Unmarked quotes, quoting badly and sinful silence

What the Agonist did — not putting quotation marks and attributions on stuff he posted — was bad and stupid.

But it doesn’t compare with the harm that can come from quoting (or even worse, misquoting) someone who speaks on the condition of anonymity… as the New York Times did this week.

Far worse than either of these, though, is the act of continuously failing to chronicle a regime’s blatant brutality in order to preserve access to “the story”… as did CNN and, apparently, every other news service with Baghdad bureaus during Saddam’s reign. Why abet a criminal conspiracy? What possible good came from staying to tell benign lies about the Iraqi regime?