30 Oct 2002 jfleck   » (Master)

anonymous sources
Great screed today in Slate about the indiscriminate use of anonymous sources by Walter Pincus in a piece in the Washington Post. Pincus' thesis: there is a consensus among "senior intelligence experts inside and outside government" that "Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would likely be ousted in a coup led by members of his inner circle in the final days or hours before U.S. forces launch a major ground attack." This may or may not be true, but as a reader I have no way of telling whether Pincus is accurately characterizing the consensus or merely has tapped into a subset of the intelligence community that shares a common view. Why can't I tell? Because Pincus' sources are anonymous.

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