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Today, not so much. New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan had this to say in August about the use of anonymous sources: “Readers deplore it, public editors shake a finger at it, Times editors and reporters say they try to minimize it.” The Times style book calls it a “last resort.”
Sullivan was back on the same soap box in September, ripping the Times for the categorical headline “Qaeda Plot Leak Has Undermined U.S. Intelligence.” Says who? The headline gave us no idea. The story didn’t say either, though if you kept reading long enough you found out the reporter had been talking to a “United States official.”
At their meeting last week, Mr. Jamil tried unsuccessfully to persuade Mr. Ford to allow him to attend the meeting [in Geneva] as an opposition member, Reuters reported, citing a Middle Eastern official.
What Reuters reported and the Times robotically rereported was marginally interesting and immeasurably less explosive than “Qaeda Plot Leak Has Undermined U.S. Intelligence.” But journalistic practice doesn’t have to be offensive to be absurd.
