These are the unsourced news items I ignore. "people familiar with the matter, "sources tell CNN," "according to text messages obtained by CNN," "multiple sources told CNN. When I see phrases like that, I seldom read the rest of the story and I put no credence in it. Without named sources, we have no idea if there even is a source. In this case, we have no idea if the referenced text messages even exist. And we have no idea who the sources are.
If such text messages exist they could have been given to CNN by any number of people. That includes the people who sent and received the texts, people at the phone company that have access to them, attorneys for the defense and prosecution, and many more. I have never troubled myself about such articles because there is no way to know what is not being said. As I said above. I'm content to wait for the truth to come out. At trial, we'll learn if the text messages existed or not and who sent and received them. I view it as a complete waste of time to even talk about such things (making an exception here). Why carry on and on and on about something that cannot be known?
Journalists cultivate relationships with all sorts of people and they are quite good at extracting info from them. They love to scoop each other and break news before their competing peers. That leads to recklessness and misinformation. I expect more from media professionals and am continuously disappointed when they do not deliver it. In that, I know I am a lonely voice.
Many see this leak game as normal and OK. I don't but that does not stop them. So I ignore their petty game.
