‘Anonymous Quotes’ and Political Journalists: How Spin Doctors Deceive the Public

Peter Oborne considers what a startling admission by a Times journalist reveals about how political reporting and power really work in Westminster

No one who has followed political journalism closely in recent decades could fail to have noticed a curious development: the number of anonymous quotes that appear in political stories, which has risen to a near industrial scale.

This tradition has a noble history, epitomised by arguably the greatest political scoop of all time: the Watergate Scandal.

The key to nailing the story by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein famously came from their ‘Deep Throat’ source. “Follow the money,” the source told them, among other things, anonymously of course. The two reporters would never have been able to expose President Richard Nixon’s criminality had they not given their source such protection.