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We're passport-carrying residents of Romeneskoland, and, even so, we admit we find an awful lot of media criticism to be stultifyingly boring. We agree entirely with one famously incisive observer, who recently wrote, "It's not that I don't believe emphatically in square dealing and maximum honesty, but the customary righteousness, disingenuousness, futility, and wonky tedium of such debates are for me almost unbearable."

So what could make such discussions bearable? Maybe a column on media ethics from that famously incisive observer. From someone with a charmingly ironic, world-weary, bemused writing style. Someone who's a best-selling, zeitgeist-chronicling novelist. Who co-founded Spy. Who hosts a high-culture public-radio show. Who's a generally good-living, aphorism-spouting man of letters about town. Come on, Kurt Andersen, show us how it's done.

And this is the nub of the debate. Do you believe unidentified sources are inherently bad, like sugar or capital punishment, a necessary evil to be used as sparingly as possible (and ideally never at all)? Or that granting anonymity is just one more somewhat unattractive journalistic technique along with badgering and begging and insincerely flattering sources that should be used as much as necessary and as carefully as possible? I say the latter.

So, to answer your question: Yes, writing about media ethics makes Kurt boring, too.

Welcome to the Sausage Factory [NY Mag]