Several readers were puzzled by The News & Observer's handling of the controversial report by U.S. intelligence agencies that the war in Iraq has fueled Islamic terrorism. The story ended up dominating the national news for much of last week.

The N&O ran its first story, from The New York Times news service, Sunday on page 4A. Then, on Monday, it ran as its main front-page story the Bush administration's denial of the bleak terrorism assessment. Why, readers asked, run the initial story inside the paper and the Bush reaction on the front page?

"Once again, The News and Observer is using page one to support the Bush administration's Iraq War policies while relegating to inner pages substantive accounts of its crimes and abuses," wrote Paul F. Grendler of Chapel Hill. "When there are authoritative reports about abuses by the administration and the American armed forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, The N&O usually relegates these stories to inner pages....Why not put these stories on page one?"

I was curious about the story placement as well, so I checked with editors responsible for the coverage. It seems that the decision-making turned not so much on the importance of the news as on how the stories fit with N&O publishing standards.

The Sunday story, from The New York Times, was based largely on anonymous sources who described the classified National Intelligence Estimate to a Times reporter on condition that they not be identified. The Times said it interviewed more than a dozen U.S. government officials and outside experts for the article, but they would not allow their names to be used because they were discussing classified information.

That kind of reporting conflicts with N&O publication standards, which discourage use of anonymous sources. The paper, rightly I think, wants stories to say where information comes from as a way to maintain credibility with readers.

"The story had severe anonymity problems," said Rob Waters, The N&O's weekend editor. But editors were aware that The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times also were running stories Sunday on the intelligence report, and the stories would be the subject of the Sunday TV talk shows. Waters said The N&O makes exceptions to the anonymous source policy if a story meets certain conditions -- it is reported by multiple outlets, it soon will be widely known and the news is important. The Times story met all those conditions, so Waters made the decision to run the article on the inside page.

True enough, the story became widely known on Sunday, causing the Bush administration to issue a denial that the Iraq War has worsened the terrorism problem. That story was published in The N&O Monday with a five-column headline running atop the front page, "White House denies Iraq breeds terror." Waters said the story merited that kind of display because it had become public and was now on the record. "By then, it was out there and everybody was talking about it, and it was sourced, so we felt comfortable about it," he said.

(Also playing into the decision-making, Waters said, was that the Sunday story had more competition for front-page space than did the White House reaction story in Monday's paper.)

This is yet another example of the conundrum the paper creates for itself with its sourcing policy. It's important to be open with readers about where we get information. But that's often problematic with national and international stories from news services, especially from Washington, on very controversial topics that tend to be peopled with sources who decline to be identified publicly.

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