Debating Anonymice

At this hour, across town at the National Press Club, the World’s Largest Panel is convening to discuss the virus of anonymous sourcing spreading through the news media.

In preparation for the discussion, and because with 15 other people involved, he guesses that the chances of actually speaking are slim-to-none, Slate’s Jack Shafer gave kudos in his column to USA Today for actually enforcing their policies towards not using anonymous sourcing:

I rail against anonymous sources because they tend to degrade the information content of news stories in which they’re quoted. Most anonymice spin and leak selectively for political, personal, or institutional gain, and all the “balancing quotations” from other sources can never erase their taint.

We’re stuck in a meeting this morning, otherwise we’d be at the panel. So how’d it go? Anonymous email reports are encouraged.

Full list of panelists after the jump.

“Confronting the Seduction of Secrecy: Toward Improved Access to Government Information on the Record”

To address the off-the-record briefings, anonymous sourcing and official leaking that plague Washington — and the atmosphere of heightened government secrecy underlying them – requires understanding what feeds the system: Who benefits from anonymity? Why? Whom does it harm, and how?

The Fifth Annual Curtis B. Hurley Symposium will open with comments by Bill Kovach, chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists and former New York Times Washington bureau chief, on the allure and the perils of anonymity.

A roundtable discussion aimed at achieving practicable steps toward on-the-record attribution will follow, with Tom Curley, president and CEO of the Associated Press; Mike McCurry, former White House press secretary; Ken Paulson, editor of USA Today; Ron Hutcheson, president of the White House Correspondents Association; Andy Alexander, FOI Chair of the American Society of Newspaper Editors; Barbara Cochran, president of Radio and Television News Directors Association; Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press; Pete Weitzel, coordinator for the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government; Stephen Labaton, New York Times, co-chair of the Press Club FOI committee; Jack Shafer, Slate editor-at-large; Jack Nelson, former Washington bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times; Michael Getler, ombudsman of the Washington Post; Paul McMasters, Freedom Forum First Amendment Center ombudsman; Jane Kirtley, director of the Silha Center; and Phil Taubman, Washington bureau chief of the New York Times.

Geneva Overholser, Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting of the Missouri School of Journalism, will moderate.

Audience participation will be encouraged.

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