Features Podcasts Family Video Comics Music Tech Science Books Film & TV Games ✚

Jill

Screenwipe on anonymous sourcing

Rob Beschizza at 7:01 am Mon, May 14, 2012

— FEATURED —

Book Review

Black Code: how spies, cops and crims are making cyberspace unfit for human habitation

Book Review

We Can Fix it! - a graphic novel time travel memoir

Science

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

— FOLLOW US —

Boing Boing is on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our RSS feed or daily email.

 

— POLICIES —

Except where indicated, Boing Boing is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution

 

— FONTS —

Tweet
Kindle

In this segment from Charlie Brooker's Newswipe, Heather Brooke highlights the problems of anonymous sources in the UK media, where police spokespersons frequently mislead the public about suspects and investigations. [Video Link]

Read more:
Anodyne Anonymity, by Cory Doctorow
A fatal lack of accounting, by Heather Brooke
Everything tagged Journalism at Boing Boing

⟿ Follow Rob Beschizza on Twitter.

MORE:  anonymity • carousel • heather brooke • newswipe • police

More at Boing Boing

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Hackers prepare for first "national holiday" in their honor

  • dasanjos

    The government has monopoly on violence and now wants monopoly on anonymity…

  • taras

    Good video. Reminds me of one incident where a respected journalist claimed LulzSec had illegally accessed the UK Census database, based on one anonymous source (a text file containing the claims), despite the Office for National Statistics denying it.

    Of course, it turned out to be a non-story, fueled by exactly the kind of speculative, scaremongering reports Brooke discusses in the video.

    Can’t recall that journalist’s name now. Anyone remember?

    edit: oh yeah, here it is: http://heatherbrooke.org/2011/whos-laughing-now-lulzsec-claims-census-leak/

    • http://twitter.com/ronin_b ronin b

      Um, except that she didn’t claim that they had done so. As it says right there in the post you linked to.

      And, Jeez, you made the same sneery little remark 6 months ago:

      http://dev.boingboing.net/2011/10/18/the-revolution-will-be-digitised-how-cablegate-facebook-google-and-the-regulation-will-shape-the-future.html#comment-339086569

      Get out, much?

  • scotchmi_st

    Isn’t that sort of the point of having journalists though? To separate the truth from the lies? Anonymous sourcing helps to protect whistleblowers that would find it hard to have a career if it were not for their anonymity. Surely it is far more important, as mentioned as a caveat in the 19th paragraph of that piece, for the press not to just print everything they’re told?

    • humanresource

      We don’t want to hear your opinion; you’re a paedophile with links to Al Qaeda (sources say).

    • ocker3

       If only they would