03/17/2005

News organizations should assert their right to get information on the record, says AP CEO

WASHINGTON (AP) -- News industry leaders grappled with the use of anonymous sources in news reports Thursday, weighing concerns about being manipulated by a tightlipped administration against the need to stay competitive and get the story first.

Tom Curley, president and CEO of The Associated Press, said it was critical that news organizations band together and assert their right to get information on the record.

"We have to be able to walk out of a room when somebody's going to go off the record," he said. "We have to have the courage to hold the story, perhaps, to get it on the record. We can't rush to push the send button."

Curley was among about 20 news executives participating in the National Press Club's fifth annual Curtis B. Hurley Symposium on "Confronting the Seduction of Secrecy: Toward Improved Access to Government Information on the Record."

A reliance on anonymous sourcing has been driven by a neverending news cycle, accelerated competition, and a predisposition for official secrecy after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In addition, editors said, officials have become more sophisticated about managing the news with anonymous information.

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, urged the editors to report on what she called the growing but uncovered use of secret criminal trials at the federal and state level. She said a court filing last summer by a public defender revealed there are nearly 200 criminal cases entirely under seal in the District of Columbia Superior Court. And an aide to a federal judge told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that "30 to 40 percent" of the criminal cases in U.S. District Court here are litigated in secret, she said.

In a later interview, Dalglish said she believes these proceedings may violate the Constitution, Supreme Court rulings and possibly Justice Department guidelines limiting the use of secrecy in U.S. courts. She said the few officials who will discuss the secret proceedings indicate most involve guilty pleas in terrorism or drug cases by cooperating defendants who are offered a secret proceeding as protection if they inform on their colleagues.

"But nobody knows for sure because we don't cover them, and we can't intervene to try to cover them because they don't appear on court dockets," Dalglish added.

Curley urged editors and others in the industry to steer away from using anonymous sources, and push for people to talk on the record.

"We have to have the courage to wait and develop the story fully," he said, "Even as newspapers, where we are driven to be first, we have to have the ability to say, 'Wait, we're going to get more, we're going to do more reporting and not going to take the easy way and use an anonymous source."

"We have to understand there are people out there with agendas, with motives who are trying to advance their cause."

Ken Paulson, editor of USA Today, said his organization has a strict policy for using confidential sources, and it hasn't hurt the paper's competitive edge.

USA Today reporters who want to use a confidential source must identify the source to the managing editor and explain why the information is valuable, why that source is trustworthy and why the information is not available on the record.

Andy Alexander, Washington bureau chief for Cox Newspapers and freedom of information chairman for the American Society of Newspaper Editors, said when reporters see a backgrounder coming from the White House, it's important for the editors to ask why its not on the record.

"I am not at all hopeful with this White House," he said. "All we see is public interest; they see self-interest. They're all about spin."

"I think we can make marginal progress," he said.

Panelists reviewed data on anonymous sourcing by the Project for Excellence in Journalism which found:

-- In newspapers, 7 percent of all stories contained anonymous sourcing, down from 29 percent a year ago. This is based on a study of more than 6,400 stories in 16 newspapers over 28 randomly selected days.

-- Papers are twice as likely to use anonymous sourcing on the front page, where 13 percent of stories contained at least one anonymous source.

-- Bigger papers rely more heavily on anonymous sourcing.

-- On the three commercial nightly newscasts, more than half of all stories _ 53 percent _ contained anonymous sourcing, up from 43 percent a year ago.

-- The use of anonymous sources was rare on cable news. Just 9 percent of the stories overall contained any anonymous sources.