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Watchdog ConferenceThe Role of Reporters’ JudgmentA question from the audience elicited discussion aboutwhether there can ever be truly “independent sources.” Thewhole notion of independent sources, this questioner posedto the journalists, “is an oxymoron like jumbo shrimp oreducational TV.” “Is there,” he wanted to know, “such athing as an independent source?”What follows are excerpts from the Watchdog conferencethat were either made in direct reply to this question oremerged out of other related discussions:William Rashbaum: “There’s no way to maintain completeindependence from your sources and still be reallyeffective as a watchdog. But I think that we have to continuallywork to limit our dependence. And I think we have to dothat in obvious ways, such as having many, many sourcesover as wide a range of areas and disciplines as possible,sources at the top of institutions as well as at the bottom inthe trenches. Read absolutely everything you can get yourhands on so you become as expert and knowledgeable aboutthe area that you are covering, and just use your eyes, ears,and mind, rather than relying on what you’ve been told.”Murrey Marder: “No, there is no such thing as an independentsource, and the first thing a reporter should askhimself when he is talking to anyone whom he thinks may bea source is, ‘Why is this source talking to me? What is in it forhim?’ First, I have to find out what is in it for him before I findwhat is in it for me….“Now, some source may be discovered one day in Washingtonwho comes in virginal robes and with a halo. But Icertainly have never encountered him and I would neverassume that any source is telling me the whole truth, becauseI don’t think the source knows the whole truth….“I work from a premise which may be old-fashioned, andI hope it will become new-fashioned: that the source I amtalking to does not know everything about the subject he’stalking about. Second, if he knows a great deal about it, whyis he talking to me, and what is his point of view, and why ishe selling it to me?”“With all the emphasis we have given to sources [at thisconference], it may very well create the impression that thereporter functions best when he is collecting informationfrom various people. I would say on the contrary, he’sfunctioning best when he’s collecting information fromvarious people and thinking it through for himself. I know ofno solid story that I’ve ever written that was simply drawnfrom either a single individual or even a group of individuals.It’s something that I had to piece together in my own mind,with my own resources, essentially, and present in that way.”Loretta Tofani: “No one really had an overview of the jailsystem, a system that didn’t work. Everybody had a limitedview and some people just had plain incorrect knowledge,and so it was really my task to try to make the view completeand make all these different parts see why the other partsweren’t working.”Roy Gutman: “The only way that a reporter could sortout what was really going on [with Serbian atrocities inBosnia] and hope to be at all factual was to find real peoplewho were real victims and ask them to speak. It’s kind ofanathema to a lot of us who cover governments, who arediplomatic reporters, to go to individuals who have suffered.And I think back to Loretta’s story, going to victims and tocriminals. Frankly, [going to talk with victims] gave me asense of independence [because] I acquired enough of adatabase in my head or in my notebooks. I would talk to oneperson alone, fresh, for as long as it took to get the entirestory. Then I would start checking it out with other people,independently. I would not go to anybody who had beeninterviewed by any other reporter. I was able to put togethermy own picture that way. Through that I was able to build upa record of what the crimes were, and there was nobody whocould gainsay me at the end of the day because I wasconvinced it was true. And it just turned out that the factswere correct. Few reporters used that method. So I thinkthere is a way that we can have our independence and do ourstories and be confident of them.”“It strikes me that we shouldn’t be looking for independentsources but for independent judgment. It has to comefrom journalists. Look at Loretta’s story: Who was the independentsource there who gave her the full picture? She puttogether sources, going in fact finally to the perpetrators, thecriminals themselves, and so her story became the independentsource and her work became the independent facts.There was no single source who could put her in thepicture…. The only independence has to come from us.”Susanne M. Schafer: “This is the essence of journalism.The difference between the Internet and what we’d like tothink of as solid journalism is judgment calls.”Lars-Erik Nelson: “I don’t have to be independent of mysources. I am a columnist; I find people who will help me orpeople whose stories intrigue me, and I can advocate theircause for them. So I have less need to keep independent ofsomebody’s agenda than a straight news reporter….”“[When I covered Prague in the early 1970’s], for all thatthey were wonderful democratic people fighting the goodNieman Reports / Fall 1999 15