It may be akin to sacrilege to argue that a newspaper should lift the veil of anonymity. But reasons for making something of an exception in the Lynch case are several and compelling.
For one, news organizations owe little to anonymous sources that provide bad information. The grant of confidentiality isn’t meant to be a vehicle for diffusing falsehood.
In this case, the embarrassment quotient remains high enough for the Post to identify its Lynch sources — if not by name, then by affiliation.
Another compelling reason to lift the veil of anonymity is that the veil has been partly lifted already. One of the reporters on the botched story, Vernon Loeb, is on record as saying who the sources were not.
So it should be a small step to saying who they were.
via Why WaPo should reveal sources on bogus Jessica Lynch tale « Media Myth Alert.