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How much weight do people put in anonymous sources nowadays? I'm so thoroughly disillusioned by the press at this point that if it's "according to anonymous sou

How much weight do people put in anonymous sources nowadays? I'm so thoroughly disillusioned by the press at this point that if it's "according to anonymous sources" or "according to someone familiar with his thinking" or "according to an industry insider", etc., I have zero faith in it.

ekianjo 4y ago
> put in anonymous sources nowadays Nowadays it's closer to "making things up" than actual information. Nothing can be verified, and you can claim anything outrageous for clicks.
mrandish 4y ago
While I agree completely with your conclusion that mainstream media has thoroughly discredited itself in recent years, I don't feel masking likely-biased sources behind "anonymous" attribution is the biggest part of the problem. I do agree it's definitely been abused many times though. The even bigger problems are publication bias and source selection bias. These are far less visible because massive amounts of severe bias is accomplished by simply not running stories and it's easy to mask this bias internally because editorial decisions about newsworthiness and public interest are always subjective judgement calls the public doesn't hear about. In other cases, when editors feel the 'balance' element of an issue story they care about is a little "too balanced" they ask reporters to 'beef up' sources on one side and can also cut-down opposing view sentences for "space reasons". This is as easy as ensuring a 20 paragraph story gets assigned a 16 paragraph slot in the layout process, while ensuring the nettlesome "oppo" views are deprioritized to the last four paragraphs in the (supposedly) separate editing process. It's surprisingly easy to spot this. Just look for articles where you actually aren't sure which side the writers and/or editors lean toward. One would assume in a fair distribution there should be some noticeable number of these, yet it virtually never happens (and this is equally true from both right and left leaning media outlets). It turns out that it's very difficult for biased editors to sufficiently mask their bias, even when they're trying to appear unbiased.
newaccount74 4y ago
A lot of the biggest fraudulent stories came from named sources, so I don't really think it makes a difference whether the sources are anonymous or not. If you only report on things that someone is going on the record, you'll only get government propaganda.
jjk166 4y ago
In proper journalism, anonymous sources are supposed to point the journalist towards verifiable sources. Perhaps they hand over documents or images, or tell the journalist of where to look for evidence, or just alert the journalist to the existence of a story in need of investigating. Any journalist who doesn't follow through and simply regurgitates anonymous claims not only derelicts their duty but also potentially endangers their source.
ogurechny 4y ago
There is actually no need in asking anyone. There are required inspections and replacements of parts on each plane at regular intervals. Take the flight timetables, list the planes, calculate a total number of work hours, and you get the number of spare parts required after a given number of days or months. If a grounded plane is the only source of some critical complex part, and you are confident enough there was no smuggling across the border (because you own/control the supply chains), you can guess that it was used that way.

ekianjo 4y ago

> put in anonymous sources nowadays Nowadays it's closer to "making things up" than actual information. Nothing can be verified, and you can claim anything outrageous for clicks.

mrandish 4y ago

While I agree completely with your conclusion that mainstream media has thoroughly discredited itself in recent years, I don't feel masking likely-biased sources behind "anonymous" attribution is the biggest part of the problem. I do agree it's definitely been abused many times though. The even bigger problems are publication bias and source selection bias. These are far less visible because massive amounts of severe bias is accomplished by simply not running stories and it's easy to mask this bias internally because editorial decisions about newsworthiness and public interest are always subjective judgement calls the public doesn't hear about. In other cases, when editors feel the 'balance' element of an issue story they care about is a little "too balanced" they ask reporters to 'beef up' sources on one side and can also cut-down opposing view sentences for "space reasons". This is as easy as ensuring a 20 paragraph story gets assigned a 16 paragraph slot in the layout process, while ensuring the nettlesome "oppo" views are deprioritized to the last four paragraphs in the (supposedly) separate editing process. It's surprisingly easy to spot this. Just look for articles where you actually aren't sure which side the writers and/or editors lean toward. One would assume in a fair distribution there should be some noticeable number of these, yet it virtually never happens (and this is equally true from both right and left leaning media outlets). It turns out that it's very difficult for biased editors to sufficiently mask their bias, even when they're trying to appear unbiased.

newaccount74 4y ago

A lot of the biggest fraudulent stories came from named sources, so I don't really think it makes a difference whether the sources are anonymous or not. If you only report on things that someone is going on the record, you'll only get government propaganda.

jjk166 4y ago

In proper journalism, anonymous sources are supposed to point the journalist towards verifiable sources. Perhaps they hand over documents or images, or tell the journalist of where to look for evidence, or just alert the journalist to the existence of a story in need of investigating. Any journalist who doesn't follow through and simply regurgitates anonymous claims not only derelicts their duty but also potentially endangers their source.

ogurechny 4y ago

There is actually no need in asking anyone. There are required inspections and replacements of parts on each plane at regular intervals. Take the flight timetables, list the planes, calculate a total number of work hours, and you get the number of spare parts required after a given number of days or months. If a grounded plane is the only source of some critical complex part, and you are confident enough there was no smuggling across the border (because you own/control the supply chains), you can guess that it was used that way.