Shirky on emotion as more central in news environment

Worth Watching: The Ideas Project's short-take interviews with Clay Shirky on the emotional aspects of news now taking center stage along social networks and some of the implications.

Maybe they missed the session on anonymous sources?

I find myself disturbed today as I finally get around to reading an otherwise good Washington Post profile of Ben Scott, "Net Neutrality's Quiet Crusader."

Right there, 10 grafs down in Cecilia Kang's article, is this graf:

Free Press's critics -- who spoke on condition of anonymity because discussions on net neutrality policy are ongoing -- say the group often oversimplifies complex technical issues, dismissing the importance of some network management practices that block spam and pornography, for example. Free Press is also not the populist group it makes itself out to be, critics noted, partnering with corporate interests when it suits its goals, as it did with Google on net neutrality. Also, they said the group is not as boot-strapped as it may appear, with donors such as billionaire George Soros and singer Barbra Streisand.


Let's accept the argument, for a second, that absolutely no one -- not a one -- of anyone who is on the other side of this debate would go on the record. Still, whatever happened to the idea that you don't use anonymous sources for ad hominem attacks. You may use them for hard information. You may use them to explain their side's position (sometimes, though we overdo that). But you don't use them to launch brickbats at the other side.

That's Journalism 101.

Don't give me the "balance" argument -- that's he said-she said journalism. Doing so anonymously lets the scoundrels off the hook. (And besides, Kang essentially parroted the funding stuff in the next graf, though pointing out that its lobbying budget is far less than the budgets of its opponents.)

So if Kang *really* *wasn't* *able* in this large nation to find anyone who would go on the record on a topic that has had life for some time now, then maybe the only sentence in that story should have been:

None of the Free Press's critics would go on the record with their criticism.

Sometimes, it's actually journalism to say to the other side -- especially when the other side is no babe in the woods when it comes to working the system: You want your voice heard, then speak up on the record.

(For the record, nothing here is ideological. I'd write the same thing were it Scott anonymously taking a shot at the other side.)

(This is also my monthly Carnival of Journalism entry; the Carnival this month is hosted by Will Sullivan at Journerdism.)