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Full-Text Articles in Communication

Anonymous Sources: A Utilitarian Exploration Of Their Justification And Guidelines For Limited Use, Matt J. Duffy, Carrie Packwood Freeman Jan 2012

Anonymous Sources: A Utilitarian Exploration Of Their Justification And Guidelines For Limited Use, Matt J. Duffy, Carrie Packwood Freeman

Carrie P. Freeman

This article critically examines the practice of unnamed sourcing in journalism. A literature review highlights arguments in favor of and against their use. Then, the authors examine some common examples of anonymous sourcing using the lens of utilitarianism, the ethical model commonly used to justify the practice. We find that few uses of unnamed sourcing can be justified when weighed against diminished credibility and threats to fair, transparent reporting. The authors then suggest specific guidelines for journalists that, if followed, would curb many of the pedestrian uses of unnamed sourcing but still allow for the practice in specific circumstances.


Pardon Your Turkey And Eat Him Too: Antagonism Over Meat-Eating In The Discourse Of The Presidential Thanksgiving Turkey Pardoning, Carrie Packwood Freeman, Oana Leventi Perez Dec 2011

Pardon Your Turkey And Eat Him Too: Antagonism Over Meat-Eating In The Discourse Of The Presidential Thanksgiving Turkey Pardoning, Carrie Packwood Freeman, Oana Leventi Perez

Carrie P. Freeman

To celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday for at least the last twenty years, the President of the United States has hosted a press conference where he uses his executive powers to pardon the life of a turkey gifted to him from the National Turkey Federation, an agribusiness industry group. Considering the reality that the President (and millions of Americans) will indeed eat a turkey as the traditional centerpiece of their Thanksgiving meal, this utopian spectacle of a life-saving public pardon for one bird reveals an antagonism – a discursive rupture disclosing an opening between the hegemonic advertising rhetoric of the meat …