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I'm Anous Shakalian, and this is the listener questions episode of Daily Politics from the New Statesman. And joining me today is our associate political editor, Rachel Cunliff. Hi, Rachel. It's been a busy news week given it recess. It really has. Yeah, lots of questions coming in and there's lots of things we haven't managed to talk about on the podcast this week. So I'm really glad that our listeners have prompted us to do so. This question is from

Cameron, and it's a question about journalism. My question is about journalists sharing sources.

Often panellists mention on the podcast things that you've been told by Westminster sources.

Would you tell another journalist from the news statesman who that was or is it more don't ask don't tell

also do you need to tell your editor whose sources are when quoting them in the magazine or do they

have to trust the journalist has done their due diligence i think this is a really good question and often

there is a little bit of opacity around sourcing isn isn't there? Because we often use in political

journalism, especially anonymous sources. And we sometimes have to be quite vague about how we

describe them, because they might be the only person party to the information that we're sharing.

And so we've got to be careful when we're quoting them. I don't think I would usually tell

you or my colleagues who my source was unless it was,

you know, something quite funny and innocuous and it would just make them laugh and it

wouldn't be passed on.

But I don't think...

Yeah, journalists are generally quite secretive or quite protective of their sources.

Yeah.

And the same goes for telling the editor who they are.

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