Anonymous source tracker
Continuously updated examples of the media's use of anonymous sources
Without the deal, “it's going to be really uncomfortable for” Mr. Zardari at the summit, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic nature of the talks. American officials said the main sticking point was the ...
NECN
The person spoke only on the condition of anonymity. The couple married at his Palo Alto, Calif. home in front of fewer than 100 stunned guests who thought they would be attending a party to celebrate Chan's graduation from medical school.
Tulsa World
A member of the mechanics and related workers union in Tulsa who asked not to be named said the current situation is difficult. "The last offer didn't even keep up with the cost of living, let alone our increases in health-care expenses.
Boston Globe
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission voted unanimously Friday to open an enforcement case, people briefed on the matter said, making it the third federal agency to examine the trading loss. The agency joins the Securities and Exchange Commission ...
Orlando Sentinel
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan on Sunday blocked access to Twitter in response to "blasphemous" material posted by users on the microblogging and social networking website, a senior government official said. "This has been done under the directions of ...
Tulsa World
One Oklahoma woman who did not want to be identified said she was born and raised in the church and left when she was in her late 20s. She said church leaders do not forbid going to doctors, "but if you do go to the doctor, they look at you as weak and ...
Village Voice (blog)
The man who supplied the documents, James Sabatino, also provided significant additional information that was included in the article, attributed to an anonymous source. As Chuck and his editors later discovered, what Sabatino had told him was ...
BlueRidgeNow.com
Another neighbor, who declined to give his name, said he knew there were a lot of dogs in the home, but that there had never been a problem with noise or smell. Stout said authorities do not plan to pursue charges against the woman living in the home ...
The Daily Star
TRIPOLI: A Syrian was shot dead and two others wounded as they tried to cross the border from Lebanon back into their country Saturday, security and medical sources said. The three men had left the northern Lebanese village of Mukaibleh and were trying ...
Hindu Business Line
“A draft Cabinet note, that has been prepared based on the revival plan submitted by the IDPL, including its Hyderabad plant, is under consideration in the department,” a source said. The details of the revival plan, however, could not be ascertained.
Digital Spy
They've been getting to know each other and keeping things quiet but they're close," a source said. "Harry has always had a crush on her and hoped he could get it together with her and they eventually did. "Everyone hopes they will become an item, ...
MENAFN.COM
A person who identified himself as the manager of the motel, but refused to give his name, had said the victim and another person were involved in a verbal spat. According to security sources another Egyptian had earlier arrived at the motel to inquire ...
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."