[lbo-talk] Fact-checking Anonymous Sources?

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Doug wrote: "A New Yorker fact-checker told me that they put Hersh
through the wringer on his pieces. The magazine, already notorious for
the rigor of its routine checking, goes into high gear for his stuff."

Almost all claims made in the Seymour Hersh article about nuking Iran
<http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/060417fa_fact> are based on
anonymous sources.  How can New Yorker fact-check stuff coming from
anonymous sources like them?

Washington sure would never exclude using nukes against other
countries, but that's not new.  And Hersh's articles on Iran had been
consistently alarmist before this one, too, which may be useful in the
sense that alarms can work "preemptively," but leaks going to Hersh
may be part of Washington's psychological warfare as well.

--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>