[sirwolfgang]

You report it, as news, saying "a hacker group". You don't have to report the name of the group. There's something called "Journalism ethics and standards", that includes stuff like not reporting a victim's name or in a lot of cases not broadcasting the videos terrorist groups send out.

You want to see something scary, start to look at how media coverage affects mass shootings. There is very strong evidence to support the idea that our current media coverage of making these people "famous" increases the deadliness of these events as compared to something like the North Hollywood Shootout.

[angersock]

I rather disagree--it's already basically trivial to fabricate as much news as we want; removing the burden of proof and specific naming makes it almost impossible to fact-check anything (and even then, in the pathological case, details can be made up, but I digress).

Allowing agencies to not report details that can be independently verified makes for worse news and better propeganda.

[sirwolfgang]

So you're saying that The Washington Post shouldn't have reported on Watergate, with Deep Throat? If you can't trust the people providing the news, then citing sources doesn't change that fact. This is why you have collaborating sources, this is why you vet stories, and this is why you build trust with your readers. They could have linked to their source, and still not NAMED the group. Its the name that gets added to google search, not the sources.