[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.