Two well-known media outlets picked up Paul Chesser’s commentary on the
use of anonymous sources this week. On Thursday, The Washington Times
published his reaction to a recent Associated Press survey of newspaper
editors, in which 28 percent of the papers that responded said they
never allow reporters to use anonymous sources. That’s bad news,
Chesser wrote, and it shows some papers are ignoring their
constitutional purpose. “That’s because any journalist who won’t bother
with unidentified sources will never get at the heart of corruption in
government.” It was in The Times that Tapscott’s Copy Desk saw
Chesser’s column and blogged about his thesis. Mark Tapscott, the Heritage Foundation’s director for media and public policy, then made
this comment. “What I find especially encouraging about Chesser’s
piece, however, is that it appears in The Washington Times, the
self-proclaimed conservative daily in D.C., and that Chesser is a top
editor at one of the best conservative online news journals.”