The anonymous source

A newspaper published an account based on an unnamed official and was proved right eighteen months later. Another published a similar account and was wrong. Nothing in either article allowed a reader to tell them apart.

Anonymity is a cost that buys access. A source who would lose their job cannot speak on the record, and some information is available on no other terms. What anonymity removes is the reader's ability to assess the source: their position, their motive, and whether they are in a place to know. The newsroom retains that information and the reader does not, so the reader is being asked to extend trust to the institution instead.

Serious papers have tried to make the extension less blind. They describe the source's position as precisely as safety allows, which is why the awkward phrase 'an official who was present at the meeting' is better journalism than 'a source close to the government'. They say how many independent sources support each claim, and treat one as insufficient for an allegation. And they state what the source's motive might be, including the unflattering possibility that the account serves them.

None of this converts an anonymous claim into a verified one, and the useful habit for a reader is comparative rather than absolute. Two reports of the same event, one naming the source's position and the number of corroborations and one not, differ in how much they are telling you about their own evidence. That difference is observable from the outside and it is the only part of the question a reader can actually judge.

The wrong article, when it was examined, had rested on a single source with an interest in the outcome. The paper had known that and had not said it.