{"id":199880,"date":"2007-06-20T15:52:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-20T20:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2007\/06\/20\/hats-off-to-karen-tumulty-on-anonymous-sources\/"},"modified":"2007-06-20T15:52:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-20T20:52:00","slug":"hats-off-to-karen-tumulty-on-anonymous-sources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2007\/06\/20\/hats-off-to-karen-tumulty-on-anonymous-sources\/","title":{"rendered":"Hats Off To Karen Tumulty On Anonymous Sources"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If someone gives a reporter something without <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">prior mutual agreement<\/span> as to it being off the record.<\/p>\n<p>Reporters who allow a source to unilaterally declare anonymity are not doing their job.<\/p>\n<p>Part of their job is to get attribution where possible. It makes the story more credible, and adds context.<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p><span style=\"font-size:130%;\"><a style=\"font-weight: bold;\" href=\"http:\/\/time-blog.com\/swampland\/2007\/06\/obama_stay_tuned_1.html?xid=rss-swampland\">Obama: Stay Tuned<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The answer to this is, campaigns should not be allowed to distribute things on a NOT FOR ATTRIBUTION basis. Both NOT FOR ATTRIBUTION and OFF THE RECORD (and their cousins, BACKGROUND and DEEP BACKGROUND) are understandings that are agreed to mutually by a source and a reporter. What I&#8217;ve noticed about this cycle is that campaigns (and not just Obama&#8217;s) are falling into a bad and sloppy habit of sending out mass hit pieces by e-mail and demanding anonymity. As far as I am concerned, unless I have agreed in advance to accept a specific piece of material from a source on a limited or not for attribution basis, these unilateral declarations of anonymity mean nothing.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If someone gives a reporter something without prior mutual agreement as to it being off the record. Reporters who allow a source to unilaterally declare anonymity are not doing their job. Part of their job is to get attribution where possible. It makes the story more credible, and adds context. Obama: Stay Tuned &#8230; The &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1064,978],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199880"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}