Promises of confidentiality aren't made to be broken
I am on record -- early and often, in this space and elsewhere -- complaining that the news media use too many unnamed sources.
We grant anonymity too easily and too frequently, and it's a blot on our profession -- a drag on our credibility that ultimately undermines our ability to do our primary job of reliably informing the public. If more reporters pressed their sources harder -- and more editors pressed their reporters harder -- we would have less anonymity, fewer scandals like the Jayson Blair/New York Times debacle and more public trust and confidence.
The issue of anonymous sources and promises of confidentiality has risen anew with two stories now much in the national news.
One involves a federal judge's order two weeks ago that five reporters -- including Bob Drogin of the Los Angeles Times -- must identify the unnamed government sources who provided information to them for stories on Wen Ho Lee, the former nuclear weapons scientist.
Lee was indicted in 1999 on 59 counts of allegedly mishandling nuclear weapons secrets. After the government's case fell apart, he sued, charging that government officials had violated the Privacy Act by divulging personal information about him during their investigation.
The second confidentiality story involves the disclosure of a CIA officer's identity in Robert Novak's nationally syndicated column last July. Novak quoted two unnamed "senior administration officials" as telling him that Valerie Plame -- whom he not only named but identified as "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction" -- had suggested sending her husband, retired diplomat Joseph Wilson, to Africa last year to investigate possible Iraqi purchases of uranium.
Wilson did go to Africa -- and then pronounced such a transaction "highly unlikely." But President Bush, in his State of the Union address, treated reports of the alleged deal as genuine in his effort to gin up support for war against Iraq.Though there is no evidence Bush knew personally of Wilson's report, when Wilson later accused the Bush administration of "misrepresenting the facts," his wife was "outed." Not only did Novak name her, but the Washington Post subsequently reported that "two top White House officials disclosed Plame's identity to at least six Washington journalists."
What's the problem?
Several non-journalist friends have asked me why the reporters who were leaked to don't just identify the leakers themselves.
