Anonymity, Enemy of Truth and Justice 

Victor Davis Hanson is a conservative's Establishment conservative: inspired by the enduring values and animated by the humanistic spirit of Classical antiquity, he daily applies his understanding of the past to the questions of the present. The question he's tackling right now, in National Review Online, is the damage that the anonymous-source fad has done to US institutions, including to the press that seems addicted to this journalistic junk food. 

Radley Balko is as far as you might imagine from VDH, beginning with a name that might have belonged to a factory worker in a Sinclair Lewis novel, and continuing through his politics (hard-core libertarian; his blog is called The Agitator). But he is in print today in Reason online, with an eerily parallel article to Hanson's, addressing a different type of anonymity: that given by cops to informants. 

Both of these estimable writers show examples to make the case that abuse of anonymity has corrupted the institution they're writing about -- but it's interesting that each writes about a single, stovepiped situation, and they leave it to me (it seems) to expand on their narrow arguments and tie the whole thing together. 

So I will, with a view to human nature, and I'll even throw in a few more examples....

Humans are social beasts. Our interactions are heuristic -- that is to say, they're based on experience. So in order to process information we need to know where it comes from. Victor Davis Hanson, classicist and professor, tees off on the media's fondness for feeding us tendentious stuff, while hiding the original source of the stuff from us, making it impossible to judge its credibility. 

Hansen cites Michael Isikoff's fabricated flushed Koran story, which led to riots and deaths in South Asia; Dan Rather and Mary Mapes's phony documents; Michael Scheuer's CIA-sponsored election-eve book; and the patheric affair of The New Republic and "Scott Thomas," in which Stephen Glass successor Franklin Foer defended an anonymous columnist's fabrications with... anonymous corroborators, at least one of which, a media guy for BAE Systems, has told Bob Owens that he never said what Foer says he said. 

Because he's limited to a 700-word column, he can't even scratch the surface of journalistic misconduct, in almost every case of which anonymous sources (real or imagined) figure. He doesn't even bother with Patricia Smith, Mike Barnicle, or Janet Cook, all of whom built careers on sources that never existed; or the Peter Arnett CNN/Time "Tailwind" story, which was only the last in a 30-year career of phony atrocity stories from the finally-discredited Arnett; or Dana Priest's fable about Jessica Lynch fighting fiercely in Iraq, a fabrication that Priest attributed to an anonymous source who may or may not have existed. 

One thing that is interesting about the journalistic anonymity scandals is that in every case the message of the anonymous source -- if such source really existed -- closely dovetailed with the politics and biases of the reporter. For example, Priest, who has not served in the military, is a militant advocate for expanding "opportunities" for women in combat. She was highly motivated to make up such a story, and her editors, pro-feminism liberals all, were highly motivated to run it without asking questions. 

Hansen suggests that reporters should stop using anonymous sources, which is unlikely. (His essay is subtitled "Enough with anonymity.") But there are correctives available. Once, reporters bringing anonymous-sourced stories to an editorial meeting had to reveal the sources to their editors and provide corroboration. Stories didn't run on a single, unconfirmed, unaccountable source. But as the Rather, Isikoff and Priest cases illustrate, that was then and this is now. Editors share the frames of reference and biases of their reporters, and frequently are more motivated to "advance the narrative" than to "tell the truth." 

In the absence of effective editing, what happens is that the reputation of the reporter and the publication takes a hit. (The free fall of media stocks presently parallels the plunge of public trust in media institutions). One technique that editors can use to restore public trust is simple: burn the source that burns you. Assume for the sake of argument that Dana Priest actually had a source who told her the Jessica Lynch fable. This source lied to Priest, then (Lynch was painfully honest in her book; and it's clear that Priest's story is untrue). But Priest and her editors protect the anonymity of the source, still. Why? Why shield a liar? The most likely reason is that Priest hopes to use that source again. 

Sure gives you a different way to look at Priest's byline, doesn't it? 

Be alert to anonymous sources, and treat them the same way you treat treat the celebrated dodge "experts say" or "critics say" -- as a reporter's procedure for slipping an unsourced opinion past sleeping editors. Quotes from unnamed sources should be taken as assertions by the reporter. Be doubly alert for bylines which often use these, as history tells us it's a short slide from Dana Priest to Janet Cooke. 

Anonymity without accountability is the enemy of truth. 

Balko focused on anonymity in a completely different realm -- justice. But, while he focuses perhaps for political reasons on drug informants (he's a longtime, principled opponent of the war on drugs and a proponent of legalization), he barely scratches the surface of the disruption anonymous informants visit on our justice system. It isn't necessarily drugs that cause the problem: there have been nightmare informant-driven misconduct stories in the war on guns and in the century-old battle against organized crime. 

The most celebrated case happened right here, in Boston. The FBI district office was so determined to protect its informants that it actually worked to protect and advance them, in an incredible collapse even assisting the informants in murders. Some of the FBI agents involved got taps on the wrist; one is in prison and expecting a death-penalty trial in Florida; but all of them were morally compromised by a crime-ring infiltration attempt that somehow reversed itself and left the criminals running the FBI office instead. 

There is a place for an anonymous informant. It is the world of espionage, where agent handlers have means of testing for and classifying agent and information reliability -- and where they can and do act on uncertain information. The newsroom and the courtroom are not the same as the spymaster's den. 

Anonymity without accountability is the enemy of justice.