documents more “ridiculous” use of unnamed sources.
A reader’s letter cited the Brooks Barnes story, When the Red Carpet Is Rolled Up, a story about Hollywood parties that included this passage:
‘Nobody really had time for me — it was all about the new people,’ she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because she was afraid of looking bad.
If that didn’t or doesn’t generate a fist-pounding, wall-banging temper tantrum from the Executive Editor, he has taken his anger management too far. In fact the whole Sullivan post should be worth several bangs of the fist. If Times staffers showered like baseball teams do, I’d suggest an everyone-in-the-shower scare-em tantrum straight out of Bull Durham (see the video clip toward the end of this post). Times staffers aren’t kids and they are playing in the big leagues. But they have been lollygaggers of late in granting confidentiality to sources.
Baquet needs to set the bar for use of unnamed sources really high at the Times. Given what I presume to be a lack of showers and bats at the Times, I think a temper tantrum and some tweets should do the trick. He knows how to handle the temper tantrum. But, since I have a bit more experience on Twitter, I’ll provide some help.
You’re welcome to retweet these yourself, Dean. I’d be honored to be your first retweet(s). Just hit the little double-arrow box on the bottom line of the tweet, between the curved reply arrow and the star you’d use to “favorite” a tweet. But, flattering as RT’s would be, I’d suggest putting them in your own words (you’ll get a few more characters if you cut out my repetition of “@deanbaquet tantrum”). The points you make may differ from mine, but I will cheer them, as long as you get mad and address this embarrassment to your great newsroom.
I’ll suggest 15 tweets for you, then add more of my own to contribute more detail to the conversation I hope to start.
If you’d like some help from the Times staff in composing effective tweets, I recommend consulting with Daniel Victor or Karen Workman, two Twitter aces (and former colleagues of mine).
Here are the tweets I recommend, with a few notes by me added between some tweets:
1st suggested tweet for @deanbaquet Twitter tantrum on @nytimes promiscuous use of unnamed sources: This must stop. Now. #nytsources
Cut out my long lead-in there, Dean, and you’ll have room to add a link to Sullivan review, for any staff members who might have missed it in the holiday week, maybe even enough characters to add the “ridiculous reasons” phrase from the headline.
3rd tweet for @deanbaquet tantrum: Using unnamed sources for weak reasons in unnecessary situations hurts our credibility. #nytsources
Just the process of writing these notes should deter lots of the promiscuity with confidentiality. I can’t imagine a reporter who wouldn’t burst out laughing in chagrin and searching for the delete key about halfway through the draft of the note to the editor explaining the importance of the Hollywood quote, the efforts to get it on the record and the reason for requesting and granting confidentiality.
.@deanbaquet tantrum 8: We should wait, even if we get beat, rather than basing stories on weak use of unnamed sources. #nytsources
Dean, your staff follows you on Twitter, even though you don’t tweet. Your silence on Twitter so far has set you up to grab attention when you finally tweet again, and this is a topic about which the Executive Editor of the New York Times needs to grab attention, with the public, the staff and journalists everywhere. A string of tweets about unnamed sources will resound through the newsroom and beyond louder than a fist pounding the wall or an armful of bats clattering in the shower.
More tweets about confidentiality
I think the suggestions above are plenty for me to offer for Baquet directly. The tweets below are simply more contributions from me to the conversation I hope he will start.(But, Dean, if you want to retweet any of them …) I will publish the post after I’ve added the tweets above, and will update this after each of the tweets, noting when I’ve finished the updates:
After confidential interview, try to get source on record, ask what documents source can provide. #nytsources
I should note that the story discussed in that link above was a highly competitive 1995 story the Times was working on, too. I kicked the asses of the Times, ESPN, Sports Illustrated and other competitors on that story. Pushing to get sources on the record can take time and cause you to fall behind stories when other organizations don’t follow the same standards. But you also can get outstanding stories they’ll wish they had.
Question to ask: Is this story (& the info from unnamed sources) worth the harm to credibility when we use them? #nytsources
I considered breaking this into two posts, but all these notes are related to the post above, so I decided to add them here, to make this an even longer post.
I welcome responses
First, I will be emailing have emailed Baquet, Sullivan, Corbett, LaForge and Barnes, inviting any or all of them to respond. I will add their responses if any do. I will add short responses here, but if anyone responds at some length, I will break them out into separate guest posts (as I did with Baquet’s response last year about Twitter), and link to them here. If Baquet responds in tweets, I will either embed them here or curate them in a separate post. If you see this before you receive my email or tweet inviting your response, consider this your invitation.
Sullivan is the first to respond publicly (thanks!):
Baquet told me by email that he’ll take a look, but has not responded after reading. Added late Jan. 5 from that original email: “I put you in that group that disagrees with me but wants the times to do what you see as better. So no worries,” Baquet said in that message. I will update if he responds further.
LaForge’s response: “Margaret covers this pretty thoroughly.”
Thanks to Sullivan (and a suggestion for the Times)
Next, I’ll add my appreciation to Margaret Sullivan for this brief passage in her AnonyWatch year-end review:
As I emphasize every time I write about this, anonymous (or confidential) sourcing is sometimes both necessary and important.
I have no idea whether this was a nod to my campaign to get journalists to start using
“confidential sources,” rather than “anonymous sources,” to describe the sources whose identities we know but choose not to publish. I made that case in some detail in a 2013 post already cited above, so I won’t repeat it here and didn’t want to detour the post above, but I want to note it here and thank Sullivan for using the term.
Jay Rosen tweets on unnamed sources
Next, here are some tweets from Jay Rosen about the issue of unnamed sources, which helped inspire this post, along with the Sullivan year-end review. Jay is a powerful and persistent voice on this issue:
The Times violates its own policy on anonymous sources with such frequency, makes you wonder what the real policy is. http://t.co/HaZy1Y2XJF
Again, here’s the passage on anonymity from the 2008 Times Guidelines for Integrity, this time with a few recommendations from me. My first recommendation is to change the heading of the section,”Anonymity and its Devices.” As noted in greater detail in the link above about my campaign to change how journalists discuss unnamed sources, in nearly all cases when we would use a source as anything more than a tipster, the sources are not anonymous to Times reporters. The reporters know them well but grant them confidentiality. The result makes the source anonymous to the reader, but I believe we further hurt our credibility by using the term ourselves when we vet these sources thoroughly. We don’t quote anonymous phone callers or Internet commenters whose identities we can’t learn, though we may use their tips to find information we can verify. Those are truly anonymous sources. So I’d change all uses of that word below. Here’s that section on”Anonymity and its Devices,” with other comments:
The use of unidentified sources is reserved for situations in which the newspaper could not otherwise print information it considers newsworthy and reliable. (Buttry note: Just a digital update: print should be changed to publish.)When possible, reporter and editor should discuss any promise of anonymity before it is made, or before the reporting begins on a story that may result in such a commitment. (Some beats, like criminal justice or national security, may carry standing authorization for the reporter to grant anonymity.) (Buttry note: I like that this passage is shorter than previous Times policies. But I think it still needs a stronger statement about situations that justify confidentiality. My suggestion: Reporters should grant confidentiality in most cases as a path to obtaining on-the-record information, either from later persuasion with the source or using the source to guide you to documentation and/or sources who will speak for the record. Opinions have no validity without names. We should use only information from confidential sources, and only when we are confident they have firsthand access to that information. Factors to use in granting confidentiality or in using information from confidential interviews include whether the source is more or less powerful than those whom the information could hurt and whether the source is eager or reluctant to give information to the Times. Reliance on confidential sources does not lessen our responsibility to ensure the accuracy of our stories. In fact, the lack of accountability for unnamed sources increases the reporter’s responsibility to ensure the accuracy of the information. Any story submitted for publication that uses any information from unnamed sources should include a note to the editor explaining why the information is important to Times readers, how the reporter tried to get the information on the record and why the source requested and the reporter granted confidentiality.) The stylebook discusses the forms of attribution for such cases: the general rule is to tell readers as much as we can about the placement and known motivation of the source. While we avoid automatic phrases about a source’s having ‘insisted on anonymity,’ we should try to state tersely what kind of understanding was actually reached by reporter and source, especially when we can shed light on the source’s reasons. The Times does not dissemble about its sources – does not, for example, refer to a single person as “sources” and does not say “other officials” when quoting someone who has already been cited by name. There can be no prescribed formula for such attribution, but it should be literally truthful, and not coy.
In his After Deadline blog of “newsroom notes on usage and style,” Standards Editor Philip B. Corbett laments, “For all our progress in digital journalism, we sometimes still neglect one of its most basic tools: the link.” (more…)
I have written occasionally here about objectivity and humanity in reporting.
The New York Times finally has a new and (hopefully) improved process for handling stories using unnamed sources. The process is outlined in a memo from 
I’m disappointed that the New York Times screwed up again in its over-reliance on unnamed sources. But I’m pleased that this screwup finally appears to have prompted a Times examination of this biggest weakness in our nation’s most important news organization.
The Buttry Diary 