More Fun With Lexis-Nexis:
‘Fear’ Factor of NY Times Sources

With even more time to kill, we decided to take a 5-year look (from 1/1/2001 to 4/7/2006) at all the requests for “anonymity” due to “fear” by New York Times sources:.

And we learned that when it comes to remaining anonmyous while spilling secrets to a Times reporter, there’s a hell of a lot more to fear than ‘fear itself’ - from fear “of being killed” to fear of “never being invited to another cocktail party again”:

reprisals (i.e. from White House, employees, parents): 15

retaliation: 11

retribution: 10

losing job: 10

angering (Mr. Rove, party’s powerbrokers, Chinese clients, prosecutors, board member, big drug makers, Heritage Foundation, powerful governor): 8

offending (the president, American counterparts, her, bands, clients, the White House, the prosecution, patients, potential ticket buyers): 8

alienating (less-successful colleagues, Senator Lesniak, Wal-Mart, voters, families, group): 6

his/her safety: 5

jeopardizing (the negotations, his position in the party, the sale, contract, his job): 4

repercussions (political, career, in dealings with the Cooper-Hewitt museum): 3

reprimand: 2

antagonizing (cousin’s landlord, the landlord): 2

scuttling (negotiations, talks): 2

being killed: 1

disrupting future negotiations: 1

punishment: 1

prosecution: 1

affecting his current practice: 1

influencing direction of future talks: 1

provoking tensions: 1

annoying public officials: 1

appearing disloyal: 1

appearing to be helping Michael Bloomberg’s opponents: 1

damaging relationships with legislators: 1

[becoming] a target of cloning opponents: 1

ridicule: 1

igniting controversy: 1

saying something that would complicate the investigation: 1

spoiling delicate negotiations: 1

the group: 1

biting the hand that feeds her: 1

compromising client’s interests: 1

breaking fragile peace: 1

spoiling fragile deal: 1

being sued: 1

dropped from the team: 1

being labeled a poor loser: 1

losing access to info: 1

losing clients: 1

['deep-seated' fear] of never being invited to another cocktail party: 1

[fear]: 1

Popularity: 1%

This entry was posted on Monday, April 17th, 2006 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.