Source (journalism) - Anonymous Sources

Anonymous Sources

The identity of anonymous sources is sometimes revealed to senior editors or a news organization's lawyers, who would be considered bound by the same confidentiality. (Lawyers are generally protected from subpoena in these cases by attorney/client privilege.) Legal staff may need to give counsel about whether it is advisable to publish certain information, or about court proceedings that may attempt to learn confidential information. Senior editors are in the loop to prevent reporters from fabricating non-existent, anonymous sources, and to provide a second opinion about how to use the information obtained, how or how not to identify sources, and whether other options should be pursued.

The use of anonymous sources has been a controversial subject for many years. Some news outlets insist that anonymous sources are the only way to obtain certain information, while others hold strict prohibitions against the use of unnamed sources at all times. News organizations may impose safeguards, such as requiring that information from an anonymous source be corroborated by a second source before it can be printed.

Nonetheless, prominent reports based on anonymous sources have sometimes proven to be incorrect. For instance, much of the O.J. Simpson reporting from unnamed sources was later deemed inaccurate. Newsweek retracted a story about a Qur'an being flushed down a toilet that led to riots in the Middle East; the Qur'an desecration controversy of 2005 was based upon one unnamed military source. The L.A. Times retracted an article that implicated Sean "Diddy" Combs in the beating of Tupac Shakur. The original article was based on documents and a large assortment of unnamed sources. When reporting on the original story, the Associated Press noted that "one of the sources was named."

After the embarrassment, a news organization will often "clamp down" on the guidelines for using unnamed sources, but those guidelines are often forgotten after the scandal dies down. One study found that large newspapers' use of anonymous sources dropped dramatically between 2003 and 2004. The Project for Excellence in Journalism, a research group found use of anonymous sources dropped from 29 percent of all articles in 2003 to just 7 percent in 2004.