Donald Trump's admonition that journalists "shouldn't be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody's name - let their name be put out there" would be laughable if it weren't so dangerous to have the president of the United States trying to abridge the freedom of the press.
Laughable, at least to me, because I remember writing about a stray line from Trump when he was on the witness stand at U.S. District Court in Manhattan on July 12, 1990. Trump was being cross-examined in a lawsuit on his assertion that he didn't know a subcontractor of his had used 200 low-paid, non-union, undocumented Polish workers for demolition work when he was building Trump Tower.
In the course of the questioning, Trump admitted using the alias "John Baron."
"I believe on occasion I used that name," Trump said, without elaborating. He told reporters afterward that "Lots of people use pen names. Ernest Hemingway used one."
"John Baron" or "John Barron" is a name Trump used to pose as his own spokesman in telephone calls from unwitting reporters -- something he started doing in 1980.
So we have Trump's answer to the problem of anonymous sourcing: create a fake source. It's something he did, "on occasion," during the formative decade of his career.
Use of anonymous sources is always a matter of journalistic concern, including to the reporters who use them. There are traps, to be sure, as we saw when information from intelligence sources was passed along without adequate evaluation before the war in Iraq. But it would be pretty much impossible to find out details of the FBI investigation involving Trump administration contacts with Russia without granting well placed sources anonymity. Like it or not, anonymous sources are an essential journalistic tool for finding out the truth.
If that tool is taken away -- and there are ways Trump can try to do that, depending on how heavy-handed his administration becomes with surveillance, with prosecution of leaks and in demonizing the news media--it will be much easier for malfeasance to be covered up.
The problem is that no one knows how far a man who would pose as his own spokesman will go to get his way with the news media now that he possesses the powers of the presidency.
