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Reporters should reveal real reason for unnamed sources

Bob Dylan once sang, “But I can’t think for you, you’ll have to decide whether Judas Iscariot had God on his side.”

Turns out, he did. At least that’s the way he tells it in the Gospel of Judas, a 1,700-year-old codex the National Geographic Society just released. According to that manuscript, Jesus asked Judas to leak his whereabouts to the Romans in order that his “Passion” and the world’s redemption might proceed as planned.

Also last week, we learned that former Cheney aide Scooter Libby explains that his illegal leaking was done at the behest of his leader, President Bush. All this rationalization of leaks revives some interesting questions about how communications professionals should be dealing with unauthorized disclosures.

Here in Washington, we understand that this city could not function without leaks – we’d rather give up indoor plumbing. But lately, the national newsmedia have been agonizing over how to deal with leaks. The consensus, so far, is that when an anonymous quote appears in a story, the reader deserves an explanation. Understanding a leaker’s motivation can help a reader evaluate the credibility of the leak.

Is it public-spirited or merely self-serving? Does the leaker have an incentive to “spin” the leak one way or another? Is the leaker likely to profit financially, politically, or otherwise from the leak?

Reporters’ rationales for quoting anonymous sources range from the banal to the bizarre. We are told that some leakers wish to remain anonymous out of “fear of reprisal” or “due to the sensitivity of the issue” or “because the information has not yet been made public.” Well, duh.

Why not tell us the real reason a leaker wants to remain anonymous. These would sound more like “because she would be fired” or “because this is an act of extreme disloyalty” or “because the source is really not in a position to know much about this issue.” But obviously, such candor would create other problems for reporters.

In fact, the anonymous leak serves everyone’s interest (except the target). The public gets information that it would otherwise be denied – like the existence of an elaborate domestic spying program. The reporter gets a story – often an exclusive – that could never be had “on the record.” And the source, well, here’s where those rationales come in again… the source also gets something of value. It may be as innocent as seeming in-the-know to a big-time reporter. It may be settling an old score or killing a program the source doesn’t like. Or, it may be darker than that – like ending the career of a political opponent.

Whatever the reason for the leak, however, it is unlikely to be as boring and innocent-sounding as the ones being offered up these days in our daily press. In the interest of honest journalism and, frankly, in the interest of spicy storytelling, let’s start demanding that reporters tell us the real inside story about why their sources are so shy.

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Katrina disaster shows value of restoring FEMA’s status

Twenty-seven years ago, while working in the Carter White House, I directed the reorganization project that gave birth to a new federal agency: the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). While the idea of a single agency to coordinate the federal preparation for and response to natural disasters seems obvious now, forging political consensus behind the plan was tough.

We had to pull from more than 30 different government fiefdoms – including the Defense Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The resistance was fierce. And, because we insisted that the agency be independent, report directly to the President, and have ex-officio Cabinet status, we faced another hurdle: the need for congressional
approval, which could have been avoided by tucking the agency into a larger department.

Watching the saga of FEMA’s disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, I’ve wondered what went wrong with such a good idea. The easy answer: leadership. Unlike James Lee Witt, President Clinton’s FEMA director who came to the office from a career in public service and disaster work, Michael Brown, FEMA director during Katrina, was the former head of the Arabian Horse Association, with no disaster experience. But there is another, more important explanation of what went wrong that says a lot about managing change in large organizations.

When we created FEMA, we knew that, to be effective in coordinating the assets and activities of multiple federal agencies, it needed independence, stature, and direct access to the President. President Clinton understood this and further elevated FEMA to full Cabinet status. When Witt called upon officials throughout the bureaucracy to pitch in on disaster relief, they knew he spoke with Clinton’s authority. In contrast, President Bush, in the aftermath of 9/11, downgraded FEMA’s status and made it a division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), an agency more concerned with terrorism than with more frequent – but less dramatic – natural disasters.

Large bureaucracies, whether government agencies or private companies, are not built for extraordinary effort. They thrive on routine. When their leaders or circumstances call for the extraordinary, they resist – sometimes massively. Leaders like Jack Welsh and Lou Gerstner have seen this when trying to reinvent GE and IBM, respectively, and President Bush got a taste of it after Katrina. The difference: Welsh and Gerstner knew that there is no chance for success unless it is clear that orders are coming from the highest level.

What does all of this mean for FEMA’s future? Simple. Take it out of DHS, and return it to independent, Cabinet-level status. If the next disaster requiring massive federal mobilization is a dirty bomb or biological attack instead of a hurricane, FEMA will be there to respond, and that response will be more effective if the agency has the independence and clout that it needs to get the job done.

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Google’s defiance could be its downfall if it isn’t careful

Vladimir Lenin famously cited the principle “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs” to justify creating a Utopian society through bloody revolution and dictatorship. For seven decades, the Communists broke a lot of eggs without producing an omelet.

But Lenin was right – to drive change, you have to break some rules and, often, some laws. Consider Google. The company is under siege by publishers for digitizing and distributing copyrighted work, and by the Bush administration for refusing to turn over individual search histories. The former is probably illegal and the latter a dangerous challenge to a President who thinks he’s Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men.

Ironically, while breaking the rules in the US, Google is timidly observing China’s rules of wholesale Internet censorship – the so-called “Great Firewall of China.” Next time you visit Beijing, try Googling “democracy,” and you’re likely to get the same result as placing a collect call to Osama bin Laden from New York City. Apparently, Google thinks it can make an omelet in China without breaking the yolk.

The inconsistency of these policies – one bold and rebellious, the other compliant and complicitous – says a lot about Google and the relationship between change and rule-breaking. Google’s mission statement – “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” – is high-minded and populist. If information is power, Google promises “power to the people.” The company further cloaks itself in righteousness with its motto of “Do no evil.” For Google, “Do no evil” isn’t the same as “Break no rules.” If society’s rules are designed to screw the little guy, Google is happy to pursue a high-profile, defiant rule-breaking strategy – in line with its commitment to avoid evil-doing and illustrative of its corporate persona as a populist defender of the common man.

But Google needs to be careful. Rules help preserve the power of the powerful, and when challenged, those interests are fierce defenders of the status quo. Ask Napster’s Shawn Fanning. While Google has plenty of economic and market power of its own, there are only so many times it can stick its finger in the eye of the ruling elite with impunity. The company is already finding that, despite its positive buzz and soaring market cap, it can’t find a well-connected Republican in Washington willing to represent its political interests. It should ask Bill Gates what being an outsider in Washington can cost a company in legal bills alone.

And Google, like a self-righteous politician (think Tom DeLay), could easily become an overstuffed political piñata for competitors, politicians, and the media. The hypocrisy of its China policy looks like the big bull’s eye on that piñata’s butt. Google is in its corporate adolescence – big growth spurt, lots of testosterone, moral certitude, and flagrant disdain for authority and rules. But adolescents who don’t learn when to play by the rules become obnoxious and, ultimately, unsuccessful adults.

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HP’s lack of political acumen likely had role in leak scandal

What are the first two questions you ask yourself when you hear about a new PR disaster? Here are mine. First, what the hell were they thinking? Second, how can smart people do such dumb things?

Take the Hewlett-Packard leak flap. These are smart people. CEO Mark Hurd, in just 19 months, is turning the company around. Board chairman Patricia Dunn, as a member of the Conference Board’s center for corporate governance, is no stranger to corporate ethics issues. Nor is the HP boardroom populated by unsuccessful, inexperienced, or dumb people. So when Dunn proposed conducting a clandestine probe into boardroom leaks, why didn’t alarms go off in the head (or conscience) of at least one board member? Had no one read All the President’s Men (or even seen the movie)? Didn’t it occur to anyone that the whole exercise was ethically and legally questionable and, from a PR perspective, dangerous in the extreme? Here are two explanations for these incredible lapses of judgment – one about the nature of the incident and the other about the people involved.

In my White House and Senate staff days, I learned that how you respond to leak probes can help either exonerate you or indict you. “Great idea, let’s get those bastards” suggests that you have nothing to hide. “Do you really think this is a good idea?” on the other hand, can raise all the other eyebrows in the room (there are only nine HP board members, and at least one of them was “guilty”). This is why, even after approximately 99.99% of all leak probes have backfired, they are still proposed and endorsed by otherwise intelligent people.

And what about those people? Of the nine HP board members, six are techies, one comes from finance (Dunn), one from healthcare, and one is a consultant. Notice what’s missing? Here’s a hint by way of board members of similar companies. Apple: Al Gore. Xerox: Vernon Jordan. Dell: Sam Nunn. AT&T: Lynn Martin. United Technologies: Christine Todd Whitman. Intel: Charlene Barshefsky. No one on the HP board has any obvious political experience. It’s not even clear that there’s a lawyer on the board (at least no one is identified as such on the HP Web site).

Of course, having political experience is no guarantee of sagacity or even common sense on politically sensitive issues like leak probes. But, it is hard to believe that Gore, Jordan, or Nunn wouldn’t have sounded the alarm if they were in the HP boardroom that day. It is also unlikely that any of them would have been intimidated by the prospect of being suspected of leaking.

Possibly HP is now looking for a prospective board member with these kinds of credentials, but so far, its only structural reaction has been to take a giant step back from corporate reform and name Hurd chairman of the board. Circling the wagons may be the only political strategy less likely to succeed than probing leaks.

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