The Use & Abuse of Anonymity

Details of a plot to sacrifice lives of American college students in an attempt to discredit U.S. foreign policy in the Caribbean were disclosed today.

--Los Angeles Herald-Examiner

Senator Richard Russell is relying on a verbal promise said to have been made in 1962 that Governor Carl Sanders won't run against him for the Senate next fall.

--Atlanta Constitution

When the news came after Pleiku, I can tell you that the whole mind and outlook of Southeast Asia changed overnight.

--Columnist Joseph Alsop

What is now probable is that the U.S.

Marines will, in effect, install a new Dominican government which will be permeated with Communists at all levels. --Columnist William F. Buckley Jr.

These assorted samples of recent news have one thing in common: they were all reported on the word of the most ubiquitous and widely quoted figure in American journalism today--a "highly placed," "highly reliable," but unidentified source. Conscientious newsmen have long distrusted such anonymous authority. "If you can't quote them, the hell with them," says Arville Schaleben, executive editor of the Milwaukee Jour nal--and many editors agree.

But much of today's journalism would be all but impossible without anonymous information. In Washington, where the calculated leak has become a Government tactic, the not-for-attribu-tion story is a fact of journalistic life. Says Peter Lisagor, Washington bureau chief of the Chicago Daily News: "Any new reporter in Washington, fresh from the city hall beat where he was accustomed to putting nothing in the paper without identifying the source, will find that if he tries that here, his sources will dry up on him."

Out on a Limb. Washington reporters must master the delicate art of writing news that is offered on the record, off the record, not for attribution, not for direct attribution, or for background. They must learn how to attribute stories to a "high-level source" in the White House, the State Department or the Pentagon when it is obvious to most readers who that high-level source is. In an era of instant communication, neither the President of the U.S. nor any other high-level source can afford the dangers of hasty misinterpretation. Information that has been passed along not-for-attribution can always be explained or denied later.

The day is past when no direct quotes were permitted at a presidential news conference. From Harry Truman's brusque "No comment" to Lyndon Johnson's lengthy circumlocutions, Presidents have learned to develop gambits for avoiding touchy subjects. But the anony mous answer remains the most popular. And it leads on occasion to such an apparent absurdity as a New York Herald Tribune article attributing quotes from a walking presidential press conference to a "high White House official," while directly above the story appeared an Associated Press photo picturing L.B.J. and the strolling reporters.

Correspondents have learned to be wary of the anonymous Government official anxious to launch a trial bal loon for some new policy. The reporter can never be sure when an official denial will leave him and his story out on a limb. Secretary of Defense Robert Mc-Namara, for example, recently attended a background dinner with reporters at which he remarked that nuclear weapons had not been ruled out for use in Viet Nam. Columnist Doris Fleeson, who was not at the dinner, got the details nonetheless. When she printed them, McNamara, following the established rules of the game, denied ever having met with reporters.

To correspondents who beef about these complex arrangements, Assistant Secretary of Defense Arthur Sylvester replies: "Sure, we will float trial balloons. Reporters should ask themselves, 'What is he giving me this for?' and decide along with their editors, 'Do we want to go along with this?' There is always the wastebasket. But there is always the competition. They might print it. The only defense is to slip in a few lines showing that it is a floater."

Air of Authority. Reporters who get in the habit of using the anonymous source for no apparent reason, are sometimes suspected of manufacturing the quote. But this kind of subterfuge is rarely necessary. Someone can usually be found to say what a reporter wants said. After that, the only purpose of anonymity is to give the quote a spurious air of authority.

The anonymous quote always pre sents a temptation to the reporter, says John Seigenthaler, editor of the Nashville Tennessean. "You get suspicious when quotes are too pat, too much in line with what the reporter or the columnist wants to say. The real danger is when a reporter or a columnist uses an anonymous quote to support his own point of view."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.