Anonymous sources are a practice of American journalism in the 20th and 21st century, a relatively recent practice. The literary tradition of anonymity goes back to the Bible.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Sure, some journalists use anonymous sources just because they're lazy and I think editors ought to insist on more precise identification even if they remain anonymous.
A writer is supposed to have anonymity.
I'm not quite as anonymous as I was.
There was an honorable tradition of using anonymous sources that was ruined by Jayson Blair.
For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.
Obviously you don't want to be anonymous, but you don't want everyone to know your life.
There are, in the King case in particular, some names of confidential informants, persons to whom we promised confidentiality in return for their testimony. We have put their testimony in the public domain, but feel that their names should continue to be anonymous.
Anonymous is not an organization. It is an idea, a zeitgeist, coupled with a set of social and technical practices.
Back in my days as a children's book editor, my superiors caught on to the fact that teenagers were using the Internet to gossip about each other, and thought it might be nifty to develop a series of books about an anonymous high-school blogger who gossips about her classmates. The concept was passed on to me.
Anonymity is a universal convention of the blogosphere, and the wicked expedience is that you can speak without consequences.