Anonymous sources are a problem.
Some stories could never be told without them. Some whistle-blowers would be much less inclined to pucker up if they couldn’t do it in the dark. On the other hand, granting anonymity to someone with a gripe provides a shield for people to attack, mislead and outright lie with impunity. And it makes some people question the integrity of the media that grants anonymity. How do readers know those anonymous sources are real people? And, since we don’t know who they are, we can’t know much about their motivation or their veracity.
The media’s challenge is balancing the interests of the attacked, the attacker and the public the media is supposed to serve. In a recent editorial, The Cavalier Daily explained how it decides whether to let someone speak anonymously: “The Cavalier Daily Book of Policies and Procedures states, ‘Sources who make legitimate requests that their names not be used and offer important information will be cited anonymously.’”
The editor-in-chief makes the final call.
The question, of course, is how you define “legitimate.”
All this comes up, of course, because of a Jan. 13 article in which an ex-University student accused the honor system – and several individuals, including jury members, a trial chair and the council for the community – of unfairly convicting her of plagiarism and unreasonably denying her request for appeal. Along the way, the unnamed ex-student also called into question the judgment and fairness of a professor.
The professor was named in the story. So were two students who apparently served as councils for the community.
Letters to the editor came in, including one from someone who claimed to be the unnamed ex-University student’s mother, which seems to me to compromise that ex-student’s anonymity.
But that’s beside the point of this column.
I commend the Cavalier Daily for explaining itself to its readers. In the editorial quoted above, the paper explained the standards it used to decide the anonymity question. It identified the position, if not the person, ultimately responsible for the decision. And it suggested a policy change that might improve the situation: “Perhaps if the Honor Committee allowed students who wish to have their trial discussed publicly to waive their privacy rights voluntarily, the Committee could provide more detailed information about those trials.”
Indeed. But would an ex-University student willing to speak only if her name were withheld take advantage of such a policy? Waiving privacy rights would seem to mean waiving anonymity.
Certainly The Cavalier Daily was within its rights to grant this ex-University student anonymity. Whether that was a wise decision is another question.
“In this case, the reason the source requested anonymity was obvious enough,” the editorial explained. “Making her expulsion public knowledge threatened her prospects for the future.”
That is a reason to request anonymity. It is not a reason to grant anonymity.
Nearly every edition of nearly every newspaper in the United States contains the name of someone who would rather not see his or her name there. That’s part of what newspapers do. They find out things people would like to keep secret and they make them public.
Sometimes that’s something big – say an illegal wiretapping program. Sometimes it’s something relatively small – someone whose momentary inattention led him or her to park a car against a light pole, perhaps.
In this case, it was an ex-University student who did something a professor and a jury of her peers judged to be serious enough to expel her from what’s famously called the community of trust. And what was gained by granting her anonymity? In my opinion, not much.
Though the editorial explanation called the article balanced, I didn’t find it to be so. It contained allegations from the ex-University student, attacks on the Honor System from the president of Hoos Against Single Sanction and very general responses from a defender of the system. I learned that someone convicted by the system and someone opposed to the single sanction don’t like the system. And I learned that someone very much invested in the system thinks the system works well.
I don’t find that particularly enlightening. It’s certainly not worth granting anonymity to someone who clearly has an ax of her own to grind.
Tim Thornton is The Cavalier Daily’s ombudsman. He can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.
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