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Wednesday, September 30, 2020 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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Anonymity and accountability
By Jim Cornelius
Editor in Chief
We live in a world awash
in information 4 and every
day it gets harder to separate
the wheat from the chaff. It9s
increasingly challenging for
people working in good faith
to sort out fact from fiction,
truth from misinformation,
disinformation and outright
lies.
During Oregon9s recent
spate of catastrophic wild-
fires, rumors spread as viru-
lently as the wind-driven
flames. Law enforcement
agencies from the FBI to the
Douglas and Jackson County
sheriff9s offices found it nec-
essary to address persistent
rumors 4 presented as estab-
lished fact 4 that extrem-
ists were starting fires. They
published statements that
the rumors were not only
unfounded but categorically
false.
While arsonists were
found to have started some
of the fires 4 and arrests
were made 4 law enforce-
ment investigated claims that
extremists were engaged in a
concerted campaign of terror-
istic arson and found them to
be untrue. Which didn9t stop
the rumors from spreading.
While it9s not in the same
category as wild rumor, the
over-reliance on anony-
mous sources in national
media also feeds a climate
where information cannot
be trusted. A recent article
in The Atlantic by editor in
chief Jeffrey Goldberg cited
multiple unnamed sources
who claimed that President
Donald Trump disparaged
American service members
as <losers= and <suckers=
in the context of an aborted
trip to a World War I military
cemetery in France in 2018.
Those inclined to think
the worst of Donald Trump
were quick to seize upon the
report, which rings true to
them: Trump, after all, has
mocked and derided lots of
people, including his very
public disparagement of the
late Senator John McCain,
who was a POW during the
Vietnam War.
Trouble is, other people
who were present categori-
cally reject the report. And
those people are not anony-
mous. How should a person
working in good faith weigh
the relative credibility of
people who are willing to
put their names to their state-
ments and those who are not?
In his recent memoir,
former National Security
Advisor John Bolton, who
is, to put it mildly, not on
friendly terms with the
President, said the decision
not to visit the cemetery was
weather-related. Bolton told
The New York Times that he
did not hear Trump use the
disparaging words depicted
in Goldberg9s story.
<I didn9t hear that. I9m
not saying he didn9t say them
later in the day or another
time, but I was there for that
discussion.=
Goldberg is arguing that
we should trust his report-
ing. In a letter to the editor in
The Nugget last week, D.S.
Findlay said that The Atlantic
<retracted the validity of their
anonymous 8source.9= That9s
not accurate.
In an interview with
CNN, Goldberg said, <I stand
by my reporting, I have mul-
tiple sources telling me this
is what happened, and so I
stand by it.= He also said that
he is sure that all of the things
that Bolton wrote in his own
account are true.
We9re unlikely to get the
chance to see how Bolton9s
account and Goldberg9s
report can both be true,
because we don9t know who
Goldberg talked to. Much has
reporting and dilutes the
potential impact of his work.
It seems he may have a glim-
mer of realization to that
effect. When Chris Hayes
of MSNBC pressed him on
anonymous sourcing, he
replied:
<I share that view that it9s
not good enough. But, you
know, like other reporters,
I9m always balancing out the
moral ambiguities and com-
plications after anonymous
sourcing with the public9s
right to know& These are
people in the various rooms.
But, yeah, obviously it would
be better if people would say,
attach their names to what
they know.=
Yeah, obviously, it would.
Standards for journalists
and for folks posting online
or talking with friends really
shouldn9t be much differ-
ent. If information cannot be
verified from a responsible
source that has account-
ability, it should be treated
very carefully 4 and the
more inflammatory it is, the
more skeptically it should
be viewed. We should all do
our best to follow verifiable
information where it leads 4
and then let the truth will out
and the chips fall where they
may.
been made of reports that the
Associated Press and FOX
News <confirmed= parts of
Goldberg9s reporting. But
we should be aware of what
<confirmation= means in this
context, as noted by Glenn
Greenwald of The Intercept:
<(J)ournalism is not sup-
posed to be grounded in
whether something is 8believ-
able9 or 8seems like it could
be true.9 Its core purpose, the
only thing that really makes
it matter or have worth, is
reporting what is true, or at
least what evidence reveals.
And that function is com-
pletely subverted when news
outlets claim that they 8con-
firmed9 a previous report
when they did nothing more
than just talked to the same
people who anonymously
whispered the same things
to them as were whispered to
the original outlet.=
There are valid reasons
to protect the anonymity of
sources who provide critical,
substantive and verifiable
information 4 on tax data,
for instance. Saving insiders
from owning what amounts
to gossip about the boss isn9t
one.
By relying solely on anon-
ymous sources, Goldberg
undermines trust in his
Letters to the Editor…
The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer9s name, address and phone number. Letters to the Editor is an open forum for the community
and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor. The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor.
Letters should be no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is 10 a.m. Monday.
To the Editor:
I have been curious of Laird Superfood9s inter-
est in Sisters since CEO Paul Hodge announced
that the company would build their factory and
headquarters here in Sisters and employ about
500 people. Now we see that Hodge and his part-
ner, Paul Schneider, have purchased 36 acres of
the old U.S. Forest Service property at the west
end of town and have requested approval of a
plan to build workforce housing for 300-500
new homes there on 25 of those acres. As letter
writer Gary Leiser said, (The Nugget, Sept. 23)
they should become multi-millionaires almost
instantly from selling all those <workforce=
homes.
And let9s consider this: 500 Laird employees
could mean 500 new residents of Sisters. If half of
them are married, add 250 more people. If half of
them have one child, add 125 more for a total of
875 new residents. And most families these days
have two cars, so here comes another 750 cars.
Mr. Schneider said, <We don9t want to change
the community. We want to expand on it, providing
workforce housing.= Well, sir, 875 new residents
and 750 more cars will change the community,
irreparably. I sincerely hope that the Sisters City
Council denies this devastating request.
Jim Cline
s
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Postmaster: Send address changes to
The Nugget Newspaper,
P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759.
Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon.
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s
Editor in Chief: Jim Cornelius
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To the Editor:
I don9t like to write letters to the editor anymore,
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See LETTERS on page 4
The Nugget Newspaper, LLC
Website: www.nuggetnews.com
442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759
Tel: 541-549-9941 | Email: editor@nuggetnews.com
To the Editor:
A message for Jeff Mackey
Thank you for your service. Thank you for your
patriotism. Thank you for your courage 4 it has
not gone unnoticed. And thank you for sharing your
common sense 4 a rare commodity these days and
apparently a foreign concept to many.
God bless you, Jeff.
Sharon Hrdlicka
Sisters Weather Forecast
Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon
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Owner: J. Louis Mullen
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