Glenn Greenwald (Salon, 1/12/10) makes an excellent point about the corrosive effect of the widespread use of anonymous sourcing by the most powerful U.S. news outlets. After listing a number of false stories that got prominent coverage in U.S. media, Greenwald writes:
Unjustified anonymity–especially when mindlessly repeating what shielded government sources claim in secret–is the single greatest enabler of false and deceitful”reporting.”… None of the falsehoods documented here will ever lead to any accountability, because the identity of the falsehood-producers will be shielded by their loyal journalist-servants, and the journalists themselves will simply claim that they wrote what they did because their hidden sources told them to. That’s not only the effect, but the intent, of the central method of American journalism: to disseminate outright falsehoods to the American public and ensure that neither the liars nor their loyal message-carriers ever face any consequences or even reputational loss…. Lying is so much easier–and thus so much more common–when you get to do it while remaining hidden.
Greenwald complains that reporters who quote anonymous sources “barely even bother any longer to explain why it’s justified, notwithstanding numerous policies of media outlets requiring exactly that explanation.” Actually, though, such policies are generally taken to mean that the news outlet should explain why the source wanted to be anonymous–an explanation that generally boils down to the idea that the source wasn’t authorized to speak on the record. That’s fairly useless.
A potentially more helpful rule would require the news outlet to explain, every time it quoted an unnamed source, why this particular quotation deserved to be an exception to the general rule that anonymity is to be avoided. Such a rule might actually discourage some of the more pernicious examples of anonymity–or at least produce some revealing rationalizations.
Indeed. The Grey Lady is among the most notorious offenders, especially reporters like Broad and Sanger who constantly steno dire warnings about Iranian nukes. Their anonymous sources in Vienna are no doubt US staffers at IAEA headquarters who pass on what sound like Judith Miller’s false reports on Iraqi WMDs
I’ve said it before and I will say it again and again. Even though no one listens.
We can’t really blame politicians for lying to us. It’s what most of us want. In almost every case in the last 100 years when a politician has expressed an unpopular truth they have lost the next election or been recalled.
The cost of running a campaign is so exhobitant that it is almost impossible to do without patronage from corporations and the wealthy. We know that they don’t give out money without expecting a larger return than their investment.
However, what the news media does is treason. They say they broadcast news. Our founding fathers established a free press so that an informed electorate armed with the TRUTH can make the best choices to “…form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity,…” I know that some newspeople would consider that so much liberal claptrap.
By focusing on irrelevant male bovine excrement, false propaganda sources, anonymous sources, unsubstantiated sources and creating a distraction from an impartial, unbiased presentation of all of the pertinent facts the news media is violating the sacred trust granted them by the First Amendment. Some are worse than others, but as a class the news media is abrogating their responsibility to inform the public. Both of these repudiations of your sacred trust. It borders on treason. NO! It is treason!
~;^}>
The notorious Pam Geller even brags that she NEVER cites sources. And people eat the stuff up! The saddest part about the decline of responsible investigative journalism in the print media is that it is being supplanted by the proliferation of irresponsible yellow journalism in the blogosphere.
If the media had maintained neutrality, researched and backed up every resource, we would have avoided the loss of thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives.
Present-day media practices regarding neutrality and truth-seeking are very sadly lacking and have led to the media being the “mouthpiece” of every politician, corporation and military organization with an agenda.