Yesterday, I wrote, NYT Creating Talking Points for Republicans. It was about how the same reporting team managed, in the last six months, to provide the Republicans with two major anti-Democratic talking points that turned out to be completely wrong. They were both based upon anonymous sources. Because the article got pushed back a few days, there has finally been some response from The Times. Most notably, their public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote, Systemic Change Needed After Faulty Times Article.
On Friday, she spoke to executive editor, Dean Baquet and the Washington editor, Bill Hamilton. And they both agreed that these were major problems. But they said that there is no reason to believe that the sources had a political agenda. Rather they were just incompetent — not knowing the difference between public and private messages. Further they noted that the reporters were both excellent. I mentioned that myself when I wrote about it. One of them had won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting before.
I wonder about the whole process. Sullivan noted, “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.” I wonder about that. I have a hard time believing that these stories would have been so causally pushed through editing and to publication if they had been damaging to Republicans. As usual, it isn’t because I think The Times is conservatives, but rather that it perceives itself as being the opposite. It is constantly attacked as the “liberal media” and so anti-liberal hogwash more easily makes it onto its front page.
Anonymous Sources
But the editors seem united on one thing. As Baquet said, “This was a really big mistake, 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.” I agree. The New York Times has been too dependent upon anonymous sources. But there’s a problem. 
They already have a policy about anonymous sources. They’ve had it for a very long time. It has its problems. In particular, it is vague. For example, its 2007 policy claims, “The use of unidentified sources is reserved for situations in which the newspaper could not otherwise print information it considers reliable and newsworthy.” That sounds like a mighty fine idea. But isn’t it the case that we constantly get anonymous government sources that are saying nothing but that the government is right or its enemies are wrong? Yes, it seems we see that each and every day in The New York Times.
Back in 2011, Janine Jackson at Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) wrote, But You Didn’t Hear It From… Anyone. In it, she provided an example where a “top Israeli official” was given anonymity to provide some of the most innocuous, milquetoast comments one could image. Even more absurd:
She also talked about the ridiculous policy of telling readers why the source is anonymous, “But the explanations are patently ad hoc and random.” And in the article at hand, there is no justification as to why these sources are anonymous — or indeed even that they are anonymous. All the article stated was, “American law enforcement officials said…” And far from being a little used technique, in the week 1 October 2011, FAIR found that between a fifth and a quarter of front page stories in The Times and The Washington Post used anonymous sources.
It’s not that I’m unsympathetic to the problems that reporters face. But it is mostly a question of efficiency. It would be harder for newspapers to do the work they know needs to be done to properly report the news. But I really have a problem with The New York Times editors claiming that they are going to do something about this. We’ve already been through Judith Miller; that’s why we got the 2007 policy change. This new case could lead to a policy change. But the paper won’t follow it and we will get the same old garbage again.
MargaretSullivan.jpg cropped from Margaret Sullivan – International Journalism Festival 2015 by Niccolò Caranti – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
The most disappointing thing in the Democratic debate Saturday night was that both Clinton and especially O’Malley accepted the Republican frame about the threat of terrorism and how afraid we should all be. And I’m really trying to get my head around all this. Here’s the thing: I’m not afraid. Yet I consider myself a complete coward. How can that be?
In many ways, I am a vicious person. I thought it would be fun to do a week a Christmas songs. In general, I hate Christmas songs. And I could, if I wanted, try to find those Christmas songs that I actually like. But it seems like more fun to torture you.
On this day in 1968, teenagers David Arthur Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen were murdered by the 
His various correspondences included exactly the kind of games that we know from the movies. These included his tally of the game he was supposedly playing with the San Francisco Police Department with things like, “Zodiac = 13, SFPD = 0” but there was his symbol rather than the word “Zodiac.” He also took credit for murders that apparently weren’t his. And he made numerous threats that he never carried out, like bombing a school bus.
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