OK, if you're legitimately not buying the story, here's a primer on how I consider the believably of reporting based on unnamed sources.
I'll first note that the vast majority of all political reporting is based off anonymous sourcing. Of all the Trump scandal stories, I believe I've seen only two actual named sources:
- Comey's friend Benjamin Wittes, who revealed their conversations to the New York Times and other outlets. Wittes' reports are not based off any Comey memos, even though Trump's lawyer has attempted to insinuate they are. He also runs the Lawfare Blog.
- Dan Fried, a newly retired State Department official who was the Coordinator for Sanctions Policy. He's talked about administration attempts to remove Russian sanctions.
So, how do I decide if a story is believable or not? Here's the basic process I follow:
1. Is the outlet credible, and does it have a history of being correct or incorrect?
No outlet has been 100% correct. You cannot throw out all of the New York Times' reporting just because they got one or two stories wrong. Referencing a single incorrect story from an outlet is not a refutation of any future reporting from that outlet.
So, NYT/WaPo are rather sterling in this regard. NBC/CBS news are rather high as well. Politico/The Hill have also been pretty reliable. CNN perhaps a bit lower, but they've been rather good lately. Fox News is basically unreliable, unless they are verifying another outlet's reporting.
'Twitter' does not count as an outlet. If you see a reporter on Twitter, look at their employer and their track record.
Here I'll mention 'The Intercept' is basically unreliable. The only thing I needed to know to discount them is to see how horribly they handled the anonymously sourced reporting they received. They might as well have changed their website address to
www.throw-reality-winner-in-prison.com with their handling of that situation. We've known about printer tracking dots for over a decade at this point; it was completely irresponsible to publish straight scans the of the documents they were given.
2. Have other reliable outlets independently confirmed the reporting? Have any reliable outlets refuted it?
If other outlets independently confirm the reporting, that makes it more believable.
As an example, on Trump's birthday, the Washington Post
reported he is under investigation for obstruction of justice.
On Thursday, NBC News
independently verified the information and reported on it.
Be careful here to not conflate instances where another outlet independently verifies a claim, and instances where
another outlet reports on the original reporting:
(emphasis added)
In this case, NYT is reporting on WaPo's original reporting. That's not an independent verification, and it does not increase or decrease the believably of the claim. Actually, if you look closer at the article, the byline is 'By REUTERS'. So it's actually NYT publishing Reuters' reporting on WaPo's original reporting.
3. Are the reporters/writers themselves considered reliable? Have they have a positive or negative track record?
This is a bit harder, but at this point we've seen enough bylines containing names like David Fahrenthold and Maggie Haberman to start recognizing the names. Some outlets don't use bylines, but it's rare.
Since we're talking individuals now, I'll mention that Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept is considered unreliable. Even ignoring his track record pre-Reality Winner, that incident should make it clear to not trust his reporting without independent verification. Also, Louise Mensch and Claude Taylor on Twitter are basically loons.
4. Who are the anonymous sources?
The actual citation of anonymous sources is important. There is a difference between "
a source familiar with the matter" and "
U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports".
While in both cases, we don't know
who the anonymous sources are, we have a way to validate or falsify the reporting if the sources are ever publicly revealed.
When anonymous sources are cited by a reporter, both the reporter and the source agree on the actual citation. The reporter likely wants the more specific citation, and the source the least specific. They compromise, and agree on the actual text of the citation.
Always think about who the citation could reasonably apply to.
In the case of the Kushner stories linked above, "a source familiar with the matter" could be Kushner himself, or a Russian spy, or Kushner's tennis partner who talked to him about it. The possible levels of source reliability range from 'unreliable' to 'possibly reliable'.
"U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports" is rather specific. It's
multiple people who are
current U.S. officials who
have the ability to read classified intelligence reports and are
directly citing them for their information. The range of reliability is basically 'reliable' to 'super reliable' from that citation.
I cannot find the article now, but there was some WaPo/NYT bombshell that used something like '18 current and former us officials' as a anonymous citation. At that point, you can be sure the events described happened.
5. Who are the named sources or quoted references?
In some reporting utilizing anonymous sources, there also are named sources. They may not talk about the direct claim being made, but will talk about a different claim that is related to the base claim. Some named sources, obviously, will also be cited to attempt to refute the claim. Sometimes quotes from interviews, statements, or other reporting is used. Always consider the potential biases of any named sources.
That's a general method of deciding if a story is believable or not. So, let's apply it to this story...
1. Is the outlet credible, and does it have a history of being correct or incorrect?
This is an article by Politico, so it's generally believable so far.
2. Have other reliable outlets independently confirmed the reporting? Have any reliable outlets refuted it?
This is an initial report, and I'm not aware of any outlets reporting on it. So the 'generally believable' assessment stands.
3. Are the reporters/writers themselves considered reliable? Have they have a positive or negative track record?
The bylines given are "By Elana Schor and Matthew Nussbaum". I'm not familiar with the names, so I'll google each one with 'biography' to see their history.
Schor seems to have a long career, so that's good. Nussbaum is a newer reporter, but I didn't find any negative reports of him via googling, so he's not unreliable.
So, I'll upgrade to 'pretty believable' due to Schor's decade-plus of reporting on Congressional matters.
4. Who are the anonymous sources?
The Politico article uses the following anonymous citation for the base claim: "according to a senior administration official"
That's an OK anonymous source. There pool of 'senior administration officials' is rather small. So, I neither upgrade or downgrade the assessment.
5. Who are the named sources or quoted references?
This part is interesting. We have the following named sources and quoted figures: Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Oh.), Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Tillerson, Huckabee-Sanders, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.), House. Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).
That's a lot of people. But, let's note, only one was directly talking to Politico about this report:
The others are based off unrelated interviews and statements.
In general, though, when considering the people making the statements, and their potential biases and reliabilities, they help prop up the claim. Even so, I'll still keep it as 'pretty reliable'.
In the end, when you consider all those aspects of the report, it's a 'pretty reliable' report that I believe. If other outlets either verify or falsify the reporting here, I'll appropriately consider the new reports and will change my views. But with what this report gives, I believe it. Most of the data I look at seems to point towards it being honest.
So, that's why I would say that not seeing a 'there' in this report is not a reasonable position -- you'd have to overlook a good amount of reasonably believable evidence presented.
