How much weight do people put in anonymous sources nowadays? I'm so thoroughly disillusioned by the press at this point that if it's "according to anonymous sources" or "according to someone familiar with his thinking" or "according to an industry insider", etc., I have zero faith in it.
While I agree completely with your conclusion that mainstream media has thoroughly discredited itself in recent years, I don't feel masking likely-biased sources behind "anonymous" attribution is the biggest part of the problem. I do agree it's definitely been abused many times though.
The even bigger problems are publication bias and source selection bias. These are far less visible because massive amounts of severe bias is accomplished by simply not running stories and it's easy to mask this bias internally because editorial decisions about newsworthiness and public interest are always subjective judgement calls the public doesn't hear about.
In other cases, when editors feel the 'balance' element of an issue story they care about is a little "too balanced" they ask reporters to 'beef up' sources on one side and can also cut-down opposing view sentences for "space reasons". This is as easy as ensuring a 20 paragraph story gets assigned a 16 paragraph slot in the layout process, while ensuring the nettlesome "oppo" views are deprioritized to the last four paragraphs in the (supposedly) separate editing process.
It's surprisingly easy to spot this. Just look for articles where you actually aren't sure which side the writers and/or editors lean toward. One would assume in a fair distribution there should be some noticeable number of these, yet it virtually never happens (and this is equally true from both right and left leaning media outlets). It turns out that it's very difficult for biased editors to sufficiently mask their bias, even when they're trying to appear unbiased.
A lot of the biggest fraudulent stories came from named sources, so I don't really think it makes a difference whether the sources are anonymous or not. If you only report on things that someone is going on the record, you'll only get government propaganda.
In proper journalism, anonymous sources are supposed to point the journalist towards verifiable sources. Perhaps they hand over documents or images, or tell the journalist of where to look for evidence, or just alert the journalist to the existence of a story in need of investigating. Any journalist who doesn't follow through and simply regurgitates anonymous claims not only derelicts their duty but also potentially endangers their source.
There is actually no need in asking anyone. There are required inspections and replacements of parts on each plane at regular intervals. Take the flight timetables, list the planes, calculate a total number of work hours, and you get the number of spare parts required after a given number of days or months. If a grounded plane is the only source of some critical complex part, and you are confident enough there was no smuggling across the border (because you own/control the supply chains), you can guess that it was used that way.
One of the somewhat shocking things to see when you taxi into or out of a Russian airport are the partially-dismantled airframes sitting in the grass along the asphalt.
So you will see a 2-seat trainer with two engines, missing one of the engines with the other covered properly with a tarp; larger aircraft like An-4s or what have you, missing a wing or the tail section. The plane is moving along relatively slowly, so you have plenty of time to have a good look...
You start to wonder "is one of those parts on the plane I am on now?" -- I have never been so happy to be on a Southwest-clone-looking, Boeing 737, as when I flew out of Moscow.
It's weird that they put the salvage yard right in the airport where passengers can see it, but similar aircraft salvage yards exist all over the world.
Number of Russian/Soviet planes on Russian commercial flights has been close to zero for quite a long time because of exploitation costs, lack of large scale production in post-Soviet times, tightened international standards, etc. It was easier to make money by leasing foreign planes, so civil aviation industry went poof. It is unlikely that parts of old Soviet planes could used in Boeings and Airbuses.
Obvious state propaganda, as likely to be entirely fabricated as it is to be true. What is the point of reading this article? Does anyone take this seriously?
The media, being in constant competition with entertainment, wants to impress readers with promises of spectacular crashes, but it's not what happens in this case.
Here's a random example of probable outcome, when incident report coldly notices that a dozen other things inside the cabin are either broken or ignored.
13 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 41.4 ms ] threadNowadays it's closer to "making things up" than actual information. Nothing can be verified, and you can claim anything outrageous for clicks.
The even bigger problems are publication bias and source selection bias. These are far less visible because massive amounts of severe bias is accomplished by simply not running stories and it's easy to mask this bias internally because editorial decisions about newsworthiness and public interest are always subjective judgement calls the public doesn't hear about.
In other cases, when editors feel the 'balance' element of an issue story they care about is a little "too balanced" they ask reporters to 'beef up' sources on one side and can also cut-down opposing view sentences for "space reasons". This is as easy as ensuring a 20 paragraph story gets assigned a 16 paragraph slot in the layout process, while ensuring the nettlesome "oppo" views are deprioritized to the last four paragraphs in the (supposedly) separate editing process.
It's surprisingly easy to spot this. Just look for articles where you actually aren't sure which side the writers and/or editors lean toward. One would assume in a fair distribution there should be some noticeable number of these, yet it virtually never happens (and this is equally true from both right and left leaning media outlets). It turns out that it's very difficult for biased editors to sufficiently mask their bias, even when they're trying to appear unbiased.
So you will see a 2-seat trainer with two engines, missing one of the engines with the other covered properly with a tarp; larger aircraft like An-4s or what have you, missing a wing or the tail section. The plane is moving along relatively slowly, so you have plenty of time to have a good look...
You start to wonder "is one of those parts on the plane I am on now?" -- I have never been so happy to be on a Southwest-clone-looking, Boeing 737, as when I flew out of Moscow.
The 737 has had a very checkered history. For a while there, they had several planes falling out of the sky due to a software overflow problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_rudder_issues#:~:te....
And then of course there was the 737 MAX8 scandal about 3 years ago with two more crashes.
Every time I find I am flying in a 737 I cross my fingers that I won't be in one of the unlucky ones.
Over 100K Cars Cut from North American Production This Week Due to Chip Shortage
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32394085
Here's a random example of probable outcome, when incident report coldly notices that a dozen other things inside the cabin are either broken or ignored.
https://avherald.com/h?article=4e1a3c8f