Adam LaRoche and his son

Imagine that this was General Motors instead of the Chicago White Sox.

"Anonymous GM officials told USA Today that many UAW workers agree with management's decision to cut vacation time."

 

YF seeks out articles from the NYT, while you read comic books.

 

All true.

And, there's a major problem with a column like this. There's already a dearth of original reporting. All it takes is for one column/article to report something as fact, and we get 100 more published claiming the same thing, all relying on the original report. (A bag of skittles and a can of "iced tea" anyone?)

 

Would you trust a cop who has been with the force for 30 years with an impeccable record?

A lot of this job is being able to correctly discern who to trust and who not to trust. And, again, in the Gannett I worked for, everyone was told use of anonymous sources was to be extremely limited and rigorously vetted not only for fairness and accuracy but for the source's motivation, before we granted anonymity.

 

To determine if a suspect or witness is lying or not, without confirmation?

No, I absolutely would not.

I wouldn't trust a single human.

I recently completed an independent investigation into some old homicides in which we talked to witnesses, prisoners convicted of the murders, etc., etc. The prosecutors would frequently push me on whether the witnessed "appeared credible" or "seemed to be telling the truth."

And every time, without fail, my answer was some form of: "Yes/No. But nothing in these conclusions is based upon my independent judgment of whether someone was being truthful or not. It is strictly based upon comparing their statements to the evidentiary record."

I emphasized that over and over again. I am not qualified to determine what they were asking me, and that kind of false confidence leads to innocent people being convicted and guilty people walking free.

 

A single reporter cannot go through his/her career without developing a few sources whom they trust implicitly. There are plenty such sources out there.

 

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if Kenny Williams was the Pope. You don't publish self-serving hearsay from someone with an agenda. You just don't. Readers don't know Bob Nightengale from a first-year journalism student.

 

The only thing I'm absolutely certain about here is that OOP will get in the last word.

 

Of course it matters. I had sources I trusted implicitly, because they had a long track record of not giving me self-serving hearsay, even if it sounded like that sometimes.

The difference is, I had editors. So did Bob at one point, I'm absolutely certain. Editors vetted sources, which used to go without saying, and that directly affected the reputation of the discerning reporter, which it rightfully should have.

 

"Bob" bases his story on what "multiple 'baseball' officials" told him about complaints players made to White Sox management.

We have no idea if these are even second hand reports. And, since they aren't first hand, these "multiple" reports could all be based on one first hand source, who reached out to several others, seeking to get his side of the story out (Kenny Williams).

So, while "Bob" seems impressed with himself for nailing down the story through multiple sources, it means nothing.

We're also left without a single quote from either a player, member of White Sox management, or baseball official.

We're just told that they're were complaints. What was the nature of the complaints? What specifically was said?

 

To me this is just clean-cut: No matter who you are or where you work, you don't permit sources to speak anonymously for other people in a way that advances their agenda like this.

 

We don't even have a "no comment."