Clinton Story Debacle Just The Latest In NY Times' History Of Anonymous Sourcing Problems

If The Paper Had Listened To Its Public Editors, This Might Have Been Avoided

It's been more than 12 years since The New York Times suffered perhaps its biggest black eye when the Jayson Blair scandal turned the paper's credibility upside down, sparked a special report, and forced the paper's two top editors to resign in disgrace.

Blair, then a 27-year-old rising reporter, committed a string of journalistic sins -- from plagiarism to outright lying about being at events he had supposedly covered.

The Gray Lady's credibility was in doubt until it set in place a list of changes aimed at correcting the systemic mistakes that had allowed Blair to get away with his lies. Among those changes was hiring its first public editor, an ombudsman positon that would independently review the paper's work and freely write about it for readers.

Soon after, in 2004, the Times issued a Policy on Confidential Sources. It stated, among other things, that the identity of anonymous sources must be known by at least one editor before a story is published, and that the paper must explain as much as possible to readers why the anonymity was granted and why the source is credible. 

Oddly, that policy, cited in numerous public editor columns through the years, does not appear to currently be online at the Times website.

The Times' Ethical Journalism handbook says only that the paper has a “distaste for anonymous sourcing,” and mentions the Policy on Confidential Sources, saying it is “available from the office of the associate managing editor for news administration or on the Newsroom home page under Policies.”

The Times did not respond to a request for the latest version of the policy this week. Past links to the 2004 policy reach a dead page.

Since Daniel Okrent served as the first public editor from December 2003 to May 2005, four others have held that role (including Margaret Sullivan, who currently occupies the position).

Despite the public editor post and the confidential source policy, the paper has not overcome its problems with sources that seek anonymity.

The most recent example is the poor reporting on a supposed “criminal investigation” targeting Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email account while serving as secretary of state, which appeared in the paper last week sourced to anonymous “senior government officials.” After publication, the Times had to issue corrections walking back two of the story's central claims -- that the requested probe was targeting Clinton herself, and that it was “criminal” in nature.

Stretching back to when the paper initially updated the story without issuing a formal correction, the Times has generally done a poor job managing the debacle.

The latest attempt at damage control was an editor's note issued Tuesday that said the approach to correcting the story had “left readers with a confused picture.” But it did not explain how or why the paper got so much wrong.

It is clear, however, that one of the problems was relying on anonymous sources, and poor ones at that.

Sullivan drew needed attention when she posted a scathing column on the email situation Monday, stating the story had “major journalistic problems.”

Sullivan wrote that two Times editors involved with the story -- executive editor Dean Baquet and deputy executive editor Matt Purdy -- agreed “that special care has to come with the use of anonymous sources.” But Baquet was also quoted pinning much of the story's failure on those sources -- rather than Times staffers -- telling Sullivan, “You had the government confirming that it was a criminal referral ... I'm not sure what they could have done differently on that.”

As part of her prescription for how the paper could learn from the fiasco, Sullivan suggested the Times should discuss “the rampant use of anonymous sources.”

This is far from the first time a public editor has pointed to anonymous sourcing as a pressing issue at the paper. A review of public editor columns dating back to Okrent's days finds numerous incidents in which the public editor at the time had to take the paper to task for its use, or misuse, of confidential sources.

Sullivan herself has raised the issue in the past several times, and even created what she terms AnonyWatch, a recurring feature on how anonymous sources are used in the paper.

“This post is the inaugural edition of an effort to point out some of the more regrettable examples of anonymous quotations in The Times,” she wrote when it launched on March 18, 2014. “I've written about this from time to time, as have my predecessors, to little or no avail.”

“My view isn't black and white: I recognize that there are stories -- especially those on the national security beat -- in which using confidential sources is important,” Sullivan wrote in a June 2014 column. “And I acknowledge that some of the most important stories in the past several decades would have been impossible without their use. But, in my view, they are allowed too often and for reasons that don't clear the bar of acceptability, which should be set very high.”

As Sullivan explained in an October 12, 2013, column, the Times' stylebook says, “Anonymity is a last resort.”

Okrent, during his first year on the job in 2004, penned a lengthy review of anonymous sourcing, noting at the time the problems the paper had with properly explaining who sources were, adding, “The easiest reform to institute would turn the use of unidentified sources into an exceptional event.”

He later stated, “it's worth reconsidering the entire nature of reportorial authority and responsibility. In other words, why quote anonymous sources at all? Do their words take on more credibility because they're flanked with quotation marks?”

Byron Calame, who held the public editor post from May 2005 to May 2007, also took anonymous sourcing to task on a few occasions.

In a November 30, 2005, column urging more transparency on such sources, Calame wrote, “Anonymous sourcing can be both a blessing and a curse for journalism -- and for readers,” adding that top editors' “commitment to top-level oversight, and to providing sufficient editing attention to ignite those 'daily conversations' about sources, has to be sustained long after the recent clamor over the paper's use of anonymous sourcing has faded away.”

He wrote on July 30, 2006, “Some realities of anonymous sourcing negotiations deserve to be noted, even if some people think they're obvious. When reporters accept anonymity demands, it's almost always because of one overriding reason that is seldom explicitly acknowledged: the reporter wanted or needed information that a reluctant source possessed. That's probably one reason some of The Times's past explanations for anonymity have been so absurd.”

Clark Hoyt, who served as public editor from May 2007 to June 2010, broached the subject numerous times -- usually with sharp demands for skepticism and rarity in the use of such sourcing.

“The Times continues to hurt itself with readers by misusing anonymous sources,” Hoyt wrote on April 17, 2010, in a column laying out a list of problematic examples. “Despite written ground rules to the contrary and promises by top editors to do better, The Times continues to use anonymous sources for information available elsewhere on the record. It allows unnamed people to provide quotes of marginal news value and to remain hidden with little real explanation of their motives, their reliability, or the reasons why they must be anonymous.”

On March 21, 2009, Hoyt objected again to the overuse of confidential voices, stating, “The Times has a tough policy on anonymous sources, but continues to fall down in living up to it. That's my conclusion after scanning a sampling of articles published in all sections of the paper since the first of the year. This will not surprise the many readers who complain to me that the paper lets too many of its sources hide from public view.”

The public editor prior to Sullivan was Arthur Brisbane, who served in the role from August 2010 to August 2012. He opined on the issue only a handful of times, according to Times archives.

Since Sullivan took over, however, she has made the issue a key part of her regular reviews, with the Clinton email reporting problems a clear example that the paper has not followed its own guidelines and has not adhered to the Times' legendary history of correcting even the most minute details.

When Dean Baquet says that it's hard to know what the reporters and editors on the botched Clinton story “could have done differently,” he is failing to take into account the anonymous source lessons of the past, and the rebukes from public editors over the years.