Page 51 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

0 | Anonymous Sources, Leaks, and Nat onal Secur ty

promise not to identify under any circumstances. Sometimes, these sources are
whistleblowers, who feel strongly that the public should know about a govern-
mental abuse and would lose their jobs if their identity were disclosed. Report-
ers, in turn, are generally respectful of genuine national security issues. They do
not knowingly publish stories that would endanger lives or affect the security of
this country.
Sources rarely are totally altruistic. They usually have their own motives for
talking to reporters and for wanting the public to know certain information.
In the end, it is probably impossible for journalists to understand these mo-
tives and to make judgments based on what these motives are. “My own view
is that the law can’t and shouldn’t distinguish, and I would say journalists can’t
and shouldn’t distinguish between good sources and bad, virtuous sources and
unvirtuous ones,” says Floyd Abrams, probably the leading First Amendment
lawyer in the country. “If a journalist grants confidentiality, I think the journalist
has to keep her word.”
Probably the most famous anonymous source, W. Mark Felt, was an FBI of-
ficial who finally disclosed his identity in 2005. Until then, he was known as
“Deep Throat,” the source who provided invaluable guidance to the Washington
Post’s Bob Woodward in his reporting on the Watergate scandal with Carl Bern-
stein. Even though decades had passed, once Felt made his disclosure, some fel-
low agents thought Felt had committed an outrage in telling government secrets
to reporters. Other people felt he was a hero. Felt’s motives were complicated.
He viewed himself as a patriot. He was also angry that President Richard Nixon
had not given him the top job at the FBI. Whatever his motives, his information
was invaluable in helping to unseat President Nixon.
The use of anonymous sources—so successful in the Washington Post’s re-
porting on Watergate—had a decided downside. In 1981, Bob Woodward, then
an editor, oversaw an article by Janet Cooke, a young reporter who wrote a
powerful story about an eight-year-old boy named Jimmy, who was a heroin
addict. Neither Woodward nor the other editors insisted on knowing Cooke’s
source. She had told the editors that the drug supplier would kill the boy if she
squealed to her editors. They did not press. Months later, Cooke won a Pulit-
zer Prize, journalism’s highest honor, but her story quickly unraveled. Questions

washington rules
In Washington, journalists and sources communicate in their own peculiar, often convoluted
way, with their own special terms of art. “On the record” is straightforward and means you
can be quoted by name and title. After that, things get murky. In “on background” con-
versations, officials describe facts and policy in an informal way and are not to be quoted.
Materials can be attributed to “senior administration officials.” “Deep background” material
can be printed only if it is not specifically attributed to anyone. ( The story can be couched
in terms of “it has been learned that”). Finally, in “off the record” conversations, the infor-
mation cannot be published, but journalists can only use what they are told to guide their
research. They can confirm the information elsewhere.