Anonymous source tracker
Continuously updated examples of the media's use of anonymous sources
Other sources close to the administration said it is unclear how fast these new schools can be developed, though it is possible some could start in the fall. Others may get a year to plan. It is also unclear how many districts would want to develop ...
Charleston Post Courier
One caller, who wouldn't give his name, described himself as a convicted murderer serving a 22-year sentence. He said getting illegal phones is easy as long as an inmate or a friend on the outside can come up with $350 for the device.
Biscayne Times
“I don't have nothing,” grumbled the owner of El Cafetín, who declined to give her name, as she cleaned the countertops before shutting down her restaurant. “I close everything!” Her friend Fred Grandal, a North Miami resident, says El Cafetín operated ...
San Antonio Express
“There are people at every piece of this — the Taliban, Islamabad, Kabul and Washington” — who object to or are trying to influence elements of the emerging strategy, a senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk ...
4-traders (press release)
The treasury head of a private-sector bank, who declined to be named, said the Reserve Bank of India has eased limits on the so-called daylight positions as well as unhedged foreign currency positions that his bank can hold overnight.
Fox Business
China Overseas has mandated Deutsche Bank, HSBC Holdings PLC, ICBC International and JP Morgan Bank to arrange investor meetings in Hong Kong and Singapore from Tuesday, said the person, who declined to be named.
BusinessWeek
The official, who declined to be named, spoke to reporters after Prime Minister Lucas Papademos met with troika officials, who represent the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund.
KGTV San Diego
A source close to the investigation told 10News that 42-year-old Jeffrey McCreary – the man who is facing a murder charge in the death of 20-year-old Morayma Denise Rodriguez – may have been on drugs when investigators believe he opened fire.
Bloomberg
... before other recent penalties have been implemented -- may make some oil buyers unwilling to comply and strain the coalition against Iran, according to US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.
NDTV
Last week, The Associated Press reported that officials in Israel - all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss Iran - were concerned that the measures, while welcome, were constraining Israel in its ability ...
Boston.com
Last week, The Associated Press reported that officials in Israel -- all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss Iran -- were concerned that the measures, while welcome, were constraining Israel in its ...
Wall Street Journal
PepsiCo directors have identified John Compton, head of Americas foods, Europe chief Zein Abdalla and Chief Financial Officer Hugh Johnston as internal front-runners to eventually succeed Mrs. Nooyi, said a person familiar with the matter.
The goal of the anonymous source tracker is to make the media's use of anonymous sources more transparent. It's an experiment, and as such it's imperfect and subject to change.
While it finds many examples of the use of anonymous sources, it doesn't find all anonymous sources used by newspapers, magazines, TV stations, wire services or other news outlets online.
It gets its examples from the English version of Google News. Phrases commonly used to identify anonymous sources are fed to Google News, which produces an Atom feed for each phrase. Those feeds are then combined under a single label, "anonymous," in Google Reader. That feed is public. Every hour a PHP script grabs the Google Reader feed, extracts the summary text, highlights the anonymous source phrasing, and puts it in a database to display on the anonymous source tracker.
Some examples are rejected, even though the articles they point to used anonymous sources, because the anonymous source phrasing isn't in the summary.
Some examples are duplicates. If a URL is already in the database, those examples are rejected. But sometimes the same story can have different URLs, so the same story can appear more than once. The same wire story may also be run by multiple outlets.
The news outlets scanned are the same outlets scanned by Google News. I don't know what criteria Google News uses to decide whether to include a Web site.
Typically Google returns a search result for a phrase giving a summary for only one outlet, with an "and more" link pointing to other matches for stories on the same subject. The anonymous source tracker doesn't grab those "and more" results, so many examples are undoubtedly missed.
I don't know how Google does what it does or why, or why one outlet is given prominence for a given search while another isn't, so I don't know if all outlets are being treated equally by the anonymous source tracker.
The count for each news outlet doesn't include every anonymously sourced story produced by that outlet. The counts shouldn't be considered valid rankings.
To quote Donald Rumsfeld, "there are known unknowns."
"That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know."
| Wall Street Journal | 8,141 |
| Reuters | 6,916 |
| BusinessWeek | 6,335 |
| Bloomberg | 5,684 |
| New York Times | 2,944 |
| Washington Post | 2,641 |
| The Associated Press | 2,061 |
| Los Angeles Times | 1,502 |
| San Francisco Chronicle | 1,408 |
| New York Daily News | 1,218 |
| New York Post | 1,199 |
| AFP | 1,133 |
| Livemint | 1,111 |
| Economic Times | 1,099 |
| Times of India | 1,059 |
| Financial Times | 1,030 |
| ESPN | 1,024 |
| Hindustan Times | 888 |
| Reuters Africa | 855 |
| New York Times (blog) | 837 |
| Patch.com | 755 |
| Boston Globe | 664 |
| The Star-Ledger - NJ.com | 633 |
| Wall Street Journal (blog) | 590 |
| CNN International | 558 |
| Chicago Sun-Times | 547 |
| Daily Mail | 526 |
| Chicago Tribune | 519 |
| San Jose Mercury News | 518 |
| Washington Post (blog) | 516 |
| CNN | 492 |
| Business Standard | 479 |
| Sydney Morning Herald | 470 |
| Philadelphia Inquirer | 453 |
| msnbc.com | 431 |
| ABC News | 414 |
| The News International | 411 |
| The Guardian | 409 |
| MiamiHerald.com | 379 |
| Monsters and Critics.com | 375 |
| UPI.com | 367 |
| Inquirer.net | 363 |
| Daily News & Analysis | 362 |
| NASDAQ | 361 |
| Detroit Free Press | 355 |
| Xinhua | 346 |
| Fox News | 343 |
| Sify | 343 |
| Salon | 328 |
| Reuters India | 326 |