Reply #36: this entire episode highlights one of my major criticisms...

[mike_c]

...of American journalism-- one that was echoed by Robert Fisk recently on Democracy Now-- reliance upon unnamed sources rather than people who will go on the record or better yet, physical evidence. It's gotten crazy! Here's what Fisk had to say:

"...I find that an awful lot of my colleagues are quite happy to go along with stories planted or otherwise. You’ve only got to see the number of times on the front page of the New York Times or the L.A. Times or the Washington Post when the phrase “American officials say” appears, particularly the L.A. Times. I can give an example of that, in which a whole story is repeatedly sourced, after 2003, when we know there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction, when we know the press was misled totally in the United States and went along with the war party.

Still we see everything being sourced and re-sourced back to American officials, as if the U.S. administration is the center of world truth. I’ll give you an example. I was actually doing the book tour in Los Angeles, picked up my morning L.A. Times. Here’s a story about Zarqawi, who may or may not exist, of course. “U.S. authorities say,” “U.S. officials said,” “Said one Justice Department counterterrorism official,” “U.S. authorities say,” “officials said,” “U.S. officials said.” It turns to page B-10. It gets worse and worse. Look. “Several U.S. officials said,” “those officials said,” “U.S. officials confirmed” -- stop me when you want -- “American officials complained,” “U.S. officials stressed,” “U.S. authorities believe,” “Said one U.S. senior intelligence official,” “U.S. officials said,” “Jordanian officials said” -- Amy, see, there’s a slight difference here -- “Several U.S. officials said,” “U.S. officials said,” “U.S. officials say,” “say U.S. officials,” “U.S. officials said,” “The American officials said,” “One U.S. counterterrorism official said.” Welcome to American journalism today in Iraq. This is what’s wrong. "

Fisk's comments were directed specifically at coverage of the war against Iraq, but they apply much more broadly, IMO. If TruthOut attributed their story to named sources, or had copies of memos or other physical evidence suggesting that an indictment had been handed down this entire dust up over who's credible and who's not would never have happened except in regard to the sources themselves, which is as it should be, IMO.

The argument that requiring named sources or actual evidence would make stories impossible to get only makes sense in the context of "getting stories" before they're truly credible yet, i.e. asking the readership to share in the authors' and editors' reasoned speculation. That's not good for journalism, IMO.