Gokulananda Nandan

Revised column - III

Rhetoric of Anonymity
One day one of my professors recommended that not cling to anonymous sources, as the
absence of name might be perceived as slapdash reporting, and consequently, would put
the credibility of the story in danger.
However, what about those who prefer to mask their identity because they dont like
others to know about them? How their stories would be recounted without mentioning
their names?
About the anonymity of the source, Society of Professional Journalism (SPJ) has
prescribed that reporters should always try to confirm and attribute information before
relying on unnamed sources because if the news consumers loose faith that the stories
they are reading or watching are accurate and fair, if they suspect information about an
anonymous source has been made up, then the journalists are as useful as a parka at the
equator,
However, how would you deal with the information that is extremely personal about the
source and that source just dont want to others know that story? Will you not write that
story? Will you not write it down because of that human angle?
I will do that.
Yesterday, there was a news article published in the Times on the relationship between an
autistic guy named Gus and Siri, Apples new iPhone app. When I tweeted it in which I
didnt even mention the name of the guy it received 1,345 impressions, four retweets,
five favorites over the last 24 hours.

It indicates that the readers were not interested in Siris influence on Gus particularly I
mean the name but an autistic kid.
Let me talk about a personal experience.
Recently, I was talking to one of my colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Housing Department. I told her, As a journalist, I believe everyone has at least one story
to tell which people would like to remember.
I have a lot of stories to tell, but I dont want everyone to know that those are my
stories, responded that colleague, an immigrant from Mexico.
However, she agreed to tell me her story on the condition of anonymity.
And I wrote that story recounting how an immigrant was desperate to learn English in
order to get a better job in the US.
It is definitely my colleagues story, but it can happen to anyone of 17.1 percent of
Hispanic populations in the US who are always working hard to make their life better.
All human beings stories with similar plot their struggle to make their presence feel in
the US are subsidiaries of perennial flow of a unique societal storyline: Immigrants
struggle for survival.
However, I am not endorsing to write a story about someone like Jimmy, who didnt even
exist. The source can be anonymous, but he or she must exist in real life.

Janet

Courtesy of Nieman Foundation

Lab

Cooke, the infamous writer of Jimmys world didnt acknowledge at the time of its
publication that Jimmy was a composite character, which was a breach of trust between
her and the readers. The irony was that her fictional character made the readers emotional
about a factual character.
One of the unkind purposes of writing a gripping story about any human beings suffering
is to garner sympathy and praise from readers and critics, respectively. And when hunger
for praise becomes the frontrunner over the act of storytelling, disaster occurs like that of
Janet Cooke.
But, we need to tell those stories of those people who prefer not to talk about the
incidents because they have fear of shame, ridicule and disapproval.
My colleague also had same feeling.
I didnt write her story to garner appraisal but to tell the readers how desperate and smart
she is in learning English.
Do you think anyone would like to talk about how she was abused by her uncle when she
was a child? How many people one had to kill being a military soldier in Russia? How
one felt when he saw his father beating up his mother?
We need anonymity to recount these stories so that people get to know about some true
stories that depict different facets of this humanly inhuman society.
Anonymity is here nothing but an individual who experiences or performs an unusual
deed for which society should be ashamed of or be proud of.

Names are important. But voices under those names are far more important to underscore
what is told and how is told. Who-has-told comes next in a narrative story as long as
what-is-told doesnt delineate verisimilitude but verity.

Word count: 762

Audience: National audience who like to read about social issues.