Style Points: AP on Saving Daylight and Citing Sources

In my Gmail inbox, I get a breaking update on new usage guidelines from the AP Stylebook [online edition].

AP will no longer hyphenate the first two words in the phrase “daylight saving time.”

Note that it is “saving,” singular, not “daylight savings.”

They provide no explanation for the change, however.

And they still have not delivered the handy flipbook hard copy that is supposed to come with my online subscription.

Another entry that has apparently changed since I purchased my last dead-tree edition of the Stylebook — in the spirit, if not the letter.

anonymous sources Use anonymous attribution only when essential and even then provide the most specific possible identification of the source. Simply quoting “a source,” unmodified, is almost always prohibited.

Or “press sources” or “most people say,” things like that. The operative principle, analogous to the principle in information access laws around the world, is “when in doubt, err on the side of maximizing information.”

Do not attribute information to sources – anonymous or otherwise – when it is obvious, common sense or well-known.

This, apparently, is the loophole that Journalists 2.0 rely on to create such permanent states of exception as The WaPo on Rio Militias: Foreign Desk Does Foreign Disservice to Facts.

“Some Brazilians think,” for example, or “press sources says,” are hallmarks of Larry Rohter’s reporting methodology, for example.

Is that what we mean by “common sense”?

See, for example, Open Letter to the New York Times Public Editor.

It is common sense to many Americans that the Rapture is imminent. Should we report that as fact, without attribution? It may be true, but only God can possibly know. If you can get God to go on the record as confirming it — and be sure to check ID — then by all means, run it as as an established fact.

The basic guidelines for use of anonymous sources:

1. The material must be information and not opinion and it must provide information of significant value to the news report.
2. The information must not be available except under the conditions of anonymity imposed by the source. In some cases, it may be appropriate to say why the source requested anonymity.
3. The source must be in a position to have accurate information and, to the best of the reporter’s ability to determine, must be understood to be reliable.
4. Be sure to seek more than one source for the story.

I would modify (4) to something like (a) “be sure to seek corroboration for each assertion of fact” and “be sure to talk to all sources with a relevant interest in the case at hand” — not just “more than one.”

There are often more than two sides to a given public controversy.