Anonymous source tracker
Continuously updated examples of the media's use of anonymous sources
Wild, a punter on North Central's 2010 football team, tried to stop the attack and was fatally stabbed in the upper abdomen by a weapon that may have pierced his heart, a source said. Hayes remains hospitalized in fair condition and is expected to ...
CSNwashington.com (blog)
The Redskins could have claimed Orton off waivers late in the season and thought about it, a source said, but didn't want to damage the locker room's morale because of his non-relationship with Rex Grossman. The two competed for the same job in Chicago ...
Times of India
Madura is set to win new alliances-with Birla readying fresh investments and stalling stake sale plans-after India's largest branded apparel maker bounced back to profit, multiple sources briefed on the matter said. The latest developments reflect ...
Williamson Daily News
“I have to say, first of all, that I love them dearly,” said the grandmother who asked to remain anonymous. “They bring great joy to my life and I thank God each and everyday that he has blessed me to remain in good health, and to have the financial ...
Sydney Morning Herald
We do not have the same view," a senior government official said after an earlier round of talks between Papademos and the troika that went past midnight on Saturday. Finance Minister Venizelos described the talks on Saturday as being "at the razor's ...
The Australian
“Nothing was going to happening today or this week anyway,” the source said. “People are still trying to work out where things are up to and they will be for a while.” Mr Combet said Labor should focus on the economy and “get on with the job” of ...
ESPN (blog)
Aceves' contract includes $100000 in performance clauses based on starts or appearances, the source said. The language in the contract addressed both starts and appearances because it remains uncertain what role Aceves will fill for the Red Sox this ...
Wall Street Journal
Now UBS, which is trying to figure out how to manage its hodgepodge of office spaces, is looking to shed several large blocks of space, including 110000 square feet at 101 Park Ave., according to people familiar with the matter.
BusinessWeek
National supervisors will likely discuss the sovereign buffer, according to one of the people, a senior EU official, who declined to be identified because the talks are private. The EBA told banks to raise 114.7 billion euros ($150.5 billion) in fresh ...
Bloomberg
The central bank asked banks to submit orders for one-year and three-month bills and 91-day and 28-day repurchase contracts this morning, according to two traders who declined to be identified because the information isn't public.
Wall Street Journal
Three dealers, who attended the meeting, confirmed the figure but declined to be identified since they don't officially speak for the company. "We had a steady flow of customers all year and many who are buying want the heated seats, want the hands ...
Daily Mail
However, one top franchise official told Mail Today on the condition of anonymity that there was still hope that Roy's anger would subside and some sort of deal could be struck between Sahara and the BCCI. 'If you listened to his press conference, ...
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 |