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Comment by mcculley | Hacker News Reader

I can understand a hypothetical analyst being eager to complain to the press yet scared to jeopardize an "analyst" job, whatever that is. What I don't understand is why, in the age of "fake news", journalists are not being more diligent about credibility of sources. This sloppiness empowers the exact thing they claim to be against. The only purpose I can imagine is to foment social media outrage and drive clicks and advertisement impressions.

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A key part of journalist ethics is protecting the sources.

And it is up to the journalist to decide when anonymity is warranted. We aren't talking about Watergate or the Pentagon Papers. This is gossip. Promoting gossip serves Trump, not the public.

What evidence do you have that they have been sloppy or not diligent with regard to their sources here? The fact that the sources are anonymous is certainly not such evidence; anonymous sources have been considered crucial to journalism for a very long time.

I agree that anonymity is important for things like Watergate or the Pentagon Papers. Allowing anonymity for anything less just promotes gossip.

Letting sources be anonymous doesn't preclude you from being diligent about the veracity of your sources' claims. The sources aren't anonymous to the journalist.

Just in case you hadn't checked, this is the New York Times you're talking about.

I'm aware that it was posted to the New York Times. I saw the same thing presented on several news sites yesterday. The New York Times does not get a pass because of some appeal to authority. I don't want the Trump administration to make the CDC less useful. The New York Times publishing gossip doesn't improve the situation.

The New York Times doesn’t have the credibility they once had. Sadly. I think after the Iraq War, even the Times has to prove themselves.

And to be completely fair, this was originally broken by Washington Post, which has a long history of corroborating their sources. I understand that an appeal to authority is hard to stomach these days, but I believe that Washington Post has shown more than enough evidence that they investigate their sources' claims thoroughly before publishing. If you don't want to trust this right now, that's your prerogative, and you can wait for the official comment by the administration.

The appeal to authority is completely unacceptable, in my opinion. I don't want another Iraq War. I want administrations held accountable. I want Trump held accountable. Journalists are playing into his game by publishing gossip as news.

> The only purpose I can imagine is to foment social media outrage and drive clicks and advertisement impressions.

economics drives everything. we need a different incentive structure for news, and the readers are probably the only ones that can effect change.

I agree. I really want a journalism source to which I can give a monthly or annual fee which doesn't allow anonymity for anything less than a real scandal.

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