Rieder: The fog of Washington

You just can't make this stuff up.

There was White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, chastising The Washington Post for a story that was based in part on information from unnamed sources.

"The lede is hooked entirely to anonymous sources," Earnest said Monday when asked about a Post piece asserting that the Obama administration had had plenty of warning about the burgeoning crisis of children from Central America crossing the Texas border. "That's a fact."

Earnest went on to helpfully explain the fine points of journalism ethics to the assembled reporters. "What I think is important is that greater weight should be granted to those who are willing to put a face and a name with specific claims," he said.

True that. But it's hard to imagine a less likely messenger for that bit of insight.

That's because the Obama administration, which took office vowing to take transparency to new heights, has opted instead for opacity. Earlier this month, a letter to the president signed by a coalition of 38 journalism groups and open-government advocates accused the administration of "politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies." Among the bullet items in the indictment were background briefings where information can't be attributed to a named official and responses from press spokespeople who can't be identified by name.

If he keeps this up we'll have to start calling him Josh Disingenuous.

You could see why Earnest was upset about the article. It put the administration in a very poor light, reinforcing the increasingly prevalent meme that Team Obama is just not very nimble when it comes to responding to crises.

But the newly minted media critic's problems did not end with his lack of standing to make the argument. The piece was deeply reported and actually had quite a bit of on-the-record information.

Beneath the delicious irony of the flap, though, lurks a serious issue. Despite years of gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over the evils of unnamed sources, they remain way too prevalent in contemporary journalism.

The problem lies with the complete lack of accountability of the source. If a story blows up, the news organization and the journalist take the hit, while the source remains unscathed. That opens the door to manipulation by people with axes to grind, eager to use news outlets to achieve their own ends. Plus, information without a name attached is just inherently less credible, as journalism sage Earnest taught us.

I've always opposed an outright ban on unnamed sources. Many significant stories with great value to society have been brought to light by whistle-blowers who would put themselves at risk, or might lose their livelihoods, if their names came to light.

That said, anonymity is granted far too easily far too often, even at news outlets that have policies sharply restricting the practice. New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan has launched a laudable campaign against unnecessary anonymity in that great newspaper. It's an important reminder that reporters and editors should press harder to get information on the record.

(At USA TODAY, says standards and ethics editor Brent Jones, the policy is to "use anonymous sources sparingly, when we've concluded the facts shared will advance the story or help the reader to better understand the report. We describe for the reader as precisely as we can why the person was in a position to know, and we offer a deserved explanation on why a source could not be named.")

But the problem in Washington, D.C., goes way beyond the journalists.

Providing information only on a background basis rather than attaching a name to it is deeply embedded in the culture of the federal government, and it has been for decades. It certainly wasn't invented by the Obama administration, although writer Kathryn Foxhall, who helped draft that letter to the president, says it has gotten worse each year on Obama's watch.

Why do news organizations put up with it? An experiment years ago by the great Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee during the Nixon years is illustrative.

Tired of those no-name briefings, Bradlee ordered Post reporters to walk out if they couldn't ID the speaker. Trouble is, when they did, no one followed their lead. So after two days of getting clobbered by rival news outlets, the fiercely competitive Bradlee ended the experiment.

So, until all news outlets join together in protest, or until an administration actually means it when it says it will be the most transparent ever, the cloak of anonymity will continue to reign supreme in the nation's capital.