Going Positive

"Len Downie is a visionary," said one Washington Post staffer who declined to be identified when discussing his boss. "He's really beefed up the paper journalistically. And he's incredibly fair to boot."

Were I to publish such a quote about the paper's executive editor, I would be ridiculed, and rightly so. ( Not because of the content, in case Len is reading this, but because of the absurdity of granting someone anonymity for such comments.)

This, I confess, is one of my pet peeves. It's bad enough that journalists overuse and abuse unnamed sources who either rip their rivals or say something critical of their own operation, but at least there is a patina of a rationale--namely, that no one, at least in politics, would make such utterances on the record.

But saying something positive about your own side? Why on earth should we drape a cloak of anonymity around such people? Why not say, "I'd love to use that, but there's no reason it can't be on the record"?

Well, I know some of the purported reasons. The Bush White House is so secretive that some officials aren't supposed to talk to reporters at all, even to praise the emperor's wardrobe. And some officials fear that if they're quoted by name as saying something nice, they might be suspected of saying not-so-nice things that appear in the same piece.

But that's no excuse. Here are three other examples that caught my eye:

In Newsweek , Howard Fineman and Richard Wolffe report:

" 'The president has formulated a lot of his own views,' said an aide, 'and has a very firm idea of what he wants to do and accomplish with his foreign policy.' " (This had to do with how Cheney wasn't as influential any more, but still.)

In U.S. News , Kevin Whitelaw and Kenneth Walsh report:

" 'If we lose Karl Rove, we lose the best political strategist of this generation,' says a House Republican leader. 'He's a hall-of-fame player, and his loss would be incalculable.' "

No way that could be on the record, huh?

In The Washington Post , Peter Baker reports: