> ""people familiar with the situation said" conveys a very different impression than "according to amazon PR off the record."" Well "according to amazon PR of

> ""people familiar with the situation said" conveys a very different impression than "according to amazon PR off the record."" Well "according to amazon PR off the record" is a contradiction in terms. If you identify them as the source, they're on the record in every way that matters. That said, I completely agree that the press has long been horrible at passing along glorified press releases as 'news' and it ought to stop. I just can't think of any feasible system to stop it. Even a community attempt to catalog and shame people out of it would just force the practice to evolve into using intermediaries, however deep as necessary, to establish plausible deniability.