The front-page Times article on the prospects for Joseph Lhota's mayoral campaign begins with a violation of the Times policy on anonymous sources:
They are startled and unsure how to react. "Terrifying," is how one banker put it. Many in New York's business and financial elite, stung by the abrupt ascent of Bill de Blasio, an unapologetic tax-the-rich liberal, are fixated on a single question: What are we going to do?
The Times doesn't say who this "one banker" is.
The Times policy says: "We will not use anonymous sourcing when sources we can name are readily available." Plenty of people on Wall Street are already on the record denouncing de Blasio and his plan to raise taxes (Bloomberg News had a fine story just the other day), so the anonymity here is unnecessary.
The Times policy further says, "We do not grant anonymity to people who use it as cover for a personal or partisan attack. If pejorative opinions are worth reporting and cannot be specifically attributed, they may be paraphrased or described after thorough discussion between writer and editor. The vivid language of direct quotation confers an unfair advantage on a speaker or writer who hides behind the newspaper, and turns of phrase are valueless to a reader who cannot assess the source." It's certainly a partisan attack and a pejorative opinion to call the ascent of de Blasio "terrifying," and the quote is a great example of that "vivid language' or turn of phrase that the policy says is not allowed.
If the top Times editors don't agree with the paper's written policy on the use of anonymous sources, they should change the policy. Instead the policy stands, but the paper violates it again and again with no apparent consequences for the reporters or editors responsible for the violation.