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Good investigation on an important subject; note that at its heart the story relies on confidential sources. Wonder what arrangement the NYT journalist has made with these sources in the event of his being legally required to disclose their identity. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/us/politics/jeffrey-clark-trump-justice-department-election.html?referringSource=articleShare
Granting anonymity and confidentiality to sources who are in a position to provide important information, especially for sensitive investigations, will always remain a legitimate and productive part of professional journalism. But...
Norman Pearlstine’s impassioned insider account, “Off The Record: The Press, the Government, and the War on Anonymous Sources” (2007), highlights the crisis of source protection for US journalism during the George W. Bush presidency...
“Most conversations with unnamed sources are not ‘confidential’...In general, Confidential Source Status should be reserved for sources...providing information that is important and in the public interest, and who, by doing so, are risking their lives, jobs, or reputations.”
Pearlstine emphasises that “if the reporter, editor, and source cannot reach an understanding [by which confidentiality is guaranteed to the source come what may], the publication cannot publish the information.”
My apologies: the NYT investigative journalist is Katie Benner who covers the Justice Department and is “part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for public service for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues”. @ktbenner
A major problem for Indian journalism is the licence it provides to official, corporate, and other privileged sources to use and abuse its columns and broadcast space, hiding behind the veil of anonymity or confidentiality.
These sources are often able to wield power and influence without responsibility — promoting official agendas and special interests, attacking and, at times, scandalizing opponents and opposing views, planting self-serving stories and, from time to time, plain disinformation.
The justification for the demand of anonymity & confidentiality is rarely questioned by reporters and the deals struck routinely between reporter and privileged source to grant confidential status are rarely monitored and supervised properly within the newsroom.
Thus the misuse of sources by journalists, and what is even more damaging, the misuse of journalists and the news media by privileged sources, have assumed epidemic proportions. And quite often those responsible for the epidemic in the first place are at the top!
