Off-the-record, deep background, and being used
Photo by Flickr user Hello Turkey Toe
Howard Kurtz takes on journalists today in a column on the increasing use of unnamed sources: Don’t use my name; the anonymity game.
Kurtz longs for the days when sources withheld their names because what they told a journalist could get them fired (or worse) and maybe get someone indicted.
“For day-to-day political potshots, though,” Kurtz writes, “it’s really become a kind of free pass: Here, say something snarky about someone who ticks you off and we’ll publish it.”
Kurtz writes for The Washington Post and, of course, since politics is the local industry, most of his examples are political. But he points out that business is not immune to sources dangling off-the-record comments. He praises the unnamed source who revealed to the N.Y. Times that in June 2007,
“an eBay employee claimed that Ms. (Meg) Whitman became angry and forcefully pushed her in an executive conference room at eBay’s headquarters, according to multiple former eBay employees with knowledge of the incident. . . .
“The employee, Young Mi Kim, was preparing Ms. Whitman for a news media interview that day. . . . Two of the former employees said the company paid a six-figure financial settlement to Ms. Kim, which one of them characterized as ‘around $200,000.’ “
Kurtz doesn’t do more than just remind journalists to be careful, don’t take the easy route, and don’t let yourself be used.
Let me offer some resources as reminder about when and how to use anonymous sources.
