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Blair Scandal Shows Dangers of Anonymous Sourcing

“Keep a grip on reality” was the message of Thursday’s showcase panel, uttered by National Public Radio’s Daniel Schorr. “We’re losing it.”

In the labyrinthine lower depths of Washington’s JW Marriott Hotel, a hastily assembled panel of journalists gathered to discuss the day’s earlier announcement that The New York Times’ executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd had resigned, exactly five weeks after Jayson Blair resigned from the Times because of repeated instances of fraud and plagiarism.

The discussion replaced the day’s original showcase panel on balancing national security and privacy interests.

Schorr said Blair's misconduct was the latest examples of an increasing problem: journalists losing track of their responsibility to be accurate and truthful in their reporting.

"Reporters and editors have become too isolated from their readers," said Michael Getler, ombudsman of The Washington Post.

The only representative of the New York Times on the panel, reporter Ford Fessenden, offered few specifics on how the paper’s staff was reacting to the resignations, but said that he expected few changes in the paper’s modus operandi.

The situation was “a little prickly,” he said, but “we know where the traps are.” While little new ground was covered in the panel discussion or the questions from the floor afterwards, the showcase provided a forum to air the anxieties and divisions that the recent series of scandals at the Times have provoked in journalistic circles.

Many panelists said the Blair episode has further hurt press credibility and particularly griped about his and other reporters’ use of unattributed sources. Loud applause followed Getler’s impassioned polemic against journalists who tamely accept the increasing boldness of the Washington political establishment in demanding nonattribution.

“No one walks out of press conferences anymore,” he said, harkening back to a time when reporters would refuse to attend news events conducted entirely “on background” and The Washington Post would run Henry Kissinger’s picture next to its quotes from “highly placed government sources.”

“A lot of it could be challenged,” he concluded, and press credibility could be restored in the process.

Raines’ managerial ability came under heavy fire from Schorr, who attributed the editor’s resignation more to an inability to keep the newsroom united than to an effort to restore credibility in the wake of the last month’s high-profile scandals concerning Blair and Rick Bragg, who resigned after he was suspended for overuse of stringers’ information.

Geneva Overholser, Hurley chair at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and others disagreed, citing the renowned disagreeability of many well-respected newspaper editors, including the Post’s Ben Bradlee.

“What happened to Howell is very different from what happened to Ben,” Getler said. Post reporters rallied around Bradlee after reporter Janet Cooke admitted to falsifying a Pulitzer Prize-winning story, while there was a revolution against Raines at the Times, he said.

Perhaps the least-discussed item was the question of the panel’s title: what does “The Blair Affair” mean for investigative reporting. There seemed to be a consensus among most panelists that the scrutiny already given to investigative reports, from editors, lawyers and the public, made the field in some ways the least vulnerable area of journalism.

However, Tom Kunkle, dean of the Philip Merrill School of Journalism at the University of Maryland, reminded the audience that investigative reporting is where the stakes are highest because reporters and editors have the most invested, the deepest personal opinions and the most to gain from success – factors which can skew their judgment and create a powerful temptation to fudge the facts.

For instance, Overholser mentioned mentioned Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Mike Gallagher’s expose of the practices of the Chiquita Brands International fruit corporation. It was recalled after it was found to contain information that Gallagher had obtained illegally by breaking into the voice mail of company officials. Gallagher’s desire to expose what he saw as the company’s exploitative practices has been cited as a possible reason for his conduct.