Anonymous source tracker
Continuously updated examples of the media's use of anonymous sources
The next Assassin's Creed is set to feature a new protagonist and switch setting to the American Revolution, a source close to the project has told CVG. The exciting switch to the 18th century conflict will mark the series' 'biggest instalment yet', ...
KGTV San Diego
He declined to give his name to help protect the identity of his 13-year-old niece. "I think he's the biggest creep on the planet. I hope that every single day of his life when he's sitting in that jail rotting for the 350-some-odd-years worth of ...
New York Times
The person, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the focus on the Planet stores, which were meant to make Carrefour's out-of-town stores into shopping destinations, had been ill advised considering the ...
Wall Street Journal
"I think that, in practice, we've already advanced all we can from the point of view of regulation," said the person, who asked not to be identified. "To take more steps to make the market more flexible, we start to run up against the question of the ...
msnbc.com (blog)
The man, who declined to be identified, spent the night in the car fearing it would be damaged by road clearing vehicles if he abandoned it. By ALINA WOLFE MURRAY BUCHAREST, Romania — Parts of eastern and central Europe were hit hard by heavy snow and ...
BusinessWeek
The chain is developing a partnership with the UK's Waterstones Booksellers Ltd. to add the Nook to its locations this year, said the person, who declined to be identified because the talks are private. Closely held Waterstones, the largest bookstore ...
Otago Daily Times
A staff member at the school, who declined to be named, said the school's three teachers were not happy about Mrs Casey's return to teaching on Monday after six months' leave. As a result, one teacher had been granted unpaid leave until at least the ...
Firedoglake
Bank of America had guaranteed California borrowers would receive $8bn in mortgage aid, while Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase committed at least $5bn to the state's distressed homeowners, according to people familiar with the matter, who declined to ...
Wall Street Journal (blog)
NYSE's Duncan Niederauer and Nasdaq OMX's Bob Greifeld both personally pitched their markets in June, according to people familiar with the matter. The exchange operators outlined a slew of promotions and co-branding opportunities with other companies ...
Kuensel, Buhutan's National Newspaper
According to a former user, speaking on the condition of anonymity, a variety of ways are employed to pass detection at the checkpoints along the Phuentsholing – Chunzom highway. Drugs are taped on the body, and then thick clothing is worn, ...
Pro Football Weekly
By PFW staff The following quotes are from NFL scouts, coaches and front-office personnel, speaking on the condition of anonymity. • "How do you think Jim Harbaugh feels about getting burned by a (Ohio State) Buckeye? Not having Ted Ginn (Jr.) really ...
Washington Post
Late last year, sources close to the company told Bloomberg that Facebook could raise up to $10 billion with its IPO, making it the largest technology IPO on record. Visa currently holds the record for the largest IPO in history, having raised $19.6 ...
The goal of the anonymous source tracker is to make the media's use of anonymous sources more transparent. It's an experiment, and as such it's imperfect and subject to change.
While it finds many examples of the use of anonymous sources, it doesn't find all anonymous sources used by newspapers, magazines, TV stations, wire services or other news outlets online.
It gets its examples from the English version of Google News. Phrases commonly used to identify anonymous sources are fed to Google News, which produces an Atom feed for each phrase. Those feeds are then combined under a single label, "anonymous," in Google Reader. That feed is public. Every hour a PHP script grabs the Google Reader feed, extracts the summary text, highlights the anonymous source phrasing, and puts it in a database to display on the anonymous source tracker.
Some examples are rejected, even though the articles they point to used anonymous sources, because the anonymous source phrasing isn't in the summary.
Some examples are duplicates. If a URL is already in the database, those examples are rejected. But sometimes the same story can have different URLs, so the same story can appear more than once. The same wire story may also be run by multiple outlets.
The news outlets scanned are the same outlets scanned by Google News. I don't know what criteria Google News uses to decide whether to include a Web site.
Typically Google returns a search result for a phrase giving a summary for only one outlet, with an "and more" link pointing to other matches for stories on the same subject. The anonymous source tracker doesn't grab those "and more" results, so many examples are undoubtedly missed.
I don't know how Google does what it does or why, or why one outlet is given prominence for a given search while another isn't, so I don't know if all outlets are being treated equally by the anonymous source tracker.
The count for each news outlet doesn't include every anonymously sourced story produced by that outlet. The counts shouldn't be considered valid rankings.
To quote Donald Rumsfeld, "there are known unknowns."
"That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know."
| Wall Street Journal | 8,075 |
| Reuters | 6,804 |
| BusinessWeek | 6,237 |
| Bloomberg | 5,579 |
| New York Times | 2,906 |
| Washington Post | 2,598 |
| The Associated Press | 2,047 |
| Los Angeles Times | 1,483 |
| San Francisco Chronicle | 1,371 |
| New York Daily News | 1,195 |
| New York Post | 1,177 |
| AFP | 1,128 |
| Livemint | 1,099 |
| Economic Times | 1,086 |
| Times of India | 1,042 |
| Financial Times | 1,015 |
| ESPN | 1,009 |
| Hindustan Times | 876 |
| Reuters Africa | 851 |
| New York Times (blog) | 827 |
| Patch.com | 749 |
| Boston Globe | 664 |
| The Star-Ledger - NJ.com | 627 |
| Wall Street Journal (blog) | 579 |
| CNN International | 557 |
| Chicago Sun-Times | 541 |
| Daily Mail | 515 |
| San Jose Mercury News | 515 |
| Washington Post (blog) | 507 |
| Chicago Tribune | 504 |
| CNN | 489 |
| Business Standard | 477 |
| Sydney Morning Herald | 463 |
| Philadelphia Inquirer | 446 |
| msnbc.com | 430 |
| The News International | 407 |
| The Guardian | 406 |
| ABC News | 404 |
| MiamiHerald.com | 376 |
| Monsters and Critics.com | 374 |
| UPI.com | 361 |
| Daily News & Analysis | 360 |
| NASDAQ | 358 |
| Inquirer.net | 357 |
| Xinhua | 346 |
| Sify | 343 |
| Detroit Free Press | 340 |
| Salon | 328 |
| Fox News | 324 |
| Reuters India | 324 |