07 October, 2015

The Trouble With Granting Anonymity to U.S. Officials - The Atlantic

The Trouble With Granting Anonymity to U.S. Officials - The Atlantic: "What’s more, government sources have a powerful incentive to tell a story like that, whether or not it is true: intentionally targeting a hospital would likely be a war crime, and would, at the very least, be considered a shameful public relations disaster.



 The very weakest case for withholding a source’s name is when 1) powerful officials 2) with a clear incentive to lie 3) use anonymity to spread a self-serving narrative 4) without accountability 5) on a matter of great consequence. All those conditions are met here. The anonymous officials in this particular case may have tried to be truthful; and even self-serving narratives are sometimes accurate.



But this one was false."



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