Anonymous Communications on the Internet

CASE THREE
THE CASE(S) OF THE HOT NEWS TIPS

A young reporter working for an East Coast daily newspaper with a national circulation receives four kinds of anonymous news tips on the same day. A story based on any of these tips could result in an above-the-fold front page news story. Although each tip is anonymous, and each concerns the current administration in a potentially embarrassing way, there are differences among them.

Tip 1

A phone caller leaves a message on the reporter’s voice mail but does not identify herself. She says that the wife of the President of the United States is about to file for divorce, citing mental cruelty as the cause. The message is about five minutes long and contains plausible information, even details that could be known only to an insider. The caller says that later in the day the first lady’s press secretary will announce that her boss has departed the White House for a three-week religious retreat, but that this is only a story to cover up the true state of affairs until after the fall elections. The caller also gives other clues that indeed come to pass within a few hours.

Tip 2

An e-mail arrives that same morning stating that, despite its public posture, the Administration is winking at a hostile foreign country’s non-compliance with a treaty. The e-mail has been routed through an anonymizer so that a reply from the reporter is not possible. Yet there have been rumors to this effect in the State Department coffee shop, and other national news outlets have possibly received a similar e-mail and may go with the story for tomorrow’s paper. Further, the e-mail contains details about the Secretary of State’s itinerary, including a scheduled trip to the manicurist’s that turns out be verifiable. This story could have major consequences regarding the career of the Secretary and our relations with friends and foes alike.

Tip 3

A highly-placed presidential aide meets the reporter for lunch at an out-of-the-way bistro and tells the reporter -- off the record, of course -- that the President, when alone in the living quarters, has been seen repeatedly beating his adorable new dog. Although the source is well known to the reporter, has always been reliable, and has just relayed information that would surely anger the American people, the reporter finds this information utterly unbelievable of this President.

Tip 4

The reporter gets a call from someone he knows who tells him that a new, and quite famous, aide to the President is a wife-beater. The reporter decides not to follow through on this tip, for now at least. It is obviously a busy news day, and he does not have the time to find the additional sources to verify such a sordid story. But the next day Mark Grudge, a notorious purveyor of rumors on the internet (see http://www.Grudge.com) has the story on his Hot Line. The reporter knows it must have come from the same tipster because of telling little details. Not only does the President’s aide (and his wife) deny the story, but they sue Grudge and a certain Professor L., who they claim is the source of the story. Grudge, through his lawyer, says that he should not be held to the same standard as a print journalist because "everyone knows that you have to take what you read on the Net with a grain of salt." And Professor L., through his lawyer, says that he is not the source of this story (which he privately believes to be true).

Discussion Questions

How does the medium through which the tip is received affect its believability?
2. Although the sources if the first two tips are anonymous to the reporter, while the identity of the third tipster is known, the reader will be equally in the dark regarding all three. What is the reporter’s responsibility to the public, if any, when using such sources? What is his responsibility to the public official whose reputation may be impugned?
Does anonymous information accompanied by verifiable details carry more weight than a tip from an informer who is personally known and trusted but can offer no corroboration? Should it?
What would be the reporter’s responsibility if, in trying to identify an anonymous tipster, that person’s position were placed in jeopardy?
5. Does the reporter have any responsibility to try to convince anonymous sources to take responsibility for their tales?
Is Grudge (Tip 4) right that there are different, many would say lesser, standards for news items appearing on the Net? And should we add a grain of salt to such stories above and beyond the generous portion we already use before ingesting news stories in the papers? If this is true, is there also a different standard for other information on the Web? For example, is health information likely to be less reliable? How about instructions for changing the oil in our cars or filing our income taxes?
Our reporter knows, in the case of Tip 4, that Professor L. was almost certainly not the source of Grudge’s story because he knows the identify of the true tipster. He does not want to come forward, even to save L. the expense and aggravation of defending himself in a lawsuit, as he has promised anonymity to the caller. What do you think of his behavior? What should he do?

This case was prepared by staff at the American Association for the Advancement of Science as part of a project on "Anonymous Communications on the Internet: Uses and Abuses" (see http://www.aaas.org/spp/anon), funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation. This case may be downloaded and used for educational purposes.

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