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September 05, 2006

Double-sided anonymity in journalism

On TAPPED today, Garance Franke-Ruta maintains that newspapers should not quote anonymous blog commenters or pseudonymous bloggers:

I was and remain disturbed by the way newspapers and magazines quote from bloggers and commenters whose identities they do not even make an attempt to determine. So far I have lost this battle, and badly -- even The Washington Post quotes anonymous blog commenters without always confirming their identities -- but I do believe journalists will eventually have to come around to my position. As I said last spring, it's one thing to quote someone whose identity you know, but who wishes to remain anonymous -- and it is quite another to quote someone whose identity is unknown even to you, the reporter. [TAPPED]

I see two issues here: Quoting commenters and quoting pseudonymous bloggers whose identity is unverifiable.

Lately, the established media have acquired the nasty habit of nutpicking. I'm sorry to say it's a vice they probably picked up from us bloggers. Nutpicking is when critics attempt to discredit a blogger by selectively citing the most extreme or offensive comments on that blogger's site.

Nutpicking is objectionable because it's unfair and uninformative. As blogs become more influential, nutpicking could become an extremely destructive tactic that calls the credibility of the entire blogosphere into question by showcasing the very worst our medium has to offer.

Lately, established journalists have also resorted to nutpicking to discredit political candidates who are prominently associated with bloggers. If the journalists and their audience knew anything about the internet, it would be obvious how irrelevant selected inappropriate blog comments are to the credibility of a blog. It's even more absurd to criticize a candidate just because a prominent blogger draws a wacky commenter.

Apart from deleting truly offensive material, bloggers don't have much control over the weakest links in their comment threads. If we collectively decided that every view expressed on a blog reflects directly on the blogger and his "side", commenting as we know it would cease. Bloggers couldn't afford to host freewheeling debates, lest they be held responsible for every heated exchange or controversial statement.

Worse still, nutpicking encourages provocateurs, sockpuppets, and others trying to game the system.

For example, I'm just waiting for troublemakers start introducing themselves as Lamont supporters and making anti-semitic remarks on Joe Lieberman's blog. It doesn't matter whether they're Lieberman operatives, random pro-Joe citizens, internet pranksters trying to stir up trouble, or what. The point is, you can't tell. That won't stop the Liebercrew from trying to smear Lamont for any nasty comments that show up.

I think Garrance goes too far when she suggests a moratorium on quoting commenters whose identities can't be established. Blog comment sections can also be home to strong communities, insightful commentary, and productive discussion. It would be a mistake to declare them off limits. Better for bloggers and other journalists to establish reasonable anti-nutpicking ground rules.

It may be acceptable to quote other people's commenters, or remark on the general tenor of debate in a thread or on a blog, or respond to someone else's commenter on your own site. What's not acceptable is singling out non-representatively nutty screeds and treating them as if they reflected the blogger's views or the attitudes of the blog's readers.

Newspapers should deal with pseudonymous bloggers they can't identify on a case-by-case basis. They should actually consider the source when they consider the source.

In general, blogs should be treated like other published material. Journalists don't have to rule out the possibility that a contributor to the American Prospect is using a pen name before they can cite the piece. Obviously, not all published sources are equally credible. Self-published works don't have the same cachet as those published by corporations. The Weekly World News doesn't get as many cites as the New York Times. Over the years, the pseudonymous Digby has built up more credibility and goodwill than most established journalists.

The situation is more complex when a blogger claims to have inside information or other first-hand knowledge. If an unidentified blogger claims to be a Democratic campaign insider, a junior lawyer at a fancy law firm, or an intern at Comedy Central, a journalist shouldn't assume that these blogs are authoritative sources of insider info.

Reporters should regard these bloggers as they would other anonymous tipsters. If the claims seem credible, they may warrant further investigation, but it's not good enough to cite "the letter dropped over the transom" as a source.

Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein at 03:19:41 PM in Media

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Comments

funny you should start talking about this majik,

i just closed my comments section today. part of my reasoning was that whatever excellent debat was occurring would be marred by 'all muslims like to kill the whole world' interruptions, and partly b/c it is impossible for a blogger to respond to all of his/her commentators.

i hadn't given much thought to the possibility that media could be using commentators as the opinion of the blog!

that seems like shoddy journalism to me, and simply borne out of a lack of ocmmon sense.

Posted by: eteraz | September 05, 2006 at 04:00 PM

As long as anonymous bloggers are identified that way, I agree that they should be quoted the same way other anonymous sources are. Seems odd to call for a moratorium instead.

A phenomenon similar to nutpicking as you describe it is to pick out the most obnoxious or stupid representatives of a point of view and present it as representative of those who hold that view, or who are of the same political wing. This seems very common.

Posted by: Sanpete | September 05, 2006 at 05:29 PM

I think you're spot-on that while nutpicking should be frowned upon, there's no reason to simply rule out all use of commenters as data points.

I'm curious about the "apart from deleting truly offensive material" caveat. I'm not sure if "truly" is the modifier I'd use. There's a lot of genuinely offensive stuff that may be best to let pass. I'd think that the focus might more be on things that are 1) highly offensive and 2) easily identified by fairly objective criteria. That'd cover slurs and Protocols-type stuff, but wouldn't, say, force one to make close calls about attempts at constructive or critical responses that employ some more subtly but still genuinely offensive language or assumptions. There's a lot of "truly" offensive stuff that goes uncensored on blogs, and probably rightly so.

Posted by: aeroman | September 05, 2006 at 05:33 PM

Aeroman, I think you're right. I might go back and change the word "truly" in that sentence. My point was that deletion is a very blunt instrument. Editors can edit letters for clarity, brevity, and good taste. When you submit a letter to the editor, you accept that it probably won't get published.

Whereas, bloggers only get a binary decision: delete, or not. The norm is that only egregious violations of community standards get deleted.

Yes, the community standard reflects on the blog. People get away with a lot more at Little Green Footballs than they would around here, and I let stuff slide that might get deleted at Alas, a Blog.

In our medium, there's generally no rule against craziness or stupidity. If someone suggests transcendental meditation as a solution to the impending ARM mortgage crisis, I'm not going to delete that comment for just for being dumb.

Posted by: Lindsay Beyerstein | September 05, 2006 at 05:58 PM

Reporters should regard these bloggers as they would other anonymous tipsters. If the claims seem credible, they may warrant further investigation, but it's not good enough to cite "the letter dropped over the transom" as a source.

OK, quick straw poll... How many times have you seen the words "unnamed senior administration official" (or an equivalent construction) recently? And where you have seen it, has the context indicated that the information was likely to be reliable, or unreliable? Or is it simply accepted, a priori, that "unnamed senior administration officials" always tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

Personally, I find that the "anonymous official source" has become so ubiquitous as to be practically invisible. Information just appears, as if by magic.

My somewhat oblique point being that if reporters start "regard[ing] these bloggers as they would other anonymous tipsters", that would probably make them something like the Word of God.

Posted by: Dunc | September 06, 2006 at 08:04 AM

Trust is a major issue in terms of how the internet works. The conventional means of administering trust as for example editors in the newspapers is far wide of the demand for trustworthy interaction.
As telecomputing develops it emphasizes network processes more. That means how people truly interact. For example a big business can interact with millions at once such as a bank, but if trust is not built in to the interaction millions are hurt at once. That's what risk management is about.
What we tend to do in this culture is see everyday human face to face as being minor and the major communications are via the media. But the media takes a pass at interaction except at the most crude level like letters to the editor. In that case it is sufficient for trust to be the editors personal response to a letter.
The argument Lindsay makes is true enough in terms of freedom of speech, but fails to examine what trust amounts to in communications. I would agree that people say things that are 'dumb', or hurtful and divisive. Etc. Those sorts of words represent a 'lack' of connection and trust. They are entirely human but a network medium of interaction demands ultimately more and more interconnection. Thus more trust be built into connection.
Hence those parts of words that humans spew that are not trustworthy eventually run up against the need for networks to work right for everyone. At that point defining trust becomes a paramount social 'right'.
I think 'non-connecting' words, words that are untrustworthy are just a fact of life. Belong in human communications and a trustworthy network somehow knows the difference and literally does not respond to untrustworthy words. In other words people are not penalized for their lack of connections.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor

Posted by: Doyle Saylor | September 06, 2006 at 11:40 AM

I don't like the use of "senior officials" any more than the next person. However, that's supposed to be single-sided anonymity. The reporter knows the identity of the source, but the source is granted anonymity. Anonymous sources have their place, but they've been flagrantly abused in the established media lately.

Posted by: Lindsay Beyerstein | September 06, 2006 at 12:11 PM

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