Anonymous source tracker
Continuously updated examples of the media's use of anonymous sources
"If he goes and does that (throws the money) then we would have to do something about it," said a police officer, who declined to be named. "It could create a riot. "Already we asked them to move over to the side or to move on at a sensible pace and ...
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. The 2011 budget deficit will be close to ...
Monterey County Herald
"It's not so much what the public wants, it's what they're being spoon-fed," said one insider who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It's what the production companies, National Geographic and the Discovery Channel are demanding so they can sell ...
Mid-Day
According to another lawyer who specialises in divorce cases, and who refused to be named, he once had to ask a client who wanted a divorce to continue living with an abusive husband and build a strong case against him. "When Dipali Chandra approached ...
Emirates 24/7
A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the matter is under investigation, said that authorities were looking at the possibility that the message was intercepted after a private email account of one of the invited ...
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
... Inc. and Credit Suisse Group AG, are planning a road show early in the second quarter to market the shares to investors, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plans, who asked not to be identified because the information isn't public.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
The woman, who asked not to be identified because she works in the medical field, said a plastic surgeon repaired damage from the initial procedure and treated a post-surgical infection. She reached a confidential settlement with Carney, ...
Kansas City Star
Sometimes, a tip is hotlined from an anonymous source. But once the disclosure is made, a police officer or a social worker will talk to the child to ensure safety. Parents are notified. And very quickly, a referral is made to go to a place where a ...
New York Daily News
“After a while, they heard noise on the 14th floor, and a gunshot,” a source said. Detectives found a cell phone and other possessions on the body, suggesting that robbery was not the motive, sources said. But the dead man was not carrying any ...
The Detroit News
"It was a fake marriage for appearances' sake," a source said. The same source said Gentz told police he strangled Jane Bashara after she entered her garage yelling at her husband. He allegedly was paid less than $2000 for the hit, the source said.
NEWS.com.au
Speaking to a reporter for the first time since the incident, Mr White said he, Mr Briscoe and three other men who had been arrested for drunkenness were in a room with four police officers on January 4 when Mr Briscoe refused to give his name.
NTNews.com.au
Speaking to a reporter for the first time since the incident, Mr White said he, Mr Briscoe and three other men who had been arrested for drunkenness were in a room with four police officers on January 4 when Mr Briscoe refused to give his name.
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 | 8,135 |
| Reuters | 6,910 |
| BusinessWeek | 6,329 |
| Bloomberg | 5,670 |
| New York Times | 2,940 |
| Washington Post | 2,636 |
| The Associated Press | 2,060 |
| Los Angeles Times | 1,501 |
| San Francisco Chronicle | 1,408 |
| New York Daily News | 1,218 |
| New York Post | 1,198 |
| AFP | 1,131 |
| Livemint | 1,109 |
| Economic Times | 1,097 |
| Times of India | 1,054 |
| Financial Times | 1,030 |
| ESPN | 1,023 |
| Hindustan Times | 885 |
| Reuters Africa | 854 |
| 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 | 545 |
| Daily Mail | 524 |
| Chicago Tribune | 519 |
| San Jose Mercury News | 516 |
| Washington Post (blog) | 516 |
| CNN | 492 |
| Business Standard | 478 |
| Sydney Morning Herald | 469 |
| Philadelphia Inquirer | 452 |
| msnbc.com | 431 |
| ABC News | 414 |
| The News International | 411 |
| The Guardian | 408 |
| MiamiHerald.com | 379 |
| Monsters and Critics.com | 375 |
| UPI.com | 367 |
| Daily News & Analysis | 362 |
| Inquirer.net | 361 |
| NASDAQ | 360 |
| Detroit Free Press | 355 |
| Xinhua | 346 |
| Sify | 343 |
| Fox News | 340 |
| Salon | 328 |
| Reuters India | 326 |