[beat]

I haven't heard of the journalists who wrote the article. I have, however, heard of the New York Times. I trust the NYT to vet its reporters carefully, and to review relevant facts. If someone wants to go off on "liberal media fake news", well, fuck them. They're not interested in facts anyway, and there's no point in debating such idiots.

As for "specific knowledge of wrongdoing"... well. What's "wrongdoing" here? Barr presented a summary of the Mueller Report to the public. Apparently, people in the investigation itself are unhappy with that summary and consider it deceptive (yeah, no shit, saying the Trump administration misleading people is like saying water is wet).

Yes, this is multi-layered, anonymous leakage, BUT. BUT. Is it untrue? Are investigators actually fine with the Barr summary, and the sources are lying to the journalists? Probably not. So despite the abstraction layers, the gist of the story is most likely true. And the NYT certainly doesn't have to run a story that says "Mueller is totally fine with the Barr summary" next week, so they're not going to print it unless they believe it true. So smell tests are fine here.

And the basic question is important. It's not whether Barr lied, but rather whether he intentionally misled - or more to the point, if Mueller's team believes he misled. That is relevant to the public, and to me.

[Macross8299]

>Apparently, people in the investigation itself are unhappy with that summary

But the article doesn't even say that they heard the investigators say that. At best it's hearsay and gossip of n-th degree, at worst it's outright misrepresentation of the facts.

Look at the weasel words: "according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations."

Who are government officials in this usage? And what qualifies someone as "familiar" with the matter? How many people work as a government official in some capacity and could claim some vague familiarity with the Mueller report? Does a park ranger in Wyoming who follows political news qualify? It wouldn't be technically lying to cite them as a "government official familiar with the matter", right?

[beat]

Stories are leaked through cutouts like this for good reason, politically. What I'm saying is that the layers don't make it untrue, and decent journalism will catch most misrepresentation.

You say "weasel words", I say "We think you should take this with a grain of salt". They're being explicitly clear that their sources are secondhand. What's your answer? That they shouldn't run the story at all?

[Macross8299]

>What they shouldn't run the story at all?

Well, I think as you get more and more degrees removed from a primary source, the closer the article gets to being gossip and/or somebody's opinion and not factual news. Which is fine, there's a market for stuff like that. But I don't think that's very sustainable if you want to maintain a reputation as a purveyor of fact-based reporting.

There's a reason hearsay isn't generally admissable in a court of law.

[dragonwriter]

> There's a reason hearsay isn't generally admissable in a court of law.

The main reasons are that courts have compulsory process to attain testimony of primary witnesses which makes it generally unnecessary, and that courts are by design intended to work via adversarial process including cross examination, and a indirect witness can't be cross examined.

Needless to say, there are lots of exceptions to hearsay exclusions, too.

[jessaustin]

It's not hard to see parallels between the two situations. Both the court and the average consumer of news are trying to figure out what's true and what isn't. A real human being who is quoted in the paper will certainly be "cross-examined" when subsequent events show him to have been completely mistaken. DC-insider ventriloquists with no names will not be cross-examined so.

[beat]

So basically, you're saying that lies on the record is good journalism, but truth off the record is not.

Got it.

[jessaustin]

Wow, that's, like, meta-weasel-words. Well done.

Absolutely, a story based entirely on odious unattributable anonymous innuendo like that we see here should not be published. If the "government officials and others" want this important information to get out, they can still talk to Rep. Schiff. He will repeat anything that hypes up RussiaRussiaRussia, and he's on TV all the time. If, in fact, he isn't the "government official" to which this piece refers in the first place.

I don't say this because I support Trump or voted for him (never did, never would). I say it because this whole multiyear journalistic dumpster fire has guaranteed his reelection. TFA is all about putting out the flames, which I do support.