CJR Daily, the blog about news, went one better than David Gergen, who suggested, as I did, that bad anonymous sources ought to be named. CJR agrees that two confirming sources should be the rule.
1 – Return to the much-cited but seldom-used two-source rule for every anonymous accusation that you print. And that doesn’t mean one source plus a second source who confirms “by not denying;” it means a second source that affirms the information passed on by the first source. That simple procedure would have stopped not just Newsweek’s “Koran-flushed-down-the-toilet” item in its tracks, it would also have saved CBS from going on the air last fall with documents whose provenance could not be proved.
2 – Inform each and every one of your anonymous sources that if you, the reporter, get burned by bum information foisted on you (and, by extension, onto your readers) all bets are off, and you will unclothe that source in public.