I pulled this from a Reuters piece on international support of the Iraqi vote:

Paris, Berlin and Moscow were dubbed the "non-nein-nyet coalition" for opposing the U.S.-led war in the U.N. Security Council. The subsequent diplomatic chill has been described as the worst crisis in transatlantic ties since World War II.

And I wondered if any of us would a) ever get away with something like that or b) even try to.

But this is commonplace in journalism: stating hearsay as fact without any indication of the source. Who dubbed them the "non-nein-nyet coalition?" Who has described the diplomatic chill as "the worst crisis ... since World War II?"

And in either case were the statements valid? Justified? Partisan? Does it matter? Does the lack of transparency lend an air of authority to the statements., What does the lack of attribution imply about the judgment, the judges, and the judged?

We would find ourselves fisked in the comments or linked by critics on other blogs, and rightly so.

Which is not to equate blogging with journalism, and I hate to dwell on this ubiquitous subject, but it strikes me that these kinds of statements at once fail to serve the avowed ends of journalism and violate the standards of its supposed bastard cousin, the lowly blog.

Again, it's not the claims themselves but the shadows that surround them, their role in the piece, the implied narrative.