My Country for a Source

The admin­is­tra­tion is attack­ing Seymour Hersh’s lat­est New Yorker arti­cle, which claims, among other things, that Israel sought a green light from Washington prior to tak­ing mil­i­tary action against Hezbollah.
The administration’s sharply worded denial — as seen in this response to the Los Angeles Times – attacks Hersh’s cred­i­bil­ity and his use of anony­mous sources:

“The piece abounds in fic­tions,” White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said in an e-​​mailed response to a request for com­ment. He also assailed reporter Seymour M. Hersh’s use of unnamed sources, say­ing it was “hard to imag­ine that the story would meet any major news organization’s stan­dards for sourc­ing and verification.” 

In fact, the New Yorker arti­cle does have a more than its healthy share of anony­mous sources, such as “for­mer diplo­mat,” “con­sul­tant,” and the ever-​​in-​​demand “expert in Middle East Affairs” (which these days, could be just about any­one in Washington). In some cases, these sources are pro­vid­ing sub­jec­tive infor­ma­tion, describ­ing people’s thoughts and moti­va­tions. In other words, all things hard to ver­ify. For example:

According to a Middle East expert with knowl­edge of the cur­rent think­ing of both the Israeli and the U.S. gov­ern­ments, Israel had devised a plan for attack­ing Hezbollahand shared it with Bush Administration offi­cial­swell before the July 12th kid­nap­pings. “It’s not that the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into,” he said, “but there was a strong feel­ing in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going to do it.” 

What qual­i­fies some­one as hav­ing “knowl­edge of cur­rent think­ing” of two dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ments? How much exper­tise does it take to be an expert?
This exten­sive use of anony­mous sources should always raise ques­tions with read­ers. But how fair is the administration’s response? Background inter­views are a main­stay of gov­ern­ment agen­cies these days. The Pentagon, in par­tic­u­lar, reg­u­larly sets up inter­views that are on back­ground (thus attrib­ut­able only to “a senior defense offi­cial” or oth­er­wise nego­ti­ated title). Worse, read­ers have no way of know­ing whether such inter­views are such offi­cially sanc­tioned “back­ground inter­views” or whether they really rep­re­sent senior offi­cials going around pro­to­col to speak anony­mously to trusted reporters.
Ultimately, the read­ers are left to deter­mine the cred­i­bil­ity they attribute to a journalist’s anony­mous sources. In this respect, Hersh is one step ahead of the admin­is­tra­tion. Readers are likely to give the anony­mous sources of Hersh–who has a solid track record report­ing on issues such as Abu Ghraibthe ben­e­fit of the doubt.
– Sharon Weinberger

August 15th, 2006 | War Update | 48029 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/08/15/my-country-for-a-source/My+Country+for+a+Source2006-08-15+12%3A12%3A46christian You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.