Wolfowitz gets a Tongue Bath-re: anonymous sources

[liveoaktx]

http://editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000847595&imw=Y

--Read the exchange in the article, not excerpted here.

March 22, 2005) -- Late last week, a group of top journalists conducted a valuable symposium at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., under the title, “The Seduction of Secrecy.” On hand were Geneva Overholser, Bill Kovach, Tom Curley, Alex Jones, Lucy Dalglish, Jack Nelson, and others -- a stellar group. A few excerpts from the transcript have appeared elsewhere.

Unnoticed was one particularly fascinating exchange between Jack Shafer, media critic for Slate, and Philip Taubman, Washington bureau chief for The New York Times. It's wonderful because rather that speaking generally, it zeroed in on one particular example of anonymous sourcing -- and the complainer found himself (perhaps by surprise) taking his case directly to the editor who approved the sourcing.

It began with Tom Rosenstiel citing his Project for Excellence in Journalism's recent "State of the Media" report, which found that 7% of all stories studied in 16 newspapers contained anonymous sources. This actually represented a 29% decrease since last year, he said.

Ken Paulson, editor of USA Today, then described his paper's fairly tough policy on using unnamed sources. Overholser, the moderator, then asked Taubman what he thought about all off this.
........

[Demit]

1. haha! Tongue bath. I gotta keep up with my euphemisms.

I thought it was going to be something about how he combs his hair. Good article. I love Editor & Publisher. Nice to see them stay on the media like that.

[bemildred]

2. Bwaaahaaahaaa. Weasel weasel weasel. Very funny. nt

[dbeach]

3. Chickenhawk wolfie was chillin with chickenfarmers in Indonesia

How appropro for the war criminal about to follow in footsteps of Macnamara who also threw ... and stepped in manure..


"And this is really quite cute here: "One of his first passions" -- this is the anonymous source speaking in quotation -- "One of his first passions was development, and when he was ambassador to Indonesia in the Reagan years, he was out there with the chicken farmers, and he's kind of made for this job in some way."