Apparently you know absolutely nothing about journalism because if a reporter were to out their sources publicly they would never have another source for the rest of their career. By your logic, Bernstein and Woodward should've outed Deep Throat as their source during Watergate. This is just a monumentally dumb argument.
If you make up one source you can just add 11 more. It really doesn't matter if you aren't giving the name. And your age as a paper makes no difference as the NY Times has become a Democratic mouthpiece with little to no ethics. Also have you ever heard of Yellow Journalism? This is really a new age in yellow journalism we are in, with these outlets desperate for survival. They are more interested in sensationalizing for clicks and pushing an agenda. Which they made clear when their editorial meeting was leaked. They openly admitted to pushing certain angles on stories. Pushing angles on stories is not organic reporting. It is propaganda. Also publishing anonymous sources is weak. Get someone on record or don't expect anyone to take it seriously other than people who desperately want it to be true.
It is a last ditch effort for huge stories, you tool. Outlets used to debate using it and were cautious, but now everyone and their mom uses an anonymous source like they're the next Woodward and Bernstein. This time a solid dozen. Wow, amazing. Except that's not good journalism! Getting sources and convincing people to actually go on record is. Letting anyone go anonymous creates a consequence free environment for gossip and outright fabrication. Yeah I know plenty about Journalism and I don't respect outlets that use it all the damn time. Especially papers with known slants that act as propagandists.
We've already tried putting snakes in the swamp but maybe alligators will do a better job draining it.
Still not ready to believe the NYT is making up sources. Yes they have their editorial bias and they have a narrative they see and want to report on, but that's a thing again from making stuff up. My impression of this story is that again Trump was speaking hyperbolically* to emphasize to his staff that he wanted to be really, really aggressive in making an effective wall. I believe the NYT's reporting that he probably literally said he wanted a moat of snakes and alligators. But what I expect he meant was that he wanted people to bring him a plan that had the same disregard for human life but with workable ideas. As usual, poking fun at the dumb things he says is funny, but I think his critics totally miss the mark with the criticism. The problem here is not that he might think it's possible to run a moat of alligators through the deserts of Arizona. The problem is that the message he was conveying was that he assigns no value to the lives or rights of migrants and he wants a solution for the southern border that does not make any allowance for either. He swore to uphold the Constitution and is directing his government to violate people's civil rights, disregard treaties, and break the law. * I expect some derision because the last time I said that -- about how Trump said he'd never heard of a Cat 5 storm hitting land before -- was quickly mis-attributed to his assertion that Alabama was in the storm path. That's alright; bring it.
12... 12 people anonymously? Seriously, that's some BS. You don't need 12 people first of all and good luck getting 12 people who want to go deep throat on a presidential issue. That just sounds like a number used to give themselves more authority as people call them into question as a propaganda outlet. You go right on ahead and trust that corporation that doesn't benefit from sensationalizing things to get clicks. You go right on ahead and trust what is literally an attention w**** of an organization. Do you really think a man who even remotely understands construction costs would even bother asking to get a cost estimate for essentially a canal that would go across the country? He couldn't even get the wall done, was complaining supposedly about this being his issue, so why would he bother making it more expensive by adding a massive earth moving task, the likes of which has never been done, to said stalled project? Or do you believe every damn negative piece of press that confirms you bias? Take the NY Times seriously all you want, but there is a reason Americans often say "don't believe everything you read in the newspaper." Did you not hear that growing up?
Actually since WaPo and NYT receive majority of their revenue through subscriptions rather than ad revenue, they are less prone to relying on click bait headlines. We are speaking in a relative scale. There is no perfect news source but people in general, not your isolated bubble, trust subscription based news sources more than online sites and youtube channels that rely on ad revenue. Even the conservative leaning sources such as WSJ that are subscription based are far more reliable than their counterpart services that rely on ad revenue for the majority of their profits. I also gave the age of these papers because these papers have built up over a century worth of reputation of getting it right factually significantly more times than not. They may all have opinion pieces but the last thing they will do is fabricate sources out of thin air, At worst the sources could have grudges with the administration and can exaggerate.
They still need to please their costumer... wannabe leftist elite types who hate the president. No difference in attention whoring for that or clicks there. Also 536 white house officials said you're wrong. Trust me. That's a lot of people man. Just trust in that number.
If you are going to state that papers like NYT and WaPo have to cater to the liberal elites, then you have to acknowledge right wing sources on right wing YouTube channels and sites such as Breitbart also cater towards right wing individuals. Remember what I stated about relative scale. Both sides have a certain demographic they cater towards. So we can cancel those effects. The remaining effects are how they receive revenue. Old establishment newspapers (WaPo, NYT, WSJ) rely more on subscription revenue which is less prone to click bait and right wing Trump cult sites such as right wing youtube channels, Beitbart etc are more prone to click bait revenue due to reliance on ad revenue. Yes, they all have opinion sections that have biases but even then NYT and WaPo do have occasional conservative Trump defending writers in the opnion sections which many of those articles have been posted here thanks to @Os Trigonum. You will never see the reverse of that on the vast majority of right wing youtube channels and right wing sites. It's pure ideological bubble. I'm sorry, NYT and WaPo are not going to fabricate 12 sources from thin air. I trust 536 Trump officials to PUBLICLY state that it never happen to keep a job and 12 of them anonymously report what they heard to NYT.
On the 12 anonymous sources: It's hardly deepthroat. Trump said something mildly embarrassing in a private meeting when he usually does that stuff on twitter. He didn't even break the law this time. The reporter regularly talks with people inside the Administration with an ongoing understanding that he won't use their names. And when he heard this story, he asked everyone else I about it and found 11 more people who said, "yeah, I heard him say that." Sure, it's way more sources than he needs, but if he's talking to everyone then why not. On the NYT: Ok, I will go right on trusting them. You have your sources of news you trust (for whatever reason). We can't really know anything at all about politics unless we trust some news organizations' reporting. That doesn't mean to read things uncritically, nor does it mean to trust one organization to the exclusion of all others. But you do have to think about the credibility of who you're listening to. I thought about it a lot in 2016 with all the fake news and the accusations of fake news. I decided then I wasn't considering enough who it was I was reading and changed my habits. That included reading more of the NYT. Yes they have a political lens, I'm already aware. But it's a subscription service and are less reliant on clickbait. They have such a strong brand in the news business that they can get many of the best journalists. And, they have a high need to protect that brand, so they will not want to get caught with their pants down because some journalist made up quotes or sources. They did get embarrassed by their reporting a couple weeks ago and were flayed. So yeah it'll happen sometimes but they are highly incentivized to not let that happen. I'm not familiar with the fairytale news organization that you think people should be paying attention to, that reports straight news "organically" as it happens without a political lens. You'd need a robot journalist, and even then it would probably reflect the prejudices of its programmer. News is written by people who go out and try to learn from others what's going on and delivering an understanding of events to their readership. That requires analysis and judgment. Doing it without making judgments or applying some analysis would result in a useless string of trivia. Only cspan comes close, and they don't even do that. So you have to (a) be familiar with who your sources are and understand what their lens is, (b) find sources with whom you share values so they care about the same things you care about, and (c) be familiar with the larger journalism landscape and what they might be saying that your own favorite sources might be blind to. My current news consumption goes like this. Subscription to NYT. Thought about subscribing to WSJ too, but seriously how many subscriptions am I really going to pay for? Listen to NPR in the car (another commie source, I know). Google News, which lets me see the headlines from whomever is best at SEO -- but not WaPo because their expertise in SEO (and in publishing in volume) is undone by their paywall. Cable news at work (closed captioned), which varies on the whims of coworkers -- probably in descending order CNBC, Fox News, MSNBC, sports, and CNN. And the links posted here -- unless its video because I hate video, and unless @Os Trigonum posted it .
Do you have any idea how unlikely it is to get 12 sources to risk their career over a mildly embarassing meeting? Don't ever be a reporter.... you will find it far harder than you are imagining. This is so obviously bullshit it is not even worth debating anymore. I am done with you. Believe it and all the other crap you let get in your rotted brain.
