< Previous page

Chastened by scandals of fictitious reporting, the Times and Post both supposedly tightened up their source policies in the last year. But recent reviews of their work show that they still are infested by "anonymice," as Slate magazine critic Jack Shafer calls unnamed sources. Daniel Okrent, the Times' public editor, found that more than 40 percent of stories in April 2004 used sources not named.

That kind of fast-and-loose fact-gathering, unfortunately, works its way downstream to The N&O and other papers. In any given week, you can find multiple violations of The N&O's source policy. Last Tuesday, the paper did report the Bin Laden-Zarqawi connection in a brief, from the L.A. Times, that quoted an "official, who spoke on condition of anonymity."

On Feb. 27, The N&O ran a lengthy New York Times story about Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program using these attributions: "a senior administration official," "a European official," and "a European official asking not to be identified because the discussions were confidential and sensitive." Not a single named source was used in the story.

In the first instance, the use of sources was approved by Drescher, the managing editor. Publication of the Iran story, said Nation and World Editor Andy Bechtel, was a mistake.

The anonymice also find their way to The N&O's online edition, newsobserver.com. The lead story on Feb. 17, about President Bush's choice of John Negroponte to be intelligence czar, confided thusly: "According to one well-informed administration official, former CIA director Robert Gates was Bush's first choice but Gates and some other candidates declined the post. They worried that the legislation establishing the intelligence job was too vague in outlining its authority, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity." That was an AP story.

Drescher acknowledged that the reins have been looser on the online operation, which updates stories throughout the day (but, with 50,000 weekday readers, affects The N&O's credibility nearly as much as the print publication).

All this points up how much incredible information, literally, is out there. It's a finger-in-the-dike proposition to protect one local newspaper -- and its readers -- from information that can't be verified. The N&O does a respectable job of that with local coverage and a better job than most newspapers with the wire service news it doesn't control. But unfortunately, until the standards upstream are better, the paper still needs to come with a warning label: Let the reader beware.

< Previous page

Get $150+ in coupons in every Sunday N&O. Click here for convenient home delivery.