Q. It's easy enough to defend anonymous sources at the Pentagon Papers level. But let's look at a lower level, like the frequent statements to reporters by corporate or governmental employees who anonymously disclose information, not of illegal activity but of, say, finances or plans, which his/her boss would rather not have disclosed, and in fact has asked the employee to keep his mouth shut on the subject.

Not a week goes by without my seeing in your pages a statement attributed to an employee who has requested anonymity because he has been told not to disclose certain information.

Are you not, usually to gain an often unimportant disclosure, assisting the source to violate a request or order from his employer? Why do I find this unwholesome?

A. You are right, of course, that some anonymous sources are not exposing important illegalities, cover-ups or public deceptions. But their information or observations may nonetheless add an important dimension to an article.

It is crucial to understand how the terrain for reporting has changed. Within government at all levels and in the business world there has been a culture of far greater secrecy. Certainly, public officials and business leaders are going to try to keep secrets and control the message. A journalist's job is to dig, expose secrets (as long as they matter) and present a truthful, balanced picture. This is more difficult in an environment where gag agreements are now commonplace for employees or departing executives. Leak investigations make government employees fearful of speaking on the record. Often, the only people who are truly authorized to speak for attribution are paid spokesman, who merely parrot the official line. Their remarks are usually included in news stories, but to leave their statements unchallenged by other sources who are as knowledgeable but not officially designated to speak in public, would mean that our journalists were not giving readers a full picture of the truth. Many sources now fear that their supervisor will see unsanctioned remarks in the press, even statements that don't seem at first blush to be either negative or controversial, especially when every public utterance is quickly picked up and can ricochet across the Internet. So some unofficial but still credible sources ask to withhold their names to avoid getting into trouble. Perhaps this is, as you note, unwholesome. Again, our main concern is not whether a source is wholesome or unwholesome, but whether he/she is credible and whether the information from the source is important to getting the full story.

Sometimes, sources become so overly worried that they insist on anonymity even when their statements are anodyne. For example. former First Lady Barbara Bush was notoriously prickly about seeing her friends quoted in the press. A colleague of mine was profiling her and interviewed a pal who insisted on anonymity. Her quote? "She is a wonderful mother."

In those cases it is best to cut the anonymous quote, as it adds nothing of value to the story. Similarly, a denigrating, anonymous quote would also, according to Times standards, be excised.

Writers and producers for the ABC hit “Grey’s Anatomy” are fuming after one of the show’s stars, Katherine Heigl, said this week that she had opted out of the Emmy race this year because she was not given good enough material to work with last season.

Two people involved in the production of the show said that the program’s writers and producers were angered by what they considered a slap by Ms. Heigl at the people in the writers’ room. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity, which was granted because they have been involved in discussions with the program’s top executives about the situation but were not authorized to speak on behalf of the series.