Anonymous source tracker
Continuously updated examples of the media's use of anonymous sources
But by April it was clear the tale Mark was spinning was fiction, and the 58-year-old woman, who asked not to be identified for reasons that will soon become evident, had lost more than $138000 of her savings to a scam. "It sucked me in, ...
New York Post
By NATASHA VELEZ and REBECCA HARSHBARGER A man was slain this morning in a vicious gang-related squabble in East New York, law-enforcement sources said. The seeds of the deadly conflict were formed last week when the victim's girlfriend told cops that ...
KHBS-KHOG Northwest Arkansas
Negotiations on the issue continue, the senior administration officials said. Obama officials are also pushing for more Pakistani involvement in peace talks with the Taliban. The United States also expects Hollande to announce the removal of French ...
BlueRidgeNow.com
Another neighbor, who declined to give his name, said he knew there were a lot of dogs in the home, but that there had never been a problem with noise or smell. “Anyone that can't maintain their animals is bad, but if they can maintain them, ...
New York Times
A spokesman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with his department's policy, said the three men were arrested in Kabul after an investigation of the messages they had sent. “We believe these three men are part of a bigger network,” he ...
ABC News
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of the private session. Russia is a partner with the United States and European nations in containing Iran's nuclear program, although with China it has blocked the most severe penalties ...
Chicago Tribune
"Of course, I was at Madison (Street) in the late '60s" said one neighbor who asked not to be named. "This reminds me of how I used to be ... But I still moved my car off the street." The protesters have been upset for many months at Emanuel's cuts to ...
Chicago Tribune
The people asked not to be named because the plans are confidential. "We are still on track to begin shipping the Focus Electric this spring," Ford spokesman Wes Sherwood said. The Focus EV will compete in the burgeoning electric vehicle market against ...
New York Times
“The strife distracted everyone because no one could push back,” said one current trader in the office who insisted on anonymity because of the nature of the issue. “I think everything spiraled because of the personality issues.
Washington Post
Saturday's crash occurred during the Var Rally on a road going through Plan-de-la Tour, a small village in southern France, a policeman said on condition of anonymity in keeping with regulations. He said the cause of the crash at 4:30 pm (1430 GMT, ...
The Province
A Canadian official speaking on background said Canada also supports the "smart defence" proposal. The fact the budget cuts are coming at a time when members are embroiled in a debate over what kinds of missions the alliance should be undertaking, ...
The Republic
Earlier on Friday, the New York Times reported that the CFTC had opened an enforcement case, quoting people briefed on the matter. The CFTC would join the FBI and the US Securities and Exchange Commission among federal agencies examining the loss, ...
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."