Anonymous sources

Nothing said on this site should be taken as representing the views of Freedom Communications or the Daily Press family of newspapers.

It would be fair to say that many journalists are upset about Time’s decision to turn over notes to a grand jury regarding the Valerie Plame leak.

That’s not because journalists don’t take what happened to her seriously — quite the contrary, all the journalists I’ve discussed it with realized how much potential impact this would have on her work and the lives of her contacts the moment Robert Novak released her name — or because journalists are lawbreakers as a category.

There is a fear, probably a legitimate one, that confidential sources will be less likely to speak to journalists if they know their names will come out in the end anyway. (They sure won’t be in a hurry to talk to reporters for Time.) As I noted recently, most journalists don’t want to publish stories featuring the words of a person who doesn’t want their name on the record. I’ve been in newsrooms where management actually forbade it, although given good enough reason, they’d relent.

Because sometimes there is a good reason: Let’s imagine that the local police department is rife with corruption, and a non-uniformed staffer has information to prove crimes have been committed. That staffer has a strong belief that her life would be in danger if she came forward to expose this information, and that filing charges would be just as bad and accomplish even less. So what does she do? She goes to a reporter and becomes an anonymous source.

Now, anonymous tips are used more often than they appear to be to readers and viewers, because the way journalists (and publishers, who are the ones who have to pay for the lawyers) prefer to use anonymous tips is as a springboard to getting information on the record from sources you can name. Much like tough love parenting, when you come to someone knowing the truth, very often, the people you confront fold and starting telling you the truth, even if it’s only pieces of it that you will have to assemble manually on your own. Used in this way, anonymous sources suffer very little risk of exposure, since the focus will shift to the people who speak on the record and give their names. But even here, there’s an initial risk involved — that anonymous source stuck their neck out, even if only briefly. (This is typically referred to as getting information “off the record,” but it really amounts to the same thing as an anonymous source.)

But sometimes, even that doesn’t work. Much like the teenager with icewater in their veins when confronted by their parents, often people with something to hide will be able to stonewall a journalist and they and their associates will present a united front. In those cases, the question of what to do becomes trickier.

I’ve been in more than one newsroom where I was told, typically with regret, but not always, that if I used an anonymous source, and ended up on the wrong side of the legal system, I was on my own, since the paper simply didn’t have the money to fight the legal challenge. (The public would likely be horrified if they realized how much of the local media operates just pennies from the red at all times.) And, while I realize this probably has a chilling effect on how aggressively reporters are willing to do their jobs (and aggression is sometimes necessary, even for those of us who realize you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar), it’s hard to argue with the papers’ position on this.

But it certainly isn’t the case with Time. So while reporters may not like using anonymous sources more than anyone else, if it’s felt to be necessary, they’d expect Time, if anyone, to be able to afford to back reporters up.

Myself, I don’t know how I feel: The Supreme Court made its decision, and I definitely respect the rule of law. I’m also someone who believes that democracy has been well-served on a number of important occasions by the use of anonymous sources. I do know it’s a mess and I do know that I’m surprised that Time made the decision they did.

In any case, I suspect this is far from over. There is a renewed push for a federal shield law, which would give certain uses of anonymous sources legal protection (31 states and the District of Columbia already have them), so we will likely hear more about this debate in future weeks and months, not to mention the eventual results of the Novak investigation.

Yahoo! News: Blah, blah, blog

Perhaps a little late for me, but Yahoo! News’ newest edition of Tech Tuesday talks all about the history and practice of blogging.

Well, maybe it’s not too late. Jonah has had a blog for years, and just revamped it quite a bit this past week, porting it over to the same software I use, WordPress, and making other changes. Check out what he recently saw around the neighborhood, where I lived until a year ago.

Anyway, Yahoo on blogging. There’s four blogging articles, and more on podcasting and RSS, which I think somewhat fall outside the strictest definition of blogging. The blogging articles themselves:

Can my employer fire me for criticizing the company in a blog? Maybe. Freedom of the press means Uncle Sam has to tolerate your ramblings, but your boss doesn’t necessarily have to–especially if you use a company PC to monitor or manage your blog. That said, some companies encourage blogging as a way for employees to engage customers, partners, etc. Several, such as IBM, have issued guidelines for employees to follow, so everyone understands the rules. In general, unless you’re at a company that encourages blogging as a way to communicate, like Sun Microsystems, don’t blog at work. Anything you create on an employer’s PC is fair game for monitoring.

If you’re going to talk business on a blog–regardless of where the PC you actually post it from is located–make it clear you’re not speaking for the entire company. And remember, if you keep a racy or controversial blog, potential future employers may find it when they do a Web search for information about you (and many will). You may be proud of your creative writing about Carmen Electra and Paris Hilton, but the folks in human resources may not see it your way.

This would probably be a good time to mention that nothing said here on this site should be taken as representing the views of Freedom Communications or the Daily Press family of newspapers.

American Revolution’s drink of choice was rum, not tea

An interesting piece over at Salon. Forget tea, it was all about the rum:

The tea that was thrown into Boston Harbor was actually tax free, and the men throwing it overboard were doing so at the behest of local merchants who had warehouses filled with more expensive smuggled tea that they could sell only if the British East India Co.’s cheaper cargo was unloaded. They knew that no amount of patriotism would stop the Bostonians from buying a cheaper product.

But the real conflict between the colonists and Britain began over taxes on molasses, not tea. And that’s where the French come in. The Founding Fathers not only loved the French, but they also loved the molasses that Paris’ Caribbean colonies produced — and they loved even more the rum that New England distillers made from it.

New England had an insatiable thirst for molasses, since a gallon of it made a gallon of rum, and the inhospitable lands of the Northeast did not produce enough grain to make whiskey. The colonists drank a lot of the New England rum they produced and sold the rest to the Indians, with devastating social results, or bartered the rum for slaves from West Africa, with equally devastating results there. Benjamin Franklin chillingly put it that “indeed if it be the design of Providence to extirpate these Savages in order to make room for cultivators of the earth, it seems not improbable that Rum may be the appointed means. It has already annihilated all the tribes who formerly inhabited the Sea-Coast.”

However, they could not get molasses from the British colonies in the Caribbean, who used it to make their own — and much better — rum. Franklin actually wrote poetry about punch made with Jamaica rum!

In 1775 Abigail Adams wrote indignantly to her husband that British Gen. Thomas Gage in Boston had “ordered all the molasses to be distilled into rum for the soldiers: taken away all licenses, and given out others, obliging to a forfeiture of ten pounds if any rum is sold without written orders from the General.” Equally concerned with a rum gap, Washington wrote to Congress in 1777 suggesting “erecting Public Distilleries in different States.” He went on to explain, “The benefits arising from the moderate use of strong Liquor have been experienced in all Armies and are not to be disputed.” Indeed, he anticipated modern patriots when in 1781 he complained to Gen. William Heath because the latter was providing French wine to Continental soldiers, when everybody knew that they preferred rum. Washington laid down firmly, “Wine cannot be distributed the Soldiers instead of Rum, except the quantity is much increased. I very much doubt whether a Gill of rum would not be preferred to a pint of small wine.”

New Hampshire rose to the call and levied each town to provide 10,000 gallons of West India rum for the Revolutionary Army. It is ironic that Gen. Washington thought so highly of the martial virtues of rum, since one of his few outright military victories in the field — over the 1,300 Hessians at Trenton, N.J., on Christmas Day 1776 — was reputedly because the enemy was overfortified with the Christmas spirit.

So tomorrow, do the patriotic thing: Have a rum and Coke or three. (Just leave the fireworks, and the driving, to someone else. Another good argument for backyard celebrations.)

Google, Yahoo: “Hack our maps!”

From Wired: Yahoo! Maps and Google Maps both decide to embrace the hacking of their applications and enable it with more programming info (and future advertising possibilities for them).

Not surprisingly, the two companies have different rules.

Yahoo is a bit more flexible in the kinds of data that can be passed and uses several open data standards, including RSS. The company also hosts the resultant map on its own servers, which could save hackers from having to pay for expensive bandwidth if their application becomes popular. It also allows Yahoo to serve advertising, if it chooses. However, the hosting offer is not negotiable, even for geeks with deep pockets who want the map featured on their own website.

Google, on the other hand, expects developers to host their own hacks by running Google’s innovative JavaScript to power the map’s smooth rendering, but reserves the right to place ads next to the mashup map in the future.

There are quite a few neat examples of the maphacks linked to in the article:

Study: Trust in media down, but still very high

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press just released the results of a new study into how Americans feel about the media. It’s good news and bad news.

The bad news is that, overall, trust in the media has declined. The good news is that, unless you work at the New York Times or Washington Post, it’s not by much.

By wide margins, more Americans give favorable than unfavorable ratings to their daily newspaper (80%-20%), local TV news (79%-21%), and cable TV news networks (79%-21%), among those able to rate these organizations. The margin is only slightly smaller for network TV news (75%-25%).

In addition to the favorable/unfavorable results, the favorables dropped like this: Daily newspapers dropped 2 percent, local TV news by 4 percent, cable network news by 9 percent, national network news by 1 percent and national newspapers like the Times and the Post dropped a whopping 13 percent, which now are languishing with a 61 percent favorable rating. At this point, local newspapers are the most trusted media source, but only with a 1 percent margin over local and cable TV news.

Much-publicized attacks on the press by politicos tend to focus on the big name papers, which is probably why their brands have lost some of their luster, while papers that people tend to be more familiar with, like their hometown papers, are known quantities that are seen as not having the same sorts of problems those other papers have.

This isn’t me taking a political stand with this analysis: The study found a divide in how Democrats and Republicans view the media, which definitely suggests the hammering the press have gotten from right wing critics in recent years has had a real impact with the intended audience. (Obviously, the NYT’s well-publicized problems have had their own bipartisan impact on the paper’s reputation.)

The partisan gap on this issue has grown dramatically, as Republicans increasingly express the view that the press is excessively critical of the U.S. (67% now vs. 42% in 2002). Over the same period, Democratic opinions on this have remained fairly stable (24% now vs. 26% in 2002).

Republicans are now closely divided as to whether the press protects or hurts democracy; 40% say it protects democracy, while 43% believe it hurts democracy. Two years ago, by a fairly sizable margin (44%-31%) more Republicans felt that the press helped democracy. Democratic opinion on this measure has been more stable. In the current survey, 56% say the press protects democracy while just 27% say it hurts democracy.

Views on whether the press is politically biased have been more consistent over the years. More than seven-in-ten Republicans (73%) say the press is biased, compared with 53% of Democrats. Perceptions of political bias have increased modestly among members of both parties over the past two years.

Interestingly, while fewer Democrats tend to view the press as biased, a growing number of them think the media hasn’t been tough enough of President Bush: 54 percent say the media aren’t “criticial enough” of him, compared to 39 percent a year ago. I suspect that has more to do with evolving opinions about the presidency on that side of the aisle than it does the press — the war in Iraq and other issues are likely much more important in shaping that sort of opinion than anything the news media have done in particular. Presidential election results may have also created a sour grapes effect as well, right or wrong. It’s something I’ve seen in local politics and with local readers for many years.

The newspaper industry has been terrified to varying degrees by the rise of the Internet — which is probably something worth exploring in more detail at another time — but the news here wasn’t bad, if one assumes that many newspapers will eventually fully adapt to the challenges ahead, albeit with some soul-searching and probably some pain along the way:

The current study includes two measures that provide some insight into this growing news source. First, by a 90%-6% margin, respondents who say they rely on newspapers as a main source almost universally mean the printed version of the paper, not the online version. Second, when respondents cite the internet as a main source, most are including their use of online newspapers. Fully 62% of internet news consumers say they read the websites of local or national newspapers.

Combined, these questions indicate that while 40% of Americans count the printed newspaper as a main source of news, another 16% are reading newspapers as part of their internet news consumption. The relevance of online newspaper readership is most important among younger Americans. While only about a third of those under age 40 count the printed newspaper as a main source of news (compared with half of those age 50 and older), another 20% say the online version is at least a part of their internet use. While younger people tend to consume far less news overall than their seniors, newspapers ­ in one form or another ­ remain a key part of the media mix for majorities in all age groups.

Of all the traditional media, I’ve always felt the newspaper industry was the best-poised to prosper under the Internet paradigm — just look at how omnipresent the Associated Press and Reuters wire services are online now; they’re part of pretty much every major Internet news site, like Yahoo! News and Google News.

There’s a detailed breakdown of who reads newspapers online. Interestingly, it’s most popular among self-described “moderates” politically.

Where the views of online newspaper readers differ more dramatically is in their evaluations of mainstream media organizations. People who read the newspaper online have a far less favorable opinion of network and local TV news programming than do people who read the print version, and also have a somewhat less favorable view of the daily newspaper they are most familiar with. But consumers of online newspapers feel far more favorably toward large nationally influential newspapers, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Again, I’m guessing that’s the familiarity factor coming into play again. And, of course, if you’re an online consumer of news, the major sites have the finances to have a lot of stuff there for you, between larger news staffs and all the bells and whistles generally.

Interestingly, the public seems to be split on the media’s role as a watchdog, something again that I’ve seen in my professional life:

Beyond the rising criticism of press performance and patriotism, there also has been significant erosion in support for the news media’s watchdog role over the military. Nearly half (47%) say that by criticizing the military, news organizations are weakening the nation’s defenses; 44% say such criticism keeps the nation militarily prepared. The percentage saying press criticism weakens American defenses has been increasing in recent years and now stands at its highest point in surveys dating to 1985.

By contrast, public support for the news media’s role as a political watchdog has endured and even increased a bit. Six-in-ten Americans say that by criticizing political leaders, news organizations keep political leaders from doing things that should not be done; just 28% feel such criticism keeps political leaders from doing their jobs. Two years ago, 54% endorsed the press’s role as a political watchdog.

In my experience, even the politicians tend to be generally OK with the press being a watchdog, so long as they can see you sniffing around other politicians the same way, and aren’t singling them out. I’ve only had one serious run-in with an elected official about this in recent memory, whereas I’ve put quite a few under the microscope in public. Most of the politicians, including those under the microscope, know it’s a “Godfather” thing: It’s business, not personal.

Here’s an interesting bit that defies conventional wisdom, or at least what I would have guessed to be true:

By nearly three-to-one (68%-24%), Americans believe it is better if coverage of the war on terror is neutral rather than pro-American.

Of course, it’s likely that people’s perception of what constitutes neutral coverage may be colored at times by their political beliefs. Ask someone how Clinton and Bush were treated by the media, and the answers almost invariably tell you how they vote, I find.

And the use of anonymous sources come under scrutiny as well, with the results mirroring, I think, how most journalists tend to feel: It’s acceptable in certain circumstances, but it still makes everyone a bit nervous.

About half (52%) say the use of such sources is too risky because it can lead to inaccurate reports, while 44% say it is okay because it can yield important news that they otherwise wouldn’t get. People who say they paid very close attention to the Deep Throat story are much more positive about the use of confidential sources than those who paid less attention to this story (60% vs. 41%).

But most Americans think the use of confidential sources is at least sometimes justified. Over three-quarters (76%) think reporters should sometimes be allowed to keep their sources confidential if that is the only way to get information, while 19% say reporters should always reveal their sources. Despite the recent visibility of the Deep Throat story, opinions on this question are no different today than they were twenty years ago.

That definitely mirrors what I’ve been hearing in newsrooms since 1992, when I started my professional career.