Gambling on anonymity

So, I'm the feature editor for my school newspaper, which is all fun and good. The only tricky thing with my section is my insistence on choosing controversial topics, but hey what are you gonna do? Anyway, for our upcoming issue, it was suggested to me that I report on kids who gamble (it's illegal to gamble the way they're doing it, mind you) at my school.

Alright, so of course I jumped on this opportunity. However, being a gal who knows absolutely nothing about gambling, I was able to find someone a bit more knowledgeable than myself (at least in the basics of playing cards) to write the story.

We secured sources and looked at the law in preparation for this spread. And while it is quite obvious that if everyone is careful about what they say, nobody could get into serious trouble, (but if we were stupid or careless, this could be considered a serious misdemeanor.) So, of course I don't want to see any of these people get hurt, and although I oppose their decision to go against the law, I chose to use anonymity for the sources.

"So, what's the problem?" you're probably asking. Well, the thing that infuriated me enough to write a whole post about it happened when I went to talk with the athletic director of our school about what would happen if an athlete were caught gambling.

It started out innocently enough, he listened intently to my spiel about the story and my question, and then he turned on me. He insisted, no demanded would probably be a more accurate word, that I keep the sources anonymous. (Why? Probably because he didn't want the suspension of one of his players due to their illegal activities to hamper our sports season.)

Are you kidding me? Now, after his stern lecture about how getting people in trouble would be bad, I didn't even want to tell him that I planned to keep the sources anonymous, so I just didn't. But really, wouldn't you think that a good, honest athletic director would be more concerned with the fact that his athletes are blatantly braking the law on a regular basis than whether they get caught for breaking the law? And furthermore, I think that in rebuttal to his comment to me I should have told him how I felt; how if people are dumb enough to break the law and then talk to a newspaper about it, they should probably know what's coming to them (because when we contacted the sources, we didn't specifically guarantee them their anonymity), but instead I was silent.

But I guess what I'm getting at is this: isn't this one of those double standard things? People aren't supposed to break the laws, but because these people are successful athletes (like the gods of this athletic director's pathetic life or something) it's only applicable as long as they don't get caught. Yeah, that's just stupid.