| name | Source Protection |
| description | Take information on terms, record them so the whole newsroom honours them, and publish without identifying anybody. |
| category | Editorial |
Source Protection
The terms are a promise made by the newsroom, not by the reporter. A source
identified by an illustration or a translated detail is identified just as
thoroughly as one named in the text.
When to use
- Anybody provides information on any condition.
- A story involves somebody who could face consequences for having spoken.
Steps
- Agree the terms explicitly and in their words — on the record, on
background, off the record — and check they mean the same thing by them that
you do. They frequently do not.
- Record them immediately on
sources, with the date and who agreed them.
Terms that live in one reporter's memory are terms the newsroom will breach
by accident.
- Name the interest. What the source gains if the story runs. Everybody has
one; not writing it down does not remove it.
- Corroborate independently. A protected source's account is a lead until a
second source or a document supports it.
- Audit for identifying detail before publication — in the text, the
illustration, the metadata, the social card and every translation. The detail
that identifies somebody is rarely their name.
- Reassess reliability afterwards. A source who turned out to be wrong must
be recorded as such, by somebody other than the person they charmed.
Output
A sources row carrying the terms, the interest and the reliability, and a
publication-ready story with an explicit note of what was removed to protect
them. Anything contested goes to the operator before it is published.
