Anonymous Sources
I've been biting my tongue on a rambling rant about how the BBC has handled the whole Andrew Gilligan reporting mess. In short, I think the BBC screwed up by pretending their reporter didn't screw up in the first place. Tony Blair's people, despite what the Hutton report said last week, surely did some measure of wrong and weapons inspector David Kelly is not without blame either. Plenty of guilt to spread around.

But I'd like to use this mess as a jumping off point to discuss some things about anonymous sources. As a reporter, I've used them. As an editor, I've approved them sometimes knowing, other times not knowing who the source was. As a random newsroom flunkie, I often learned the names of other reporters' sources because other careless editors decided to banter the name about in the newsroom forgetting that names sometimes leak out that way.

I've also been used as an anonymous source and one time in particular I was burned in a way that really gave me pause about how many unethical or sloppy reporters there are out there. This one time in particular I talked to a reporter because we had mutual friends. The first time he called me I was in a bar and I joked that even if I was going to talk on the record, he wouldn't be able to use it because I was close to drunk anyhow and therefore unreliable. I did indeed make it clear in that call and all that followed that I was not to be quoted. I gave him names of people to talk to, in some cases phone numbers. I gave him the background and told him what I expected several people would say or not say. I even gave him questions that I would ask if I were doing the story myself. This went on for days and he kept getting nowhere. Before his final deadline he called me begging for me to go on the record. He even read back (hello?!) direct quotes of things I said that he now wanted to use because he had nothing else. Absolutely not, I said. But the story comes out and there are all the quotes he wanted to use, attributed to an anonymous source. The adjectives used to describe me weren't totally honest. I called him and he claims he misunderstood me.

I knew he lied and why. He burned me but didn't care. He knew I wouldn't go public because I wanted to remain anonymous, so who was I going to tell? In retrospect, I realize I should have called his editor.

Now think about weapons inspector Kelly. He speaks to sloppy BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan and gets anonymity from him. Supposedly Kelly (who killed himself as this all unfolded in July) heard the Gilligan report and thought it sounded close to what he had said, but not close enough. So Kelly thinks Gilligan has another source. Then another BBC reporter calls Kelly for his opinion on the first report -- neither of them knowing Kelly is the source for the first report. Then still later a third BBC reporter for yet another BBC show calls Kelly and uses him as an anonymous source to comment on the first two (Kelly) statements.

So even if all parties involved are acting with good faith (and Gilligan, in his second testimony for the Hutton hearings conceded he made mistakes) it would be possible for the same anonymous source to "confirm" his own facts or theories several times over.

And sadly this isn't exclusively a BBC problem. I bet if you gathered together any five reporters -- even from the same publication -- you'd be unlikely to get them to agree what "off the record" means. Some reporters take that promise to mean they will protect the source's identity even from their own editor and a judge if ordered to produce it. Other reporters seem to think that they can do anything with the information short of print the source's name next to the quote. It really runs the gamut.

You've probably heard enough from me on this, but here's a couple of other things on this topic:

* the BBC policies on anonymous sources (pdf file - scroll to page 24)
* details of the Kelly/Gilligan flap as it unfolded in the Brit papers last summer. The whole thing happened to hit the fan just as we arrived in England for the annual visit with the in-laws. I blogged it then -- and as I just looked back on it, I see I was just as ticked off about the anonymous sources thing back then.
- posted by Amy @ 2/02/2004 10:06:00 PM