‘A license granted to liars’

The Associated Press news story in Tuesday’s newspaper told of the turmoil inside the Central Intelligence Agency following the resignation of Stephen Kappes and Michael Sulick, the top two officials in the agency’s clandestine service.

It ran for roughly 15 column inches, ending with a paragraph so ludicrously cryptic that it must have impressed even the jaded old pros of the CIA’s clandestine service long used to not disclosing anything to anyone for any reason.

Take a gander at this beaut of a paragraph and then tell me you don’t long for the good old days when newspapers would rather get scooped by the competition than run a story relying on anonymous sources.

“A front-runner for Kappes’ job heading the clandestine service is the current director of the CIA’s counterterrorist center, who cannot be publicly identified because he is undercover, said an intelligence official, also speaking on condition of anonymity.”

Now, I’ve read some nothing paragraphs in my day – indeed, may even have written a few in moments of temporary brainlock. But that one surely takes the prize for best illustrating how the media can mindlessly go to hell with the joke in allowing the malignant cancer that is the anonymous source to infect its news copy.

The scourge has become so entrenched that it’s nigh impossible to find a major story in newspapers and news magazines these days – especially those involving government and foreign affairs – that doesn’t report that sources spoke “only on condition of anonymity.”

Not that this sorry situation doesn’t also frequently apply to the more mundane news story. An incident occurs in a remote spot halfway around the world – a ferry boat sinks, say, or a train derails and drops into a jungle ravine – and the news article reporting the event quotes some innocent villager “speaking only on condition of anonymity” saying stuff such as, “It was an accident.”

Readers are unsure why it is imperative that they not know the name of this person responsible for such earth-shattering information making its way into the news story. I have always supposed the news source in such cases demanded anonymity because in his country it is a capital offense to speak without saying anything. But that’s only a guess, and I suppose it could be a wrong one.

The anonymous-source craze is also alive and well right here in our own back yard, of course. Just two days ago, a Republican state senator “who asked to remain unidentified” disclosed that he and his buddies would have preferred Sen. John Martin, the Ayatollah of Eagle Lake, as president of the state Senate over Sen. Beth Edmonds of Freeport, whom majority Democrats elected. Similar examples can be found almost daily.

As well, the anonymous source’s first cousin – the news story that never identifies the person the story is about – is another phenomenon that flourishes locally, seemingly more popular with each passing news cycle: A 46-year-old man, his name withheld, is found injured and dazed near his skidder in the woods of Penobscot County and is airlifted to a Bangor hospital. Two local kids wreck their cars on a back road in a Dukes-of-Hazard style maneuver and remain unidentified by police for days. The Zoo Employee With No Name is attacked by a leopard at a Trenton menagerie and carted off to the hospital…

And so it goes. The notion that names make news – once the cornerstone of the news media’s modus operandi – seemingly is fast becoming quaint, its steady retreat bemoaned mainly by old fogydom.

Still, hope remains. In a column last May, Daniel Okrent, public editor for The New York Times, broached the touchy subject of the anonymous source, declaring “there is nothing more toxic to responsible journalism.”

“But there is often nothing more necessary, too,” he wrote, explaining that crucial stories might never see print if a name had to be attached to every bit of information. A newspaper “has an obligation to convince readers why it believes the sources it does not identify are telling the truth,” though, Okrent stated.

The standard editor defense that the newspaper is not confirming what a news source says – that it is merely reporting the statement – may work fine when applied to statements of sources speaking on the record, the Times editor wrote. But when applied to anonymous sources it’s worse than no defense at all. “It’s a license granted to liars,” he suggested.

Hear, hear. Formerly ink-stained wretches the world over will drink to that. But then again, those I once ran with would drink to most anything.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net