Sources of shame

Every journalist in this country has access to ‘informed sources’ who feature in a majority of stories in print and electronic media on a daily basis. Why then do the consumers of news complain of being uninformed, or worse, being confused and misled by the information?
One of journalism’s universal principles is to attribute all information to the relevant person, group or entity, clearly identified in the story. Exceptions must be very few and must require supervising editor’s consent. Quality media all over the world exercises discretion in the use of unnamed sources of information and where they are used, an attempt is made to justify it to the consumer, within the story. And there may still be unforeseen and adverse consequences. The last time BBC used an unnamed source in a high profile case was in 2003 when it reported to its domestic audience that a well informed official within the government believes the Tony Blair government ‘sexed up’ its Iraq dossier to get a pro-war endorsement from the Parliament. In that instance, the source committed suicide, two top BBC directors had to resign, the reporter lost his job, and the entire BBC had to retrain to ‘regain the confidence of the audiences’. (Highlights of Hutton inquiry report).
Compare this with Pakistani media that attributes even the most official and open announcements for public – sighting of moon by the designated committee of religious scholars, for instance – to unnamed sources (this example from AFP news headlines feed for mobile phone users). Why? I routinely ask journalists participating in my training workshops. I get different replies but the underlying perception is the same: Stories attributing information to unnamed sources sound more credible, even to editors. One reporter narrated this incident in which he attended a news conference held in Peshawer and filed his story. The next day he saw the Islamabad correspondent’s story published in his paper, instead. He called up the news editor and the explanation was: the Peshawer story seemed run of the mill as it quoted people that the rest of the media was quoting. But the Islamabad story stands out because it quotes ‘sources’. I would’ve thought the anecdote was a joke if the rest of the 20 or so mid-level to senior journalists hadn’t nodded in agreement with the narrator.
Reporters, sub-editors and senior editors know all too well that the term ‘sources’ is merely a euphemism for:
1- Reporter’s imagination. Just think of something and attribute it to sources. Who’s going to know!
2- Laziness. Attribution requires meticulously and contextually quoting a subject. It also requires the reporter to know the full name and exact designation of the person quoted. Why get into all this trouble when my editors are happy with the usage of ‘sources’.
3- Planted stories. Sources are not motivated to spill beans to help the cause of journalism, or to respect the right of public to know facts; they have their own personal or institutional reasons and they use news media to further their agenda.
4- Coercion/bribe. Journalists are ‘persuaded’, threatened and bribed all the time to put out some information without disclosing the source. Governments and intelligence agencies routinely use this ploy.
True, there is a story now and then that explains, to the satisfaction of an informed consumer, the reason(s) for withholding a source’s identity; and not all stories attributed to unnamed sources are malicious; but by and large the use of ‘sources’ in news media or not attributing information at all, fails journalists in their professional duty to be accurate, fair, objective and neutral, and should be viewed with suspicion by the consumers. And that brings us to the question of a news media outlet’s credibility – considered the most valuable asset of the organisation anywhere else, but here in the ‘sub chalta hei’ land, the media houses find nothing too shameful.
During Lal Masjid operation, late one night the Islamabad bureau chief, Hamid Mir, said live on Geo that his sources confirm a number of explosions in the residential sectors of the city. The information was wrong but Geo never retracted or followed up on that story, completely oblivious to the panic it created among Islamabad residents and their loved ones watching Geo all over Pakistan and abroad.
Except for a couple, all mainstream newspapers fell for the fake WikiLeaks story put out by Online news agency in December last year. No editor asked the question: Where did Online get this information from? The News and Jang even put it as their lead story, with the former not even crediting the story to the agency, giving the impression it was the paper’s own information. But next day when it dawned on editors that they’d been duped, some like Express Tribune accepted their mistake and apologised to the readers while The News chose to blame Online for not properly vetting the story, as if the newspaper editors get paid their salaries to trust the judgment of hundreds of news agencies that put out thousands of stories every day. With the innocence of a crafty teenager, The News still tried to save face: ‘We learnt from our sources that the story was dubious and may have been planted’. It WAS planted and the media group as a whole DID fall for it, was something the story never said.
Then again at the end of last month all newspapers, this time Dawn included, carried a story about the arrests made at Karachi airport of two suspected killers of Dr. Imran Farooq, on receiving a tip-off from British intelligence. The names of the arrested were not given in the Dawn story of August 26, and they were said to be affiliated with ‘a political party’. The Nation went a step ahead and screamed that the murder case was ‘nearing its conclusion’ with the arrest of ‘three suspects’ including the ‘mastermind, Khalid Shamim who also belongs to MQM’. The Nation story gave the un-attributed details of the plan as if it’d seen CCTV footage, and added that all suspects had owned up to their part in the crime. The same story with additional ‘sensational revelations’ appeared on Paktribune.com on August 27.
Here was a story the entire media seemed to endorse. But when MQM snubbed them for the reporting it termed “devoid of truth, baseless and concocted” the same media cowered into carrying the terse statement word for word, and none of them stood by their story or their sources. To add insult to injury, the interior minister weighed in with MQM in categorically denying if any arrests were made, and if British intelligence had tipped off Pakistan on this case.
What is the consumer of news to make of all this? If it was a war of attrition between MQM and an intelligence agency, how come media positioned itself to be the only loser? And without the consumers’ trust how long can this news media survive?