Global Policy Forum

By Lorne Manly

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, added a new role to his portfolio last week: journalism professor. After singling out Newsweek for its article, now retracted, on reports that interrogators at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had flushed a Koran down the toilet, Mr. McClellan broadened his critique of the magazine's journalistic practices to apply to those at the rest of the mainstream news media.

There is "a credibility problem in the media regarding the use of anonymous sources," Mr. McClellan said on Tuesday during a regular White House press briefing. "That's one of the issues that concerns the American people when they look at the media," he added, "and I think sometimes the media does have difficulty going back and kind of critiquing itself."

Criticism of the media by the White House press spokesman is nothing new. What is different is how many national news organizations seem to agree with him. Concerned that they may have become too free in granting anonymity to sources, news organizations including USA Today, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, NBC News and The New York Times are trying to throttle back their use.

But some journalists worry that these efforts could hamper them from doing their jobs - coming in a hothouse atmosphere where mistrust of the news media is rampant, hordes of newly minted media critics attack every misstep on the Web, and legal cases jeopardize their ability to keep unnamed news sources confidential.

"Right now, the pendulum is swinging too far in the wrong direction," said Stephen Engelberg, managing editor for enterprise at The Oregonian in Portland. "Most newspapers, if they're honest," he declared, "would say that all of this taken together has probably created a climate that is not encouraging for the type of reporting we need to be doing."

The use of anonymous sources in news articles has long been part of journalism, as have the periodic attempts to restrict them. After Watergate, when a source who became known as Deep Throat helped Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein expose a White House cover-up, the practice grew from being mainly a useful tool to coax reluctant sources fearful for their livelihoods to being a condition that sources increasingly demanded, according to Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, an institute affiliated with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. "Regardless of what journalists may think of the utility of sources," Mr. Rosenstiel said, "it's a source of friction in restoring trust with readers."

The practice became almost reflexive, whether it was a matter of covering Washington, Hollywood or sports. "It's like this bad seed that grew into an ugly animal," said Sandy Johnson, Washington bureau chief of The Associated Press.

A series of journalistic scandals in the last two years, including the revelation that Jayson Blair, a reporter for The New York Times, had fabricated or plagiarized more than three dozen articles, has shocked news organizations into reviewing their existing journalism guidelines, particularly on matters of sources.

Last year, The New York Times adopted a more stringent approach to its treatment of confidential sources, including a provision that the identity of every unidentified source must be known to at least one editor. A committee of the paper's journalists recently recommended that the top editors put in place new editing mechanisms to ensure that current policies are enforced more fully and energetically.

The Washington Post now pushes its reporters to be more assertive with news sources to get them on the record. When it does grant anonymity, an editor has to know the source's identity and the paper tries to explain more fully to the reader the reasoning behind that decision.

At NBC News, which is reviewing its guidelines, reporters and producers are, more than in the past, encouraged to provide the viewer with as much information as possible about the source's location and motivation (a liberal Democratic Congressman rather than a Congressman, for example), said Bill Wheatley, executive vice president of NBC News. "We discourage hiding behind anonymity to carry out an attack," he said.

CBS News, which earlier this year acknowledged that it could not authenticate the documents on which it based a "60 Minutes" Wednesday report on President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service, is also reviewing its reporting standards.

One of the more stringent policies was adopted at USA Today last year by Kenneth A. Paulson, who became editor in April 2004, in the wake of revelations that Jack Kelley, one of its star reporters, had fabricated parts of at least 20 articles. All anonymous sources must now be identified to a managing editor, who considers whether the paper should trust the source and whether the news value of the article warrants the practice, Mr. Paulson said. As a result, the newspaper, through last Thursday, has used 63 anonymous sources this year, a little more than three a week, primarily in national and business articles. Mr. Paulson estimates that the paper has reduced its use of anonymous sources by 75 percent.

Still, the outright banning of anonymous sources is decidedly a minority view. There is no executive at a big news organization pushing through such a policy as Allen H. Neuharth did when he founded USA Today in 1982. Although theoretically the top editor was allowed to bless the use of anonymous sources, "I told the editor in chief if he approved any, he'd be fired," Mr. Neuharth said. (The de facto ban against unidentified sources was relaxed in the years after Mr. Neuharth's retirement in 1989.) His reasoning came from his time as a working journalist before his move into the executive suite. "My experiences as a reporter," he said, "convinced me there are sources who are cowards who tell more than they know."

While many top editors plan to use confidential sources, if more judiciously, the tacking back could have repercussions. "In my view, there is clearly a risk that as we tighten policies, there's the potential organizations will go too far," Ms. Johnson of The Associated Press said.

Some editors and reporters who cover beats like national security, politics, mergers and acquisitions, even Hollywood, worry that strict compliance would put them at a disadvantage if their competitors did not work according to the same rules. "I can't see how any reporter can handle a sensitive beat, particularly one involving classified information, if he's not willing to rely on trusted sources," said Bob Zelnick, an ABC news correspondent for 21 years who is now chairman of the journalism department at Boston University.

Editors and executives at a cross-section of news organizations said stricter guidelines regarding confidential sources had not hurt their news-gathering efforts. "I know of no problems in our reporting because of that," said Leonard Downie Jr., executive editor of The Washington Post. Mr. Paulson of USA Today said the new policy had kept some secondary elements out of the paper, but had not cost it any scoops.

Several other developments, though, complicate the journalistic issue at stake. Some news outlets, print and television, are facing severe economic pressures. That and the increased partisanship in the nation's political and cultural battles could further inhibit the work of mainstream journalists, some of whom are themselves starting to feel like targets.

The uproar over Newsweek's short article played right into this state of affairs. This administration, said David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, "is particularly intense in the way it plays on what it sees as the public's distrust of much of the media in terms of accuracy and ideological biases."

Mr. McClellan was traveling and was not available for comment. David Frum, a fellow at the American Research Institute, a columnist for National Review Online and a former speech writer for President Bush, said about the administration: "They rightly feel that the American press has become infatuated with stories that do harm to the country's war efforts. Abu Ghraib is a story, but it's not the only story."

The debate over the use of anonymous sources is also inextricably linked to continuing legal battles over whether journalists have a right to keep their promises to confidential sources. In one case, Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine face 18 months in jail for refusing to testify about conversations they may have had with government officials about an undercover C.I.A. agent whose name was disclosed by the syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

The lack of a federal shield law, many journalists say, could keep prospective sources from coming forward, and important news stories may never see the light of day. "Its effect on journalism is direct and potentially chilling," said Steve Coll, an associate editor of The Washington Post.

But in the recent campaign against the overuse of anonymous sources, some headway is being made, and in an unlikely place: Washington. The Washington bureau chiefs for seven major news organizations met late last month with Mr. McClellan to discuss the ubiquitous background briefings held regularly by officials, on the condition that they not be identified. The news organizations say that too often, the information is not diplomatically sensitive but just spin for the administration or fill-in-the-blanks detail.

"Since then, the White House has been pretty responsive," said Susan Page, Washington bureau chief of USA Today. The briefing before President Bush's recent trip to Russia, Georgia and Latvia (with a brief stop in the Netherlands) was on the record, as were briefings during the trip. "That's just a great step," said Ms. Page, adding that the "White House sets the tone around town."