Anonymous sources do tend to be more trustworthy than named sources, actually.

That's because accountability isn't just dropped. Rather, the publisher's and the reporter's reputation replace that of the source.

And a journalist faces a far greater risk for making stuff up: where you could survive a lie or two as a politician or career official, a journalist's career is essentially over when.

Even the source actually faces more scrutiny when being quoted anonymously: when they are found to have lied, the journalist is no longer bound to their promise of confidentiality. When revealed to have fed lies to journalists, they face far more consequences because they exposed the journalist to such existential risks. The result is a loss of trust by exactly those people you need to shape the conversion. It's rather rare that any single issue is worth such risks to your career.

Mr. Trump’s use of his iPhones was detailed by several current and former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so they could discuss classified intelligence and sensitive security arrangements.

And those officials are...

I too can make up random shit and claim it as fact with vague references, but that doesn't make it any more true, false, or valid.

There is a world of difference between the New York Times citing anonymous sources in the White House, and you "making up random shit".

I have yet to be convinced of that. This is the same media company that sold the Iraq war lies.

They do seem to have one constant though; writing articles that support the destabilization of sovereign middle eastern countries.

> This is the same media company that sold the Iraq war lies.

That's another way of saying that they truthfully and reliably reported the anonymous leaks coming from the White House, which justifies the opposite conclusion you seem to be making.

There weren't anonymous leaks regarding the propaganda campaign the NYT had for the Iraq war.

That all came from Ahmed Chalabi, who had ties with officials at the Pentagon. The guy was a swamp creature.

They didn't all come from Chalabi. But in any event, I actually met the man as an intern at a K Street national security policy think tank. Chalabi was the darling of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other neocons in the administration. To the extent Chalabi was the source, much of it was originally laundered through the administration (particularly Cheney's office) as anonymous leaks.

Correct, most of the DOD stuff was from 'curveball'.

> laundered through the administration (particularly Cheney's office) as anonymous leaks.

Aside from the fact that Judith Miller knew who she was getting her data from, doesn't this prove my point about anonymous sources being bullshit? The example you just gave was state sponsored propaganda 'leaked' to the NYT in order to sell the public on a pointless war. Had the public been made savvy who the sources were, we probably would not have had any sort of approval on the war.

None the less, that doesn't change what is going on here. Journalists can editorialize any topic they would like and face no repercussions because the sources are anonymous and corroboration is impossible. There is no risk to printing lies when the get out of jail free card is effectively a non verifiable entity.

Deepthroat was anonymous, not b.s. Snowden was briefly anonymous, not b.s.

You're applying an aggressive falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus standard, and while it's not crazy you are by choice considering any unnamed sources as b.s. stories, and worthy of wholesale discarding. You really cannot correlate anonymity of sources to trust or reliability. That's why reputation matters, for good or bad. And it's why triangulation matters.

Come back when you have an example that isn't old enough to have finished high school by now.

(And possibly one that doesn't also serve as illustration for the severe consequences even of errors of negligence.)

I'm sorry, there is absolutely no way to verify for certain that this is correct.

It's like comparing Bank of America and Bitcoin.

One I trust, but someday they might break that trust.

Bitcoin is code.

Any of the early bitcoin people could break bitcoin at any time by flooding the market.

Your trust is easily gained!

That doesn't actually break bitcoin - the end result is a redistribution of funds, not exploitation of a flaw of the protocol. The underlying system is still sound.

Yeah but code is code. It can be manipulated and attacked, but I don't doubt that the letters on the screen are in fact the letters.

someone with fingers in their ears, will never listen.

Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post like this, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.