Comment by tschwimmer
6 years ago
A few relevant articles about how the New York Times claims to treat sources:
[0]: "The Times sometimes agrees not to identify people who provide information for our articles...Sources often fear for their jobs or business relationships — sometimes even for their safety."
[1] "If compassion or the unavoidable conditions of reporting require shielding an identity, the preferred solution is to omit the name and explain the omission. (That situation might arise, for example, in an interview conducted inside a hospital or a school governed by privacy rules.) "
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/reader-center/how-the-tim...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/editorial-standards/guidelines-on-in...
Given the preferred solution was not to omit the name, and given that reporting the name was avoidable, modus tollens implies that the NYT did not feel that compassion was required.
He wasn't really a source or a person in a hospital or elsewhere governed by privacy rules. As he says himself, his online persona is very lightly pseudonymous. It sucks that he's inconvenienced in this way but it's hard to see how these articles are relevant to his situation. If anyone actually wished him harm, they could probably find his name just as the reporter did before ever talking to him.
I don't agree that he wasn't a source. He seems to be the subject of the article, but he made contact with the reporter and claimed to explain his concerns which were not heeded.
I've seen the New York Times omit the names of refugees who face persecution in their home countries. (I'm trying to find an example, but it's surprisingly hard to search for.) This is a different case, but I think it's broadly comparable.
I replied to these concerns at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23611034 [so we don't keep two parallel threads of the same going]
But he is a medical professional that explains that releasing his identity is possibly detrimental for those he treats. Is "hospital" the important part of that policy we should be focusing on, instead of the implications of why they might not want to report that person's name?
He didn't say releasing his name would be detrimental to those he treats. If there was a serious medical ethical concern here about just his full name he would never have used his real first names to begin with - no medical professional would take such a risk. I'm sure he takes the utmost care with whatever obligations he has as a medical practitioner.
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