Sources

At the Lawfare blog, an excellent and very useful piece by Benjamin Wittes:
"How to Read a News Story About an Investigation: Eight Tips on Who Is Saying What."

I worked as a journalist for more than a decade. Those years included covering the period of intensive reporting concerning the last major investigation of a sitting president—and the alleged leaks that arose from that investigation.

So as a public service, I lay out in this post the sourcing conventions that are in play every day within stories about Trump-Russia matters: what they mean, what they don’t mean, and what is reasonable to infer from how a reputable news organization describes its sources in an investigative news article on these issues.

I’ll attempt to apply these rules to three news stories from last week: the New York Times’ disclosure Friday that “The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has obtained a letter drafted by President Trump and a top political aide that offered an unvarnished view of Mr. Trump’s thinking in the days before the president fired the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey”; Politico’s report that “Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is working with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on its investigation into Paul Manafort and his financial transactions”; and the Financial Times’ story that “Rinat Akhmetshin, the lobbyist and former Soviet army officer who met senior Trump campaign aides at a controversial meeting last year, has given evidence before a grand jury investigation.”

Read the whole thing.  If you have any interest in the practice of journalism, it is well worth your time.