Gentlemanly ‘Vetting’
Leaves Newsweek
With Bloody Nose

By Michael Bradley

Not too many people today, even inside the newspaper business, fully understand the process that brought ‘confidential sources’ to prominence among journalists and publishers. It’s a story worth telling, though, because its roots are in the very time period that seems to be currently avenged by the GOP.

The concept of confidential sources gained credibility and power immediately following the downfall of Richard Nixon, and that should hardly be surprising since it was the unnamed source, Deep Throat, who gave two obscure Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, international fame.

If it wasn’t for Deep Throat, it is unlikely that the criminal activities of the Nixon Administration would ever have been illuminated in a way that left Congress with no option other than to act in accordance with the Constitution.

And in truly American fashion – perhaps more generally in human fashion – the device that brought this reality about suddenly became bigger and more important than it should have been. Once confidential sources gained such credibility, they moved from the slightly disreputable to the distinguished, and in the process became accepted as a norm rather than as something that should be used cautiously and in great moderation.

The result is that in the decades since White House aide Alexander Butterfield admitted there was an oval-office tape-recording system, which then confirmed what Woodward and Bernstein and their courageous Washington Post publisher and editor had printed, using anonymous sources has moved into the mainstream.

But I remember how different it was prior to those important events.

I have been a newspaperman virtually all of my working life, and as a result – for the proverbial better or worse in such a scenario – I’ve witnessed first-hand the changes that followed the use of information from the anonymous Deep Throat.

In the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s I was an editor with a respected, mid-size daily newspaper – after which I became a publisher myself, and now work as a publisher’s consultant and newspaper broker – and it is interesting to note how anonymous sources were treated by solid Massachusetts dailies during that period.

It is worth also recalling that the Bay State was the great liberal anathema for the Nixon era GOP, confirmed by the fact it was the only state to give its electoral votes to George McGovern in 1972. Yet despite the GOP rhetoric of the time, newspapers in Massachusetts were mainstream (read ‘middle of the road’) or conservative, with the possible exception of The Boston Globe, the major regional daily that under the Taylor family ownership and the editorship of Thomas Winship moved from a somewhat provincial paper to a national publication during that time period, helped along ably by columnists like the late George Frazier and the Taylor family’s willingness to stand with the New York Times and print the Pentagon Papers, etc., etc.

Even then, however, anonymous sources were treated very carefully.

In my newsroom, when a reporter came forward with a story based on a knowledgeable source that requested anonymity, the approach was particularly cautious. The norm was to require the reporter to find an additional confirming source, separate from and unaffiliated with the original source, before the story would be green lighted.

Additionally, each editor was free to add his or her own criteria, and mine was difficult: I required my reporters to accept my journalistic integrity; that is, before I would accept a reporter’s anonymous source, the reporter was required to advise his or her source that I would be privy to their identity. I was always ready to assure the source directly, if needed, that the same journalistic protection would be available from me as from the given reporter.

But if that criteria could not satisfy the given sources, the story went no further, unless of course the facts could be brought forward ‘on the record.’

If nothing else, this forced the reporter to work harder, and it made my job as editor that much more difficult, since the stock in trade of news organizations is the ability to tell stories not only with the powerful effect of knowledge derived on the behalf of the reader, but with immediacy. I am pleased to be able to state that no matter how tempting it sometimes was to move to print and push papers while distancing competitors, I never violated those principles.

The stiff criteria was not uncommon, however, since the universal feeling in the newspaper industry was that using anonymous sources was a last resort. In effect, using unidentified sources was considered an indication that the news organization had failed in finding a means to develop a story on the record.

And then there was Watergate.

It was an amazing sequence of events, and people today – even some who lived through it – forget that it was easily some two years in the process. It was slow and incremental. As the information piled up, at first through police reporting by Bernstein, the Nixon Administration reacted in a variety of ways that in the end served to drive the story.

If there’s smoke, there must be fire somewhere!

The screen was dense, though, and while Woodward was able to help Bernstein capitalize on his information, there is a reasonable probability that without the anonymous Deep Throat, the story line would have been dead-ended and the Nixon Administration might have found a way out of the hole it dug for itself with such a wide-ranging series of actions that were clearly opposed to the Constitution, and frequently were simply criminal.

When The Washington Post made the incredibly hard decision to move forward, basing everything on the credibility of Deep Throat and their reporters ability to confirm as much as possible relating to the source’s assertions, modern journalism shifted. Katherine Graham and The Post, with Ben Bradlee at the helm, took to political seas that even the famous Grey Lady was reluctant to sail into, though the New York Times soon followed in The Post’s wake.

Deep Throat was several things all rolled into one; he or she was powerful, extraordinarily well connected, and accurate. The leads provided to Woodward and Bernstein unraveled the Nixon Administration’s various conspiracies and led to recognition that the only way to avoid impeachment was for the president to resign.

Internally in the media, the ultimate consequence of all of this was a sudden and dramatic about-face regarding anonymous sources. Such reporting was more than just in vogue, it became commonplace. And worst of all, over the 30-odd years since Watergate the administration of it became conceptually loose.

No longer did an editor intensively grill reporters, and in many cases it wasn’t even necessary to have a second source to confirm the first one's statements! Instead, a ridiculous vetting process evolved whereby the major papers and the major networks would provide officials – sometimes administration executives, sometimes pentagon officers, sometimes Congressional office holders and sometimes newsmakers from other fields – with a draft of a story and see if anyone complained. If there was no complaint, it was assumed the story was okay.

In short, the people who were in fact the focus of the story - usually a story that was critical of those involved, otherwise why would it need vetting - were being allowed to see the story prior to print and if they didn't declare it false or threaten to sue, it was considered okay to print. In a very real way, the major media capitulated on the most basic tenet of long accepted journalistic standards; that is, no one outside the newsroom reads the story until it is printed. 

Normally and historically, if a story of public interest or of public concern is developed, the people who are directly involved - especially those whose actions are about to be revealed as questionable - are given an opportunity to talk on the record, giving their side of the story. But that's all. Anyone who has worked in newspapers knows how many times such newsmakers will ask to read a story prior to print, but that has always been flatly rejected for obvious reasons of journalistic  integrity, exercised on behalf of the reading public.

But somehow in the past decades major media outlets, apparently to avoid the hard work and harder decisions that occur when deciding to print a story that reveals information about people that isn't flattering, became attached to a lazy and contradictory vetting process. It was decided to let the people directly involved in the story read the piece before it goes to press, and then see if they want to challenge it. 

One can only imagine the behind-the-scenes editing that took place as the newsmakers and the press executives negotiated such foolishly vetted stories.  This is a good deal like news via legal advisor, and the only loser was the reader, or in a broader sense, the reading public, who didn't receive the story in its original form, but rather an agreed upon and compromised version that offered at least the illusion of protection against libel suits.

That this process left the media in a position of just waiting to be exploited should not be hard to imagine, but somehow it continued and, until very recently, it seemed to work, since everyone on the top levels of media and government were reacting to each other in a gentlemanly manner. The entire process was based on courtesy and trust and the 'clubbiness'  of insider knowledge and negotiations.  But now, in the rough and tumble world of the so-called Christian Right and their radical counterparts in the Bush Administration, and increasingly in the GOP in general, such niceties have been thrown overboard. These hardball right-wingers recognized quickly what a silly and fatuous system this was, and chose when to exploit it to best advantage.

And why not? The ideologues of the current GOP political structure have shown over and over again that theirs is a no-holds barred struggle for total dominance of the American government.

The first indication of this was when Dan Rather’s people sought to vett his now famous story by providing it to the White House press office. When it came back without substantial comment, they led with the story, and conveniently for the Bush Administration the network and Dan Rather became trapped in a web of weakly supportable facts. It wasn’t that the facts weren’t later shown to be largely true, it was simply that they couldn’t be soundly supported immediately, therefore ipso facto they could be portrayed as false.

Amazingly, the media didn’t catch on. The major news organizations failed to realize that the old game was over. And so Newsweek slipped into a story that may yet be proven to be more accurate than not, but which could not be substantiated on its face because it was a single-source piece and the source slipped away, suddenly recanting.

How perfect a scenario for the GOP. The source cannot be named by the media without violating its trust and honor, yet the source can throw honor to the wind in the face of expediency or even darker motives and remain protected by the very media harmed by the retraction.

And now, finally, the hubris involved in the use of secret sources is deflated.

Howard Kurtz, a Washington Post staffer, reports this week that Newsweek Chairman Richard M. Smith has announced that "the cryptic phrase, ‘sources said,’ will never again be the sole attribution for a story in Newsweek."

Smith declared that "tacit information, by anyone, no matter how highly placed or apparently knowledgeable, will not qualify as a secondary source." In other words, the fact no one in the government arena complained about information in a story will no longer become a green light to publish it. Such a close-knit cordiality between the press and the various government branches and other newsmakers is apparently over in that news department,, and that is good for everyone, especially now.

Kurtz goes on to note that Smith made it clear the "burden will now be on reporters to show why anonymity is necessary…only the editor, managing editor and other editors they appoint will have the authority to approve the use of unnamed sources…"

This puts Newsweek in line with the New York Times, USA Today, and its parent company, The Washington Post, and it brings us back to where we were before Watergate, when caution over anonymous sources was all important.

All it took to effect the return to caution was some smart GOP operatives. But how sweet the revenge must have been for all of the GOP to see Newsweek and its parent, the Washington Post Company, take such a public drubbing. It must have been sweeter even than the revenge they exacted against Dan Rather, who had dared to question Mr. Bush Sr. in a less than deferential way and therefore won the undying enmity of the right-wing.

If it wasn’t for the fact that lies spewed by the current radical Republicans are so commonplace, and are so quickly disseminated by the right-wing press and electronic media that a news cycle urgency is created that pushes the mainstream press into copying the stories with so little scrutiny,  it might even be possible to applaud the GOP for halting this type of vetting.

Nonetheless, this at least should help to dissolve the 'clubby' atmosphere of newsmakers and reporters in the nation's capital, and anywhere else where such fraternal friendliness makes it hard to tell the truth without varnish.

The hard fact, however,  is that  even if the radical Republicans now lose the ability to read stories or news scripts beforehand - a policy that may yet continue among other news outlets - a major victory has been gained by the GOP; that is, many average people throughout the country will have been encouraged to further distrust the major news outlets. This is a critical issue, since the current administration has revealed itself to be radical in its beliefs and its agenda, and it appears to be achieving its goals by saying one thing and doing another.

The nation desperately needs a press, and an electronic media, that stands up to the test and reveals contradiction after contradiction, so that the public begins to understand that radical revisionism is the order of the day under George Bush and Richard Cheney, plus their various colleagues in the administration, the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate. Further, it increasingly  appears such ideologues will be seated in the judiciary. The need for the journalistic Fourth Estate of government to act in the manner desired by the Founding Fathers could not be greater.

The current situation seems to dwarf even the cataclysmic events of the Nixon Administration, and this time there is no Deep Throat, and even if one came forward, the process has now been slammed into reverse, so that he or she might be bypassed entirely because the pendulum of acceptable criteria has swung from the concept of  total acceptance of the anonymous source to complete skepticism of the process. One can only hope that somehow the owners of the media, and their lawyers, will find the courage to support aggressive reporting, now that the crutch of vetting stories with sources has been removed.

5/27/2005