The woman spoke in a hushed voice, as if someone might be listening. She said she worked for Durham's Operation Breakthrough and that employees there were worried about losing their jobs.
She didn’t make it into tomorrow's story.
The problem was the woman would not give us her name. I get that. She was worried about her job. But that wasn’t a good enough reason to quote her anonymously.
The Durham News and The News & Observer have a policy that in almost all cases prohibits the use of anonymous sources. It’s a good policy, even if it sometimes keeps us from telling all sides of a story.
We ran up against it last week.
Staff writer Jesse James DeConto wanted to quote an ex-convict being helped by a group of Duke Chapel congregation members. The church group is helping to revitalize west Durham. Jesse wanted to report a conversation he observed between the man and a volunteer that showed the relationships forming in the neighborhood.
But the quotes are not going in. Jesse doesn’t want to expose the man’s school-age son to possible community scorn, and the paper is not backing off its policy. Jesse wil return to the neighborhood for more reporting.
When people don’t put their names to their words, it devalues what they have to say. In stories about sensitive subjects — alcoholism, sexual assault, people’s criminal pasts — the invisibility perpetuates stigmas. In develping stories like Operation Breakthough, it puts statements out there that readers can’t properly evaluate because they don’t know who’s saying them.
And it’s a slope. If we let anonymous quotes in one story, why not two or three? Pretty soon it’s not just a former Alaskan governor who’s convinced we make it all up anyway.
We’ll continue to report the difficult stories.
But at some point, if a story matters to you and you want to get it out, you need to step up. Sometimes that means telling us what questions to ask. Sometimes that means slipping us some documents.
And sometimes that means saying what only you can say, with your name backing it up.
Mark Schultz is the editor of The Durham News. Contact him at mark.schultz@nando.com or 932-2003.
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How about the corruption
Tue, 07/28/2009 - 19:26 — robdarichHow about the corruption that permeates NC? Is that anonamous? Seems the paper's got a lot of policies, ones that matter, and one's that don't.
Now run off and do another fluff piece on Apple, and be sure to leave out any quotes that don't fit your "policy". Have Roy Christienson do it, he writes fluffy.