ACCORDING TO THE NEW YORK TIMES, the word of an anonymous senior administration official deserves play on its OpEd pages.
What’s wrong with this?
A new low in “journalism.”
BACK WHEN HECTOR WAS A PUP I worked first as a reporter and later as an editor at a number of newspapers all over this land.
Some dailies with large circulations and some dailies with lesser circulations. I did not work for, nor did I aspire to work for, The NY Times.
One rule in ALL the newspapers for which I worked was that information received from an anonymous source was NOT printable. If it could be attributed to a “real” source, fine; if not, then the information was filed in the nearest “circular file” as having zero value.
In fact, except for the Editorial Page, all information HAD TO BE ATTRIBUTED. No attribution, no space in the newspaper.
Anonymous “tips” were accepted and reporters tried to find attributable sources, but lacking attribution, as far as honest reporters and editors were concerned, an anonymous tip, no matter how tempting, was just an anonymous tip; not in itself newsworthy.
The biggest competition for a legitimate newspaper was rumor. Rumors abound in big cities and small towns. An almost 24-7 job for reporters was tracking down rumors and either laying them to rest with attribution or confirming them with attribution.
The operative word: ATTRIBUTION.
Apparently the NY Times has become politicized to the point where an anonymous source, allegedly a senior administration official – another qualification (allegedly) the NY Times chose not to publish – is accepted as truth personified.
The editors of the NY Times apparently accepted without investigation that the anonymous source actually WAS a senior administration official – after all, that apparently is what the “senior administration official” claimed to be. No evidence, of course.
With an abundance of “weasel words” available to literate NY Times staffers, words such as “allegedly,” the Powers That Be at the once respectable rag have shown total disregard for attribution. If the NY Times believes the anonymous letter writer is indeed a “senior administration official,” then we – all the people who read or hear the writer’s comments from any source – must believe it. “The NY Times said so.” (Correctly, “as it was written in the NY Times. Granted, that is picayunish, but that is the burden of an honest reporter or editor – even one who put away pad and pencil years past.)
I don’t know if what the anonymous “senior administration official” told the NY Times is true or not. I DO know than Clinton’s former Secretary of State John Kerry expresses the same opinion as the anonymous “senior administration official” lending suspicion that the writer is from Hillary Clinton’s camp rather than someone the president can trust. (http://tinyurl.com/y7926vos )
ACCORDING TO THE NY TIMES (http://tinyurl.com/ycev2rwl ),
- James Dao, the paper’s Op-Ed editor, said that the material in the essay was important enough to the public interest to merit an exception (to the NY Times rule prohibiting publication of anonymous posts).
“This was a very strongly, clearly written piece by someone who was staking out what we felt was a very principled position that deserved an airing,” Dao said.
If those are the criteria for getting an anonymous OpEd article published anyone with a command of the language and the ability to communicate persuasively can have anonymously authored fairy tales and pipe dreams published on the NY Times OpEd page. As long as the screed agrees with the NY Times political views, the welcome mat is out for Ms, Mr., and Mrs. Anonymous.
Since in my not-at-all humble opinion, this is NOT the way to run a newspaper or news web site, I’m glad I left it all behind.
Unfortunately for this scrivener, I still am bothered by the lack of professionalism of today’s media.
Anonymous, indeed.
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.
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