One day's New York Times has two articles in which Times writers use what may be fake names to refer to people they know.
A review by Jon Caramanica of a men's clothing store reports, "I brought my friend (we'll call him Laird) on this expedition." Is the friend's name actually Laird? If so, why not just write, "I brought my friend Laird on this expedition"? And if the friend is not named Laird, why go to the trouble of making up a fictional name for him? Why not just use his real name, or leave him out of the story altogether, or not name him at all?
A second article is about a book by a writer for the Times, Katie Hafner. The Times reports, "Brilliant and funny, Helen, as her daughter calls her to protect her privacy, had also been a divorced alcoholic who lost custody of Ms. Hafner and her older sister." Is Helen her real name, and the last name is just left out to protect her privacy? Or is Helen a made-up first name, and the Times just dancing around that point? The explanation — "to protect her privacy" — is pretty humorous. Or at least, not much skepticism is applied to the explanation. One might have written, "Helen, as her daughter calls her to make herself feel better about cashing in on her divorced alcoholic mother by writing a book invading her privacy." If Ms. Hafner were really that interested in protecting her mother's privacy, perhaps she might not have chosen to have written a book about her at all.
in both of the cases, a clearer explanation from the Times of whether, and why, it is using made-up names in news articles would be an improvement, especially because the ordinary, baseline expectation by readers of Times articles is that the things in them be not made up, but rather true or real.