Well, it seems to me that while anonymous sources play a crucial role in bona fide investigative reporting, there use really has gotten out of control in that it's sort of broken lose from the cage of investigative reporting into all sorts of other things. Do we really need the genre of anonymous quote where it's just someone saying something bitchy ("'Kerry just doesn't have the personality for a national campaign,' said one Democratic strategist...") about a prominent figure? Do we need all these White House background briefings ("administration officials say reforming Social Security is necessary to ensure the long-term health of the American economy . . .") just designed to spare anyone the embarrassment of having his name attached to ridiculous spin? I tend to think that we do not.

Now it seems to me that when editors first started talking about clamping down on anonymous sourcing they were referring to these sorts of abuses. Unfortunately, that effort got mixed-in with the administration's jihad against Newsweek, so now it's hard to know exactly what Downie's talking about.

>I couldn't help but notice, in addition to that, that the president quite conspicuously punted when asked whether he thought Felt had done the right thing<

Rummy got the same question at a Pentagon press conference today and he said something vague about how "wrong doing should be reported" but that of course there was an "issue" of who you should report it to. 

A reporter then expressed suprise that he didn't have some very strong opinion about a government official giving confidential information to the press. Rummy replied "Well I'm just not feeling very judgmental today."  Then a voice in audience wisecracked  "what happened to you today?" which got a big laugh from all.

Matt makes a good point about anonymous sources.  When I was discussing this on TPM a week or so ago I made the same point, namely, that the misuse of anonymous sources almost always comes when it is not so much anonymous sourcing as what be more properly termed anonymous commentary, or perhaps just gossiping. 

There really is very little reason why anyone should be able to trash someone else anonymously by using a journalist to launder their abuse.

Stand behind your words.  But there's much less reason to stand behind your facts.  Because presumably facts can be confirmed in other ways.  In most cases they're capable of proof and disproof.  

But as Matt says, this is a different issue from what we're talking about in any sort of good investigative journalism.  Here we have a once legitimate concern being highjacked by folks who really are more interested in hobbling serious scrutiny of government and other powerful institutions. 

I think the perception is that journalism is in a far worse state than it was, say, five years ago, not to mention 10 years past.  While seeming to be all over Monica-gate, or similar trivialities, the mainstream press seems timid and afraid when presented with (what appear to me, anyway) clear abuses of power from this administration.  I hope ventures such as the Cafe and other popular blogs will inspire journalism anew.

... I used to believe a lot of that stuff, too.  During the Clinton years, the good old MSM was pushing that stuff all the time!  My high school history teacher let us pick between a subscription of the NY Times, the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal, which my school paid for -- as a young conservative, I picked the WSJ.  It took me until sophomore year of college to figure things out.  And heck, I STILL think Reno should have left those kooks in Waco alone!

  It's not that Mark Felt is clean as a whistle by any means; FBI black bag episodes dot the period before and after he was at the Bureau.

  On a micro scale one can sort tit for tat, but when the situation comes down to preserving the Union and the Constitution - and you are one of the few who have that capability - I would argue that the higher calling of the Constitution should precipate the action.  Laws and regulations are, in the end, merely guides to good judgment and behavior, not substitutes for that judgment and behavior. I think Felt understood that internal conflict and made a tough choice. And I think that he understood the incumbent responsibility if he had been exposed. It is in the face of that conflict and that ultimate responsibility that I would think that he made his decision to act because that is what it took at that time: it was an act of conscience.

  IMHO one of the elemental formations taking place on the net is the formation of a national conscience. We seen to be lacking one in the leadership of this country and I think their lack of serious remarks on this occasions only points out the void.

While the White House rails against anonymous sources, they themselves have been far less willing than previous administrations to go on the record with anything. The Sec. of whatever holds a press conference, just like any press conference, but demands that he be cited as "a senior official." This is orchestrated from the top. At the same time they trash Newsweek for using unnamed sources. A prefect scam for message control. Why does the press not only play the game, but defend the game as if all these background briefers were noble whistle blowers? I don't get it. Fear? Competition and inability to act collectively? Stupidity? Cash payments?

Following up on Josh's comments about the wrong people going on TV to comment about Mark Felt, I'd be interested in hearing commentary about Deep Throat from the prosecutor who later got Felt criminally convicted for abusing his office by authorizing illegal break-ins.  That person's head must be spinning a bit these days.

and anonymous sources begin? And how does a journalist differentiate between the two?

That's an excellent point that I would like to see expounded upon.

When is the leak intended to deceive and when is the leak intended to reveal the truth? And how the hell is a journalist supposed to know the difference?

While I am an adamant support of anonymous sources, this really brings up an interesting conundrum...

When a government is driven by idealogy, it seems to me anonymous sourcing becomes essential for any hope at truth. For this White House, the ends justify the means. The means are lies, pure and simple, and better funded lies than we have ever seen. When an individual or group questions the party line, they are moved into the echo chamber crosshairs, and excoriated by limbaugh, krauthammer, hannity and the other snarling dogs. When Dan Rather, perhaps the most powerful journalist in America, runs with a TRUE story harmful to bush, he ends up resigning. Perhaps my tinfoil hat needs adjusting, but this looked liked a warning shot across the bow of the fourth estate. When Josh got the forged Niger document pot a boiling', the White House outs Plame and sicks the dogs on Joe Wilson. Newsweek runs a story which would be hard to believe was NOT true, & the dogs hold them responsible for the war going so badly. And now Mark Felt, at age 91, is trying to shake the dogs off his leg.
It would be great, as Clinton keeps repeating, if we could look at POLICIES and the results of those policies, instead of dissecting the people behind them. However, that is not the Rove way, & he sets the rules. The first rule is there are no rules for keeping power, which means you and your family will be targets; and this includes journalists. Perhaps, up against the Mayberry Machiavellians, journalists need to learn some ball-faking and open-field scrambling.

It seems that we have both more and less use of anonymous sourcing than we probably need -- too much use of it for spin, character assassination, score settling and such, and not nearly enough use of it to seed the kind of investigative reporting highlighted in hartgal's comment.

And maybe this and joshtpm's original observation -- about how so much of the commentary and opinion on the legitimacy of Felt's actions is being solicited from the surviving rogues gallery of Watergate -- have a common source.

I think both point to the conclusion that the implications of Watergate were never fully acknowledged -- not by our major media and political institutions, and not by us, the citizenry.  Somehow, it became (in part) an heroic story about the system having worked: All the President's Men, in the media-centric version; the 1974 election and its consequent procedural reforms, in the politicians' version. 

But the kind of story Jonathan Schell was getting at in The Time of Illusion, about our near-brush with tyranny -- the story that takes into account the larger context of the Vietnam War and the mode of governance that grew up around that war in the executive branch -- is not, by and large, the kind of story about Watergate that has gone on to shape post-Watergate political (or journalistic) reality.  Considering that, maybe what we've come to doesn't look so surprising -- though it still looks plenty dismaying.

Yes, I think it is professional bias, which makes you conflate the amount of annonymous sources(AS) with the degree of investigative journalism(IJ) for in the end, it's the amount of investigative journalism by which we judge the quality of the press and AS is only a useful measure of that as long as AS are only used in investigative journalism.
Even then, it's questionable in that the anonymous sources may be the guilty party and that not publishing a source's name is not the same as not telling anyone.
If you want to deduce something about the quality of journalism from the prevalence of AS, you essentially need to establish that the use of AS has fallen below the previous level of investigative journalism and taken that level down with it. As long as there are superfluous AS (and we probably all agree there are), a drop in their overall number tells you nothing. You need to examine wether the legitimate or the superfluous uses dropped to reach a conclusion concerning good journalism. At that point, you might just as well abandon the proxy measure and take a look at the number of investigative articles.
Finally, unlike the amount of investigative journalism, AS sources do not only improve journalism, they also degrade it. The confidential relationsship between a reporter and their AS is problematic in that it is one of co-dependency, which (a) makes it more difficult for the reporter to critically assess the validity of the AS's claims and (b) threatens their judgement of what is news. Of course a good reporter can resist the unwarranted extra-trust humans are likely to put into people with whom they have a special relationsship and towards whom they have special obligations, but it's harder. And of course good reporters can seperate the truckload of stuff they know off the record from what is news to the general public, but just like evaluating new information on its merits instead of based on the extra background one has, it's harder.

dwbh brings up an interesting point re the Bush/Republican mindset. His comment was a cop-out, but not so strange in that Bush would like to bash the hell out of Felt for disloyalty, but chooses to cop-out instead due to awareness of the deep feelings Watergate stirs. If Bush thought Felt was a hero, the talking heads would have been "fair and balanced". Loyalty trumps everything, including the Constitution, and it is the bond which has made the Republicans kind of like the Borg; a monolithic force assimilating everything. It also makes it exceedingly difficult to get to the bottom of any story.

This is simply the fruit of 30-year conservative complaints about the "liberal" press.  Due to the nature of the press, and of the people who are are attracted to reporting and analysis as a line of work, there is a press bias towards reformism, which is not necessarily the same thing as liberalism.

 Right now, the term "conservatism" means embracing a particular set of orthodoxies.   Anything that is in contradiction to these orthodoxies is classified as "liberal."  These orthodoxies include:

• Smaller government
• More heirarchical social structure
• A greater government in the control of personal moral and sexual behavior
• Embrace of the entrepeneur and market economics
  

Note that none of these are specifically oriented towards a more prosperous, human, or just society (although, it is presumed on faith, that following these precepts will result in a better society).

But the political culture has polarized to the point where identifying or illustrating societal problems is considered "liberal"; as is proposing any policies to deal with these problems.   That's a pretty constricting definition of acceptable reporting.

But the 30 years of harping have spooked the media.  Right now, because they are under attack, the press cannot conceive of its job in any richer way than reporting simply events, and finding some "opposing viewpoint" for balance.   This is mechanical reporting, stripped entirely of the moral posture that must be at the base of all meaninful journalism.   If it is no longer acceptable to judge the events of the day by ethical criteria, the only option left is to present the opposing views of newsmakers.

So this generation's "new journalism" is to seek out conflict, and record the bloodshed.    Who would oppose a governmental official going to the press after witnessing apalling and unconstitutional behavior from the president?   The criminals who were exposed!   There are your two sides.

So, let me pose a question:   how can we bring American journalism back from the brink, and away from its flirtation with "moral relativism."   < /irony >