Anonymous source tracker
Continuously updated examples of the media's use of anonymous sources
Several people who insisted on anonymity agreed with her. “CUPE is remarkably, profoundly aware of the (public relations) problem they face over the 2009 strike,” said Councillor Adam Vaughan, who opposes the city's approach to bargaining.
Huffington Post
The source is not authorized to speak on the record. The current settlement grew out of the "robo-signing" scandal of 2010, in which banks are alleged to have systematically forged documents and wrongfully foreclosed on homeowners.
Washington Post
Like many Chinese officials she refused to give her name. Calls to county police rang unanswered, while a man at the Ganzi prefecture public security office, which oversees the county, said he had not heard of the incident. He also refused to give his ...
Daily Inter Lake
Some survivors posed with their faces and identities revealed, while others chose to remain anonymous. Each photograph reflects the wisdom each acquired during her journey out of domestic violence. Long believes the quotes paired with the photo make ...
Mason City Globe Gazette
"Most (leases per acre) were a good $200 higher than what I pay in Cerro Gordo County," said one farmer, who declined to give his name. There is a fear, he said, that other rents will be forced upwards. "With these numbers I don't know how those ...
San Francisco Chronicle
One black-clad man, pulling on black gloves, a bandanna hanging from his pocket, echoed the statement, though he declined to give his name. "I don't know anything about violence," he said. "It's all about f-ing freedom of speech here.
The Press Association
He asked not to be named because the talks were continuing. Debt inspectors representing eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are pushing for tougher austerity measures and private sector pay cuts before approving a new 130 ...
The Associated Press
Even after working all night they would sometimes come home and go back out to help their mother clean houses during the day," said the family's landlord, who asked not to be named out of privacy concerns. "Then came the news that Eder killed them.
Boston.com
He asked not to be named because the talks are ongoing. Debt inspectors representing eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund are pushing for tougher austerity measures and private sector pay cuts before approving a new euro130 billion ...
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 ...
Washington Post
The overall tone was positive, but there were “lots of tough and candid questions” from executive directors and local board members, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal communications.
WDTV
Three protestors, who chose to remain anonymous, shared their thoughts. "I'm actually here on behalf of my brother who is an addict. At some point they tend to be out of their control, so I'm fighting for him since he is bound by the chains of ...
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 |