Anonymous source tracker
Continuously updated examples of the media's use of anonymous sources
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 ...
Business Recorder (blog)
An official who requested anonymity said that he was gravely concerned about the overall fiscal deficit and depleting cash balance position of the provinces. The meeting reviewed federal and provincial fiscal operation for the first six months of the ...
VietNamNet Bridge
A female employee who refused to be named said her station had been allowed “by the authorities to operate until the unsold petrol stock had been emptied.” However, she could not elaborate on which agencies had given them the go-ahead to do so.
Sunday Times.lk
Indian embassy officials, who declined to be named, refuted claims of Indian pressure. The coal power plant is a joint venture project between the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) and the National Thermal Power Corporation Ltd. (NTPC) of India.
WDIV Detroit
Personally, I suspect there is some involvement on his (Bob Bashara) part,” said a woman who asked not to be identified. Friday, Joe was released by Grosse Pointe Park police after confessing he strangled Jane Bashara in her garage last week and was ...
Wall Street Journal
... York Fed is asking for bids on some $6 billion in residential mortgage-backed securities from its Maiden Lane II portfolio it took on as part of the 2008 bailout of American International Group Inc., said an investor and a person close to the deal.
The Herald-Mail
One employee, who spoke on a condition of anonymity, said she's noticed increased incidences of theft in the store where she works. She said some employees are “scared half to death” to work at night because of people standing around the store, ...
phillyBurbs.com
"I've lived all over North Jersey and Central Jersey and this is the safest neighborhood I've ever seen," said one neighbor who did not wish to be identified. "I still feel safe, but I'm a little worried now. When these things happen, ...
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 | 8,136 |
| Reuters | 6,911 |
| 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 |