PhotoDude.com

Mon. May 16, 2005

Deadly Anonymous

It was just one paragraph in one magazine, one with a simple reference to one anonymous source. Within days, it brought riots and death.

By the end of the week, the rioting had spread from Afghanistan throughout much of the Muslim world, from Gaza to Indonesia. Mobs shouting “Protect our Holy Book!” burned down government buildings and ransacked the offices of relief organizations in several Afghan provinces. The violence cost at least 15 lives, injured scores of people and sent a shudder through Washington, where officials worried about the stability of moderate regimes in the region.

The spark was apparently lit at a press conference held on Friday, May 6, by Imran Khan, a Pakistani cricket legend and strident critic of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. Brandishing a copy of that week’s NEWSWEEK (dated May 9), Khan read a report that U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo prison had placed the Qur’an on toilet seats and even flushed one.

At NEWSWEEK, veteran investigative reporter Michael Isikoff’s interest had been sparked by the release late last year of some internal FBI e-mails that painted a stark picture of prisoner abuse at Guantánamo. Isikoff knew that military investigators at Southern Command (which runs the Guantánamo prison) were looking into the allegations. So he called a longtime reliable source, a senior U.S. government official who was knowledgeable about the matter. The source told Isikoff that the report would include new details that were not in the FBI e-mails, including mention of flushing the Qur’an down a toilet.

On Friday night, Pentagon spokesman [Lawrence] DiRita called NEWSWEEK to complain about the original PERISCOPE item [...] On Saturday, Isikoff spoke to his original source, the senior government official, who said that he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Qur’an, including a toilet incident. But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report. Told of what the NEWSWEEK source said, DiRita exploded, “People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?”

Newsweek: “How a Fire Broke Out”

Now, reporters make mistakes all the time, and sometimes even shade their stories by leaving out information that doesn’t fit their “thrust,” or including information that … isn’t quite solid. This is nothing new, or particularly remarkable. If you’ve ever been involved in an event or story that was covered by the newspaper, you’ve likely noticed the details you read don’t always quite match what you actually saw. But usually those “mistakes,” those “shadings” in print don’t end up with dead people.

Didn’t these people see “All the President’s Men”? Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford couldn’t just run a story based on the anonymous ramblings of some dude with a porn star nickname. Their boss, Jason Robards, wouldn’t let them until they had positive confirmation via an independent source.

But I guess that was just a fictional movie, eh? It’s not like a movie can take down a President or anything.

Today, we read all kinds of things in the news based on the word of “a senior administration official” or a “high level party source” or other such euphemisms for “somebody who hasn’t got the balls to attach their name to this information, yet can’t keep their mouth shut.”

I know, this is one of the joyful constructs that allows us to get any information at all out of the Beltway, and anonymous sourcing is a journalistic tool that is often used legitimately. But even the White House press corp is bucking that horse, telling Scott McClellan they may just stop showing up for the background briefings that have to be sourced as anonymous, as they feel it’s been abused.

If there are multiple well placed anonymous sources saying essentially the same thing, I might be more inclined to accept a story based on that. But that’s not what we’ve been seeing. In this case there was one anonymous source, and when the whole story was run by two Pentagon officials, one had no comment at all, and the other corrected another detail but was silent on the rest of the story. No confirmation, no denial, just silence. That’s what they considered acceptable “confirmation” of their one anonymous source.

It even bleeds “outside the page,” as people like Eason Jordan and Seymour Hirsch make fairly outrageous statements in public speeches they cannot and do not in print or on air, due to a lack of proper sourcing, i.e., supporting facts. And they wonder why their credibility is plummeting.

Yet after admitting they got the story wrong, and that deaths came from it, Newsweek is tone deaf enough to write … “More allegations, credible or not, are sure to come.”

Credible or not. Isn’t it part of their job to help us determine credibility, like, beforehand? Or can you just sling any old thing you heard from an anonymous source on the front page, and let the chips fall where they may? “Oops, turns out it wasn’t true. Well, more allegations, credible are not, are sure to come. And you’ll find them published right here.”

There are those who are saying the problem isn’t Newsweek, it is people who will riot, kill and threaten jihad over a copy of a book. Which just reveals our blindered perspective. We may see that Bible you can find in most every hotel room as just another copy of a book, even if it’s a special book, but other religions do not hold the same view. Many Muslims view each copy of the Qur’an as a precious thing, in a way we Western Christians do not, and likely can’t understand. “Hey, that was a bad thing to do, but it’s just a copy of a book, you can get another. It’s not like he flushed your God.”

But imagine if some zealots somewhere reportedly made their media hey-day by burning a crucifix with a figure of Christ nailed on it. Many non-Christians (Muslim or Jew) might be moved to say “Hey, that was a bad thing to do, but it’s just a sculpture of one of the prophets. It’s not like he burned your God.”

How many Christians would be screaming about how they simply didn’t understand, because they had not accepted Christ as their Savior? It is a matter of perspective, and when it comes to religion, there are a’plenty who will tell that you that unless you are A Believer As They Are, you simply cannot understand.

So let’s assume that, and look at the causative act instead. Where does the responsibility lie? The argument is strong that it lies with the unfortunately anonymous bozo who first said one thing, and then when things got hot, “could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced” in the report. But he/she gets off scott-free … anonymous. How convenient for them.

So the buck stops with Newsweek, if they choose to publish based on one anonymous source and a quite wishful concept of “confirmation.” And in my opinion those consequences fall on any media outlet that plays fast and loose with these anonymous sources. If a rumor starts floating around (the ultimate anonymous source) that a right wing anti-abortion activist had carnal intimacy with a mule, should they print that as well? Would that be responsible? Oh wait, that’s true.

OK, I’ll admit, you just never know what seemingly unbelievable story will actually turn out to be true. But you can’t just run with it based on one guy saying “it’s true, but you can’t say it was me that told you.” Or else people can get hurt, figuratively, financially, or literally. You have to try and get it from the mule’s horse’s mouth.

This is another Lesson In Media, part of an ongoing five year series. We’ve learned that first reports are, at best, incomplete, and often, completely wrong. We’ve learned that a scoop and the sensationalist trump responsibility and fact-checking. We’ve learned that bias abounds from all points of the spectrum, and combined with the Rule Of First Reports, this means we must patiently filter each story through multiple sources. We’ve learned that Journalistic Hotdogs (if not for Nancy Grace, I’d simply call them “Geraldo’s”) can strangle objectivity breathless with their off-mike hand in about two seconds flat. And we’ve learned that when a story talks about an anonymous source, they’re talking about someone who has an agenda so potentially damaging they don’t even want their name attached to it.

And sometimes that one piece of really bad information can be latched onto by others with a different agenda … one that leaves people dead.

I don’t know if the media collectively will ever learn. I guess that means it’s up to us to learn, eh? So the next time you read an article that quotes deliberately anonymous sources, realize it may well be more fiction than fact. And maybe someday the media will catch on that we don’t trust them and their unnamed game any more.