Three Questions For ABC News About Its Anthrax Reporting

No need for a big preamble. Dan Gillmor and I are posting these questions simultaneously. (Here’s his case for them.) We think ABC News should answer them. They arise from two columns by Salon’s Glenn Greenwald, who has been tracking this story for some time.

* Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News, in which he shows that ABC News was probably duped by someone on a story of huge importance, putting Iraqi fingerprints on anthrax attacks that actually came from the U.S at a time when the case for war with Iraq was beginning to get traction. (Salon.com, Aug. 1)

* Journalists, their lying sources, and the anthrax investigation in which he makes the case for revealing the sources who completely misled ABC News or lied to it, including precedents where journalists have done just that. (Salon.com, Aug. 3)

If you want to understand our questions, go read Greenwald now.

Back? Greenwald raises many different kinds of questions. Some are aimed at a possible Congressional investigation, others at journalists willing to investigate further from here. On Saturday morning, Dan Gillmor and I had the same thought when we read Greenwald’s post: “ABC News has to respond.”

But to what, exactly? We tried to put it into three questions: tough but fair as people there would probably say on other occasions. And we’re simply asking others who want to know the answers to post the questions in some form at your own site. I would call them “interlocking” and aimed at the same unknowns.

Three Vital Questions for ABC News About its Anthrax Reporting in 2001

1. Sources who are granted confidentiality give up their rights when they lie or mislead the reporter. Were you lied to or misled by your sources when you reported several times in 2001 that anthrax found in domestic attacks came from Iraq or showed signs of Iraqi involvement?

2. It now appears that the attacks were of domestic origin and the anthrax came from within U.S. government facilities. This leads us to ask you: who were the “four well-placed and separate sources” who falsely told ABC News that tests conducted at Fort Detrick showed bentonite in the anthrax sent to Sen. Tom Daschle, causing ABC News to connect the attacks to Iraq in multiple reports over a five day period in October, 2001?

3. A substantially false story that helps make the case for war by raising fears about enemies abroad attacking the United States is released into public debate because of faulty reporting by ABC News. How that happened and who was responsible is itself a major story of public interest. What is ABC News doing to re-report these events, to figure out what went wrong and to correct the record for the American people who were misled?

There are many other questions worth asking in what is still a very murky story. But Dan and I think these three go to the heart of what ABC ought to tell us.

My reasoning?

Though I am a frequent critic of the practice, I am not against the use of confidential sources. I am quite aware of how important it is in national security reporting to promise some sources confidentiality. And I am sympathetic to the pleas of journalists who have made contracts: “we have to keep our word or sources won’t trust us.” That is true.

But the only way such a system can work is when sources know: if you lie, or mislead the reporter into a false report you will be exposed. People who believe strongly in the need for confidential sources should be strongly in favor of their exposure in clear cases of abuse, because that is the only way a practice like this has a prayer of retaining its legitimacy. What’s a “clear case” of abuse? Well, we have to argue about it– and try to be clear. There’s no other way. Each case is different. Each has particulars that count.

In the confidential sources system that we have, professionals keeping counsel with themselves bargain away the citizen’s right to know. Sitting outside that transaction, we’re supposed to trust them– in the dark, as it were. Ninety-nine percent of the time, we are unable to judge how good a bargain they struck for us because the names of their sources remain cloaked.

Which is why we can never trust them if they can’t take action when they get played. This looks like a case where ABC News got played. Looks like, I said. We can’t know until the good people there answer some questions. These three would be a good start.

Also see my colleague Dan Gillmor, ABC Has Major Questions to Answer in Anthrax Story. “The network’s hyperventilating broadcasts of leaked, false allegations purportedly tying the anthrax to Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime was bad enough. What the organization is doing now is journalistically unforgivable…”

Some other reactions:

Ex-Times-Picayune investigative reporter and Pulitzer winner John McQuaid, also a Huff Post-er says, “It’s imperative for ABC to tell us what happened here.” He also says: “Big media and the government are already in a kind credibility death spiral. This doesn’t help.”

Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum:

In practice, most journalists refuse to identify their sources under any circumstances at all, even when it’s clear that those sources deliberately lied to them. But should that be the standard? Or is the profession — and the rest of us — better off if sources know that they run the risk of being unmasked if their mendacity is egregious enough to become newsworthy in its own right? I’d say the latter.

At a guess, Brian Ross is re-reporting this story as we speak. I’d be shocked if he were doing anything else — and I’d say that part of that re-reporting ought to include a full explanation of exactly who was peddling the bentonite lie in the first place, and why they were doing it.

The New Republic’s Dayo Olopade: “Pressure on ABC to out their sources should be swift and sustained.”

The New Republic’s John Judis: “I join those who believe that some kind of congressional investigation is in order. There are too many echoes of Niger and uranium.”

Marcy Wheeler: “Who First Spread the Iraqi Anthrax Claim?” Important.

– Jay Rosen

Popularity: 1% [?]