...more like an ELI5? Sure.
When Bobby tries to convince his friend Jimmy that Charlie is lying, you shouldn't trust him if he says that "I know that Charlie is lying because apples are green".
> One of the reasons we know this story is bogus is because of the New York Times story which cites anonymous officials, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”. That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles.
>That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles.
I'm not even sure the apple is green! If you search `site:nytimes.com “anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation"` you'll see that this news outlet has done this multiple times in the past.
I suppose "valid" and "normal" are giving the author a bunch of wiggle room here, but he never backs this claim up.
Normal convention is that an agency will make no comment about any ongoing investigation, because making public comment prior to bringing charges could be prejudicial to the case.
If, for whatever reason, the agency feels like it's not risking its own case and wants to blow its trumpet... it really doesn't matter what the names of the spokespeople for the agency are. They don't need to speak anonymously, as they won't get in trouble with anyone at the agency for saying what the agency told them to say to the press. The NYT could just say "officials said" and not name them.
It is not like there is a whistleblower inside the Secret Service with scuttlebutt to dish, and the NYT need to protect the identity of Deep Throat 2.0... and all they had to say was the spam operation itself didn't pose any threat to the UN conference.
I think what the blog author's arguing is that this phrase is unnecessary detail that just adds intrigue to sell a rather mundane story.
I don't know about US laws, but in most countries agencies/PMs/experts or whoever has access and is involved in the investigation, cannot make a comment if the investigation is ongoing.
Breaching of this, especially as you're making a case, in most cases at best would invalidate the whole case + bring disciplinary actions upon the individual(s) that committed the breach.
Judging by the other comments, looks similar for the US too.
If you're ever partecipated as expert in any investigation or news article you'd know you'd get usually biased hypothesis, if otherwise it meant you wouldn't have the same impact for the news story. Or if you've ever heard of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.