NEWSWATCH by Thomas Griffith: Just Don't Quote Me

• Share

Newswatch Thomas Griffith

Washington is full of names that make news and of news that is made anonymously by the very same people. This arrangement, convenient to all sides, can also be worrisome. Much of the punditry of Washington columnists and the daily run of informed content in newspapers, newsmagazines and on the air is based on anonymity. A Deep Throat may happen along only once in a decade, but in Washington a lot of shallow throats and wagging tongues are in action all the time.

Insiders get good at deciding who could have said what, particularly when anonymity operates by understood code names: a "senior State Department official aboard the Secretary's plane" used to mean Henry Kissinger, and now means Cyrus Vance. A diplomat or bureaucrat can privately get across his side of an argument, or an explanation of policy, while publicly stating his position in Saran Wrapped platitudes. Not wanting to be used, reporters constantly labor to get off-the-record statements put back on the record but must often settle for not-for-at-tribution ("You can use it, but don't pin it on me"). When mutual trust has been established—the one convinced he will not be misquoted, the other that he will not be misled—a lot of important information has become public.

The temptations to cheat with anonymous quotes are many, however, and skeptical readers invariably give them less weight. In the wrong reporter's hands, the use of anonymous quotes can be a lazy device, enabling him to imply that he has talked to a higher authority than he really has. At worst, without putting his own good name at risk, an official may be floating a trial balloon, scoring off a rival or planting wrong information. The bargain may seem an evenhanded one—my increased candor in exchange for your protecting my identity—but it isn't. A strange transference takes place: the responsibility for the authenticity of what is said shifts from the speaker to the person who prints and guarantees it. Editors can't live without the unnamed authority but aren't happy about depending on him.

The anonymous-quote disease is spreading to business reporting, where inside information is bound to be profitable to somebody. So when reporters are blocked by what they think to be a company's official evasions, they often seek the real dope from securities analysts and other market watchers, who follow an industry's doings with sharpened curiosity and considerable knowledge. But the danger and the injustice of using anonymous sources is well illustrated by a New York Times story of Nov. 14. about the appointment of John J. Nevin as the new president of Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. Earlier he had headed Zenith Radio Corp., the country's largest manufacturer of color television sets.