Re: Send us your anonymous Tips!

[Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de>]

* Nils Ketelsen:

> Ein, wie ich finde, schön zu lesender Artikel, über Anonyme Quellen und dem
> Widerspruch in den sich Sicherheitsbehörden begeben, wenn sie sagen, dass
> anonyme Quellen unbrauchbar sind, Anonymität nur für kriminelle interessant
> ist etc.
>
> http://www.anonequity.org/weblog/archives/000193.php

FAIR schrieb jüngst auch etwas zu dem Thema aus einem anderen
Blickwinkel:

| MEDIA ADVISORY:
| Lessons from Newsweek's Retraction
| 
| June 1, 2005
| 
| [...]
| 
| While the practice of having officials vet stories in advance has
| received little attention, conventional wisdom holds that the real
| ethical lesson of the Newsweek incident is to avoid anonymous
| sources. In a letter to readers in the magazine's May 30 issue,
| Newsweek's Smith vowed, "We will raise the standards for the use of
| anonymous sources throughout the magazine. Historically, unnamed
| sources have helped to break or advance stories of great national
| importance, but overuse can lead to distrust among readers and
| carelessness among journalists."
| 
| While there's no denying that unnamed sources are overused, the kind
| of anonymity granted in the May 9 "Periscope" item--protecting a
| source who is breaking government secrecy to expose official
| wrongdoing--is actually the most justifiable, and such uses make up a
| small minority of the anonymous sources who appear in the news media
| every day. Overwhelmingly, the officials who are quoted without being
| identified are not whistleblowers, but rather government officials
| looking to spin the news in favor of themselves and their bosses.
| 
| Sure enough, a few pages from that editor's note, Newsweek ran a piece
| on a meeting between George W. Bush and Egyptian prime minister Ahmed
| Nazif. The meeting occurred behind closed doors, so Newsweek's only
| source for what happened there was an anonymous White House
| official--remaining unnamed, the magazine said, "because the meeting
| was private"--who, unsurprisingly, took the opportunity to boast about
| Bush's performance. In the source's version, Bush "counseled
| patience," "emphasized his commitment to nation-building" and showed a
| "more nurturing approach" during the meeting. "It's not a simplistic
| foreign policy," Newsweek quoted the source. "It's not just a
| shoot-from-the-hip, idealistic thing." This more common use of
| anonymous sources--to give administration officials a chance to
| flatter themselves--raised few if any eyebrows among the critics who
| supposedly objected to Newsweek's reliance on the unnamed.
| 
| When asked to explain the discrepancy between the White House's
| criticism of Newsweek's anonymous sourcing of its Quran item and the
| fact that the White House itself regularly gives anonymous briefings
| to reporters, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said
| (5/17/05) it was acceptable to quote anonymous "officials who are
| helping to provide context to on-the-record comments made by people
| like the President or the Secretary of State or others"; the real
| problem was that "some media organizations have used anonymous sources
| that are hiding behind that anonymity in order to generate negative
| attacks."
| 
| It's easy to see why the White House press secretary would approve of
| anonymous sources when they help the administration and condemn them
| when they don't. What's more puzzling is that some in the media seem
| to be judging anonymous sources the same way.

<http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2529>

Der Begriff "anonym" ist einfach mit zu vielen Bedeutungen überladen.

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