Unnamed Sources: A Utilitarian Exploration of their Justification and Guidelines for Limited Use (original) (raw)

Anonymous Sources: A Utilitarian Exploration of Their Justification and Guidelines for Limited Use

Communication Faculty Publications, 2011

This article critically examines the practice of unnamed sourcing in journalism. A literature review highlights arguments in favor of and against their use. Then, the authors examine some common examples of anonymous sourcing using the lens of utilitarianism, the ethical model commonly used to justify the practice. We find that few uses of unnamed sourcing can be justified when weighed against diminished credibility and threats to fair, transparent reporting. The authors then suggest specific guidelines for journalists that, if ...

Use of Anonymous, Government-Affiliated and Other Types of Sources In Investigative Stories

2005

This study analyzed the extent to which anonymous sources appear vital to obtaining newsworthy information by comparing the use of sources in newspaper stories that have won awards from Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. (IRE) between 1995 and 2002 with the sourcing patterns of other newspaper entries in the same contest that neither won awards nor were in the category of finalists. Winning newspaper stories used more anonymous sources than nonwinners. Winners and nonwinners used government-affiliated sources in about the same proportion.

The Right of Journalists Not to Disclose Their Sources and the New Media

This essay deals with the question of whether the right of journalists not to disclose their sources should be extended so as to cover the various ‘citizen journalists’ of the New Media. After expounding some jurisprudential attempts to confront this issue in the USA and after tracing the restrictive tendencies in the available instruments of the Council of Europe, we examine and then criticize a recent attempt to escape the problem through focusing on the ‘source’ rather than on the ‘journalist’. Returning back to the traditional context of the debate, in the last section of our essay we propose an enlargement of the traditional conception of the ‘journalist’, in order to provide protection to all persons who disseminate information to the general public through the use of New Media, on condition that these persons had the intent to do so (i.e. to disseminate information) already at the inception of the information-gathering process.

Absolutism and the Confidentiality Debate: Confidentiality and Journalists Sources

Sources confidentiality is the one absolute in journalism. A guarantee never to divulge the name of a confidential sources is part of all codes of conduct and is the one clause that never contains a qualification, such as 'save where the public interest demands otherwise'. However, there are problems with this rule, especially when it is used by public relations practitioners or is used when it is clearly not in the public interest.