“Journalism is the only industry where defective product is awarded rather than sanctioned.”
Lately it seems as though there’s a story a day reporting some new Trump administration scandal based on a leak from an anonymous government “official.” We are asked to take the facts in those stories on trust, without a chance to evaluate the veracity or motives of the source of the remarks. This over-reliance on the anonymous source gives both the journalist and his/her informant an overwhelming power.
The most famous anonymous source of them all, of course, was Deep Throat of Watergate fame. He was not only a seminal figure in Nixon’s denouement (and thus a hero to liberals everywhere), but he was so renowned that he had his own nickname, taken from a popular porn flick. The reporters involved in the story became famous too; Bob Woodward was played by movie star Robert Redford and Carl Bernstein by Dustin Hoffman in the film “All the Presidents Men.”
Here’s an article from American Journalism Review (written way back in 1994) that describes the role of Watergate as a turning point in the use of the anonymous source:
Although confidential sources predate Watergate, they were infrequently used before that celebrated story, which produced the most famous unnamed source of all time. Deep Throat, whose identity remains a mystery [at the time the article was written], helped Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein bring down Richard Nixon in 1974. After that, the use of anonymous sources flourished, with many reporters considering it sexier to have an unnamed source than a named one.
From the same 1994 article, we have this:
There’s not a place for anonymous sources,” says Allen H. Neuharth, founder of USA Today and chairman of the Freedom Forum. “I think there are a few major historical developments that happened in journalism – the Pentagon Papers, maybe Watergate – where anonymous sources had a more positive influence than a negative impact. But on balance, the negative impact is so great that we can’t overcome the lack of trust until or unless we ban them.
Via LI