Scoop Satire: The Source of Denial

Click for big version.

Confession time.

All those anonymous sources you see quoted in the media: me.

I am every anonymous source. I am also every anonymous twitter account, but you know me best as every anonymous source.

All of them. Each one.

Actually, since we're telling the truth, perhaps not all of them. Some anonymous sources have useful or important information. Sometimes it's even verifiable. None of those are me. But I've been working on crowding them out and mostly, these days, it's me.

I've also done a little work on the real anonymous twitter accounts.

So, I'd say eighty/ninety per cent of the time, it's me.

Most often, as a source, I pretend to be some form of political insider. I was a bit worried at first because I don't actually have any inside knowledge at all. I mostly just said some words I think whoever it is would most like to see repeated on the evening news. Luckily for me, it turned out that's exactly the relationship with the truth that politicians normally have and I was immediately accepted.

Initially I relied entirely on email but I've discovered face to face meetings with e.g. a wig and a fake beard work perfectly well. As nearly as I can tell, the disguises are judged by the same standard as the factual content in the briefings. Long story short: even if it's not very good, you won't get in any trouble.

It is of course very difficult to manage. Sometimes I get the different emails confused and end up, for example, pretending to be a National Party insider but talking about the inner workings of the Labour caucus as if I knew firsthand what was going on. But apparently that just made me more believable. That is, again, how National Party insiders talk when they're on the record.

I do have an agenda of my own, of course. It is to make politics painful and incomprehensible to the general public while also enthusing targeted political reporters into some form of deadly cardiovascular failure.

That way, when I stage my coup, nobody will know or care.

But the whole business is getting to be a logistical challenge. We seem to have reached critical mass anyway, and I have a junta to recruit, so I shall bow out now and leave you to it.

From now on, if you must have comments from one of those insider sources, you can just contact me directly. I'm confident my response will be just as useful as it's always been.

© Scoop Media