Chapter 13:Dealing With Sources of Information
Ethical Issues in Reporter/Source Relationships
Joann Byrd, “A guide for evaluating sources,” poynteronline, March 1, 2000.
Steven Mendoza, “To friend or not to friend?”, American Journalism Review, October/November 2008. Should reporters befriend their sources via social media?
Jack Fuller, News Values (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 41.
The New York Times, Ethical Journalism, Sections 22-24.
Julie Moos, “Is ‘off the record’ a relic of traditional journalism?”, poynteronline, Nov. 21, 2011. In today’s media environment, “PR professionals – and some former and current journalists – are debating whether it’s realistic to expect ‘off the record’ conversations to stay private.”
Video clip: A link to a video in which a PR professional discusses the question:
Stefanie Friedhoff, “Be careful who you quote,” Nieman Reports, Summer 2012. Friedhoff interviews with Melanie Sloan, an ethics watchdog, who says some nonprofits that claim to supply expert opinions are set up by spin doctors to further corporate agendas.
Forrest Williams, “Washington Post reporter allows college officials to alter story on controversial test,” The Texas Observer, July 24, 2012. According to Williams, the Post reporter allowed University of Texas press officers to examine at least two complete drafts of his article about a widely used standardized test that purports to determine how much students have learned in college. The reporter allowed the university officials “to suggest critical edits, some of which ended up in the published story.” The article includes varying reactions from media ethics experts.
Bruce Porter, “Lost and found,” Columbia Journalism Review, November/December 2012. “In 1967, an ambitious young reporter broke a promise to a troubled source and inadvertently made her famous. Forty-three years later, he set out to find her and apologize.”
The reporter and the hit man:
Alicia C. Shepard, “The reporter and the hit man,” American Journalism Review, April 2001. Len Jenoff told Nancy Phillips that he had arranged the murder of a rabbi's wife – at the rabbi's request. But the confession was off the record. What should she do?
Nancy Phillips, “Tale of murder took years to unfold,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 7, 2000.
Robert Hanley, “2 hit men get 23-year terms for killing wife of rabbi,” The New York Times, Jan. 31, 2003.
The BALCO case, in which the San Francisco Chronicle published secret grand-jury testimony about the use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional baseball:
Bob Egelko, “BALCO case has journalism in a quandary,” San Francisco Chronicle,Feb. 18, 2007.
Phil Bronstein, “Why we brought you the BALCO story,” San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 12, 2004. The then-editor of the Chronicle explains why the newspaper published secret grand-jury testimony in the investigation into steroids in baseball.
Edward Wasserman, “In defense of telling secrets,” The Miami Herald, May 28, 2006.
Edward Wasserman, “The dilemma of the evil but truthful source,” Media Ethics Magazine, Spring 2011, Vol. 22, No. 2. Wasserman reexamines the media’s performance in the BALCO case, focusing on this dilemma: “The journalist is given solid information of clear public importance and knows it has been given to further a private purpose that is morally problematic. Does the journalist’s professional obligation to put that information before the public entitle him or her to ignore that private agenda?” The Media Ethics article is in Academic Databases. A version can be found here:
The Challenges of Beat Reporting
Edward Wasserman, “The insidious corruption of beats,” Miami Herald, Jan. 8, 2007.
Emilie Lounsberry, “Beats, courts and sources,” an unpublished essay, Aug. 20, 2007. [See separate file in this folder.]
David Cay Johnston, “It’s scary out there in ReportingLand: Beats are fundamental to journalism, but our foundation is crumbling,” Nieman Reports, Winter 2010. “Whole huge agencies of government and, for many news organizations, the entirety of state government go uncovered. There are school boards and city councils and planning commissions that have not seen a reporter in years. … Increasingly what I see are news reports evidencing a basic lack of knowledge about government.”
Anonymous Sources
Clark Hoyt, “Culling the anonymous sources,” The New York Times, June 8, 2008.
Bill Keller, “Memo on anonymous sources,” The New York Times, June 9, 2008.
Don Van Natta Jr., Adam Liptak and Clifford J. Levy, “The Miller case: A notebook, a cause, a jail cell and a deal,” The New York Times, Oct. 16, 2005.
Bob Steele, “Who said that? Guidelines for evaluating sources,” poynteronline, Aug. 1, 1999.
Cheryl Reid, “Anonymous sources bring down a senator,” American Journalism Review,
April 1992. The Seattle Times’ use of anonymous sources’ allegations of sexual misconduct about Senator Brock Adams.
Ben H. Bagdikian, “When the Post banned anonymous sources,”American Journalism Review, August/September 2005.
Rachel Smolkin, “Reporters and confidential sources,” American Journalism Review,December2005/January 2006. AJR sent a seven-question survey about confidential sources to journalists who investigate areas such as politics and policy, courts and law, and homeland security.
Jill Abramson, The New York Times, “Talk to the Newsroom: The use of anonymous sources,” nytimes.com, June 9, 2008.
Clark Hoyt, “Those persistent anonymous sources,” The New York Times, March 22, 2009.
Phil Corbett, “A reminder on anonymous sources,” the standards editor’s memo to the staff of The New York Times, Aug. 31, 2010.
Ryan Chittum, “The dead source who keeps on giving: Fortune joins the WSJ in putting Jerome York on the record after his death,” Columbia Journalism Review, posted online Jan. 18, 2011. Chittum writes: “When you agree to go off the record, that doesn’t mean ‘off the record until I die’ – unless you negotiated it that way. Another way to put it: an off-the-record agreement is an oral contract between the source and the journalist. That contract isn’t voided by one party’s death.”
Jim Romenesko, “AP: No opinion or speculation from anonymous sources,” poynteronline, Aug. 1, 2011. Contains an AP memo on the subject.
The Debate Over Verbatim Quoting
Fawn Germer, “Are quotes sacred?”, American Journalism Review, September 1995.
Some journalists say it’s fine to “improve” quotations as long as the meaning isn’t changed. Others argue that the practice is dishonest.
Hallie C. Falquet, “Verbatim,” American Journalism Review, October/November 2006.
When good people use bad grammar.
John Solomon, “Pulling back the curtain,” National Public Radio, May 25, 2007.
Deborah Howell, “Quote, unquote,” The Washington Post, Aug. 12, 2007.
Ray Glier, “College Football: Pioneer sees a coach first and foremost,” The New York Times, Dec. 3, 2003, with correction appended on Dec. 6, 2003.
David Maraniss, Clemente:The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), 155, 174.
Allan M. Siegal and William G. Connolly, The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage (New York: Times Books, 1999), 278.
Merrill Perlman, “Never the more: Replacing a word in a quotation can lead to trouble,” Columbia Journalism Review,Nov. 29, 2010.
Perlman, “How to quote e-mail, tweets and such,” Columbia Journalism Review, March 5, 2012.
Be Cautious in Interviewing Children
Al Tompkins, “Guidelines for interviewing juveniles,” poynteronline, May 17, 1999.
Elizabeth Stone, “Using children as sources: Dilemmas for journalists,” Columbia Journalism Review, September/October 1999. (Academic databases)
Jenn Burleson Mackay, “Journalist reliance on teens and children,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 2008, Vol. 23 Issue 2, p126-140. Considers the ethical implications of quoting children with particular emphasis on privacy and accuracy. (Academic databases)
Should Sources Be Paid?
Philip Seib and Kathy Fitzpatrick, Journalism Ethics (Fort Worth, Texas: Harcourt Brace, 1997), Journalism Ethics, 109-110.
Tom Goldstein, Journalism and Truth: Strange Bedfellows (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2007), 118.
Michael Wines, “To fill notebooks, and then a few bellies,” The New York Times, Aug. 27, 2006.
Paul Farhi, “Up for audit: ‘Checkbook journalism’ and the news groups that buy big stories,” The Washington Post, Nov. 17, 2010. “[T]hanks to heightened competition for the next big ‘get,’ journalism’s Thou-Shalt-Not-Pay commandment has lately been taking a beating.”
Tony Rogers, “Avoiding checkbookjournalism: Paying sources for information creates problems – ethical and otherwise,” about.com, undated entry. Several examples are listed.
See case study below: Paying News Subjects for Photographs.
Should Interviews Be Conducted by E-mail?
Eric Zorn, “In defense of the besieged email interview,” The Chicago Tribune, Feb. 8, 2013. After three college newspapers banned or restricted e-mail interviews, the veteran columnist weighed in. Includes links to related articles.
Mark Lisheron, “The e-mail interview debate,” American Journalism Review, Spring 2013. This article examines the pros and cons.
Attribution of Information Published Elsewhere
Michael Oreskes, “AP announces editorial guidelines for credit and attribution,” the senior managing editor’s memo to the staff of The Associated Press, Sept. 1, 2010.
Case Study No. 12: Newsweek and the Flushing of the Koran
Howard Kurtz, “Newsweek apologizes: Inaccurate report on Koran led to riots,” The Washington Post,May 16, 2005.
Jack Shafer, “Down the toilet at Newsweek,” Slate, May 17, 2005,
CNN, “Reliable Sources: A look at the Newsweek controversy,” May 22, 2005,
Josh White and Dan Eggen, “Pentagon details abuse of Koran,” The Washington Post, June 4, 2005.
Eric Schmitt, “Military details Koran incidents at base in Cuba,” The New York Times, June 4, 2005.
Hedrik Hertzberg, “Big news week,” The New Yorker, May 30, 2005.
Michael Getler, “Yet another wake-up call,” The Washington Post, May 22, 2005.
Jonathan Alter, “A big source of frustration,” Newsweek, May 30, 2005.
Rem Rieder, “Newsweek’s nightmare: A botched story, not a journalistic war crime,”
American Journalism Review, June/July 2005.
Case Study No. 13: Swimming in a Newsmaker’s Backyard Pool
Alita Guillen, “Reporter leaves NBC5 amid Stebic controversy,” CBS/Chicago,July 10, 2007.
Eric Zorn, “Amy Jacobson interview on WGN-AM: ‘I can't apologize enough’ ”, July 11, 2007.
Bob Steele, “A different kind of ‘pool video’ makes waves in Chicago,” July 12, 2007.
Zorn, “Jacobson’s job too high a price for doing her job,” July 12, 2007.
Zorn, “How many times did Amy Jacobson go to the Stebic house? Did she share information with police? Let's ask her!”, July 13, 2007.
Steele, “Jacobson case: Collaborating with cops?”, July 13, 2007.
Carol Marin, “Dogged reporter went too far,” Chicago Sun-Times, July 15, 2007.(News databases.)
Zorn, “Amy Jacobson files suit in ‘pool party’ case,” posted July 7, 2008. Contains text of the lawsuit.
Lucinda Hahn, “Tale of the tape,” Chicago magazine, Dec. 4, 2008.
Janet Lundquist, Sun-Times Media, “Five years later, Lisa Stebic case still unsolved,” April 30, 2012.
Additional Case Studies
Granting news subjects the right to approve quotes:
- Jeremy W. Peters, “Latest word on the trail: I take it back,” The New York Times, July 15, 2012. “[P]oliticians and their advisers are routinely demanding that reporters allow them final editing power over any published quotations. … From Capitol Hill to the Treasury Department, interviews granted only with quote approval have become the default position.” Peters wrote that Bloomberg, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Reuters and The New York Times were among news organizations that had consented to the practice.
- Glenn Greenwald, “Inept stenographers,” Salon, July 17, 2012. In condemning the practice, Greenwald writes: “Journalists’ excuses for their bad behavior – it’s necessary to get quotes – are both fictitious and irrelevant.”
- Jim Romenesko, “Bloomberg News: We don’t allow sources to have ‘quote approval’,” July 24, 2012. Contains a link to a policy memo issued by editor Susan Goldberg and others.
- James Asher, “On Washington journalism,” McClatchy Newspapers, July 26, 2012. The McClatchy bureau chief writes that he has banned the practice of quote approval.
- David Carr, “The puppetry of quotation approval,” The New York Times, Sept. 16, 2012. Carr writes that the practice also extends to business leaders: “[S]ubjects of coverage are asking for, and sometimes receiving, the kind of consideration that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago.”
- Margaret Sullivan, “In new policy, The Times forbids after-the-fact ‘quote approval’,” Sept. 20, 2012. In her Public Editor Journal, Sullivan writes that The Times “is drawing ‘a clear line’ against the practice of news sources being allowed to approve quotations in stories after the fact.” Contains a policy memo from executive editor Jill Abrams.
- Jodi Enda, “The quote approval conundrum,” American Journalism Review, Winter 2012. In a comprehensive analysis of the practice, Enda writes about how journalists are “pushing back against the effort by federal officials and campaign operatives to control the content of interviews.”
Paying news subjects for photographs:
- Society of Professional Journalists’ Ethics Committee, “SPJ Ethics Committee condemns major broadcast networks’ practice of “checkbook journalism,’ ” a news release issued March 23, 2010. The committee’s release came after the attorney for Casey Anthony, accused of murdering her daughter, revealed in an Orlando, Fla., courtroom that ABC News paid Anthony’s family $200,000. In a statement after the payment was revealed in court, ABC said that in August 2008, it bought exclusive rights to “an extensive library of photos and home video for use by our broadcasts, platforms, affiliates and international partners.”
- Julie Moos, “5 reasons broadcasters pay licensing fees for stories and why it corrupts journalism,” poynteronline, June 9, 2011; updated June 13, 2011. Moos writes that journalism organizations are routinely paying large sums for access to information, labeling these payments “licensing fees.”
- Moos, “ABC’s Chris Cuomo defends checkbook journalism: ‘It is the state of play right now,’”poynteronline, June 12, 2011; updated June 13, 2011. Moos’ article contains links to related material, including a slideshow of photos that ABC News bought and a video clip from the “Reliable Sources” interview with Howard Kurtz on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” on June 12, 2011. During the interview Cuomo confirmed to Howard Kurtz that ABC paid Meagan Broussard $10,000 to $15,000 “for photos she sent Anthony Weiner, part of the sex scandal that [cost] the congressman’s job.” Cuomo told Kurtz, “The commercial exigencies of the business reach into every aspect of reporting now … It is my decision. I’m the anchor of “20/20.” I could have said, “Don’t do it." I don’t because it is the state of play right now.” In the video clip, this exchange begins at 5:49.
- Moos, “ABC News has paid $215,000 for Casey Anthony scoops,” poynteronline, June 29, 2011. A witness in the Anthony murder trial, who eventually found the body of Anthony’s 2-year-old daughter Caylee, testified that he had been paid $15,000 by ABC News for a photograph of a dead rattlesnake he found months earlier in the same area. “I was paid for a licensed picture of a snake but I knew there would probably be an interview involved,” said the witness, meter reader Roy Kronk.
- Howard Kurtz, “ABC bans paying news subjects,” The Daily Beast, July 25, 2011. Kurtz reports: “With no public announcement or fanfare, the news division’s president, Ben Sherwood, has effectively taken ABC out of what had become a competitive bidding war for hot bookings. … ABC will no longer be buying photos or video as a way of getting a news subject to cooperate – a process that had become a fig leaf for purchasing interviews.”
Overruling reporters’ promises:In the 1982 election campaign in Minnesota, a campaign aide gave reporters information about a rival candidate’s court record on the condition that he not be named as a source. Editors of two newspapers overruled their reporters and published the source’s name. The ensuing court case, Cohen v. Cowles Media Company, has become a classic in press law courses, but the episode has distinct ethical implications as well. [See separate file in this folder.]
Journalists’ relationships with police: Deni Elliot and Paul Martin Lester, “Is helping the police ever over the thin blue line?”, News Photographer, October 2001. Should a news photographer hand over his camera and cap to a police officer wanting to go undercover to apprehend an armed and dangerous suspect? The ethical answer is “It depends.”
The case of the lost iPhone: In the spring of 2010, the prototype of an as-yet-unreleased version of Apple’s iPhone was found in a bar in Redwood City, California. What happened next raises questions of ethics and law.
- Miguel Helft and Nick Bilton, “For Apple, lost iPhone is a big deal,” The New York Times, April 19, 2010:
Jeff Bercovici, Daily Finance, April 19, 2010: “How checkbook journalism gave Gizmodo its iPhone scoop”:
- Jack Shafer, “Why not pay sources?: My objections are practical, not ethical,” Slate,April 29, 2010. “[T]he Gizmodo case isn’t a perfect entry point for a revival of the paid-sources debate. San Mateo authorities … appear to be interpreting the transaction as a crime in which the finder moved stolen goods. …”
“Media Feeding Frenzy”: Scott Libin and Jay Black, poynteronline, Feb. 23, 1996. Intense media coverage of a teenaged runaway raises a variety of ethical questions.