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Comment by giancarlostoro | Hacker News Reader

> They want anonymous sources named "in the spirit of truth," without grappling with the reality that doing so would instantly dry up anyone risking their job, or worse, to provide information.

There's some cases where I rather someone put their name up or I don't want to hear it, the only exception is give me some damning proof? Give me something that qualifies your anonymous remarks or its not worth anything to me, its just he said she said.

Regarding this specifially, I don't care enough, I am more curious about the legal case and how it will play out though.

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> Give me something that qualifies your anonymous remarks or its not worth anything to me, its just he said she said.

This is where journalistic reputation comes in. Do you trust the journalistic entity providing the story? Do they have a history of being correct? Has information from anonymous sources in other stories proven to be true?

I don't go by that, it sounds like a recipe for disaster, too many stories propagated by major news orgs that were later retracted over the years.

Such stories are notable and egregious because they're rare. They definitely do happen -- the NYT carrying water for Bush's Iraq war agenda to preserve access particularly bothers me. Perhaps a small number of such events are "too many", but they aren't common in reputable media.

Right. Scooter Libby portrayed as a “Hill staffer”.

> the NYT carrying water for Bush's Iraq war agenda to preserve access

Judith Miller was not a politically neutral journalist trying to preserve access, she was a deeply, actively involved long-time Iraq hawk doing propaganda for her ideological faction.

I was involved in writing a history book of an organization, and we used what was termed "journalistic integrity."

We couldn't put something into the book, unless it was corroborated by three separate sources (this was before the current situation, where you will get a dozen different sources that basically all come from the same place).

The onus was on us; not the people we interviewed. We were responsible for not publishing random nonsense.

Sure, but a lot of major news orgs publish things that are later found to be patently false or incorrect, so the onus is on the facts presented for me and many readers, the journalistic integrity angle is dead in my eyes.

Well, that may be, but that's still on the news outlet.

We currently reward outlets that spew out junk, right off the bat, and penalize outlets that take the time to validate the data. Some outlets almost certainly make it up, on the spot. No downside.

Back in the 1990s/early 200s, Michael Ramirez (a political cartoonist) posted a comic, showing three pairs of shoes.

On the left, were a massive pair of battered brogue wingtips. Under them, was the caption "Cronkite."

In the middle, was a very small pair of oxfords; both left. Its caption was "Rather."

The right, was captioned "Couric," and featured a big pair of clown shoes.

False with the benefit of hindsight, because more facts emerged, or maliciously false?

The latter among major news orgs is incredibly rare.

At least since 2016 and beyond I've seen insanely verifiably false claims from mainstream media if you just look up raw sources. Starting with the Covington High Schoolers, within minutes of the story dropping I was able to validate that CNN a major news corporation was in fact lying, why?

Then there was a lot of shenanigans regarding the Hunter Biden laptop. There was a headline from a letter written by Intelligence Officers that made it sound like the actually forensically valid laptop itself was faked Russian disinformation, but it turned out to be valid.

When it comes to politics every major news org fails misserably. Their inability to contain personal biases is astounding to me. I want raw facts if you're going to make political assertions or its just propaganda. I don't care which side is doing what, if they're doing wrong expose them all, but use facts and evidence, not just TMZ / tabloid level shenanigans. Everyone is behaving like teenagers whenever politics is brought up these days.

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