It's kind of not the case here. First, they're not required to take any claims at face value, they can (and would be expected to) verify if they're actually tru

It's kind of not the case here. First, they're not required to take any claims at face value, they can (and would be expected to) verify if they're actually true by looking at the evidence their sources provide - and if there's no evidence, then they'd be expected to note that it's all speculation. Second, at least some of the claimed sources were not anonymous and were interviewed later by others (there were a few HN threads back them some weeks after the initial story) and they explicitly disclaimed that they have confirmed the case, but rather that all they have told Bloomberg is essentially "something like this might be theoretically possible, sure, but the current evidence doesn't suggest that this has happened" - so we have some evidence that these Bloomberg journalists "attempted" to corroborate multiple sources which did not confirm the story that they wanted to tell, but they went ahead with the story anyway.