This post first appeared at FAIR.

When the nameless are speaking on behalf of power, they’re in line with the official narrative: They’re on the rails.

In his bril­liant analy­sis in of estab­lish­ment media reac­tion to Sey­mour Hersh’s re-exam­i­na­tion of the killing of Osama bin Laden, the Guardian‘s Trevor Timm notes that one of the put-downs hurled at Hersh to dis­cred­it his sto­ry is ​“off the rails” – as in, ​“In recent years, how­ev­er, Hersh has appeared increas­ing­ly to have gone off the rails,” as Max Fish­er put it in his Vox broad­side.

It’s an odd choice of metaphor. Rails, after all, are meant to keep a vehi­cle on a pre­de­ter­mined track. It’s not much of com­pli­ment to com­pare a jour­nal­ist to a smooth­ly oper­at­ing train, always show­ing up at the offi­cial stations.

Am I read­ing too much into a cliché? Con­sid­er the reac­tion to Hersh’s use of anony­mous sources that Timm describes:

It has been rich watch­ing jour­nal­ists fall over each oth­er to see who can more vehe­ment­ly crit­i­cize Hersh’s use of anony­mous sources, despite the fact that using anony­mous sources is a tried-and-true Wash­ing­ton rit­u­al that receives almost no crit­i­cism in day-to-day report­ing. Banal sound bites are reg­u­lar­ly print­ed on the front pages with­out names attached, and entire press con­fer­ences are held every day with ​“senior gov­ern­ment offi­cials” who refuse to be named…. Accord­ing to the excel­lent Twit­ter account @NYTanon, the Times pub­lished at least 20 sto­ries rely­ing on anony­mous sources in the five days after the Hersh sto­ry went online Sun­day night, on top­ics rang­ing from to new Face­book fea­tures to strife among democ­rats over the stalled trade agree­ment to Cable­vi­sion drop­ping its bid for the Dai­ly News. Imag­ine if reporters aimed a tenth of the crit­i­cism at those sto­ries that they aimed at Hersh. Pre­dictably, though, we’ve bare­ly heard a peep. Indeed, anonymi­ty is some­times war­rant­ed, and the idea that Hersh’s sources were anony­mous should not come as a sur­prise. These are high­ly clas­si­fied oper­a­tions. The Defense Depart­ment has open­ly threat­ened to pros­e­cute peo­ple for talk­ing about the bin Laden raid, even as the CIA leaks its own ver­sion of events to friend­ly reporters and movie producers.

Why do estab­lish­ment media watch­ers bris­tle at Hersh’s using anonymi­ty for its intend­ed pur­pose – pro­tect­ing whistle­blow­ers from retal­i­a­tion – while express­ing no prob­lem with the rou­tine use of unnamed sources to allow offi­cial spokes­peo­ple to make state­ments on behalf of their insti­tu­tions with no accountability?

When the name­less are speak­ing on behalf of pow­er, they’re in line with the offi­cial nar­ra­tive: They’re on the rails. When an anony­mous source is chal­leng­ing pow­er, they call that nar­ra­tive into ques­tion – and go off the rails.

Despite all evi­dence to the con­trary, the pur­vey­ors of Iraqi WMDs, the eter­nal pre­dic­tors of immi­nent Iran­ian nukes, the drone apol­o­gists who insist every ​“mil­i­tary-aged male” is a mil­i­tant are accord­ed a pre­sump­tion of cred­i­bil­i­ty. Where­as call­ing into ques­tion the offi­cial sto­ry pro­vokes not just skep­ti­cism but hos­til­i­ty: It’s an affront, after all, to those jour­nal­ists who have the restraint, decen­cy and good taste to stay on the rails.