VERNON — You write: "Although The Commons maintains a policy of publishing commentary under a contributor's real name, we make an exception here to give readers a glimpse of this difficult job and the variety of people who undertake it."
"On the night shift" [The Commons, Jan. 2009] is not commentary; it is investigative reporting. Who or what was protected by the reporter's anonymity?
The Commons has taken anonymity, which leading newspapers now limit strictly due to infamous abuses, to the opposite extreme, setting a precedent for further anonymous reporting. Our freedoms of speech and of the press entail taking personal responsibility for our words, which anonymity shirks. Credibility becomes an act of faith.
How can an anonymous reporter be held responsible? An editor who claims to have taken care of this has arrogated power that belongs to citizens in a free society. The Commons is neither an arbiter nor an exemplar. It is just a newspaper that is held to the same standards of transparency as any other.