I don’t know who started this, but I always feel frustrated when I see headline along the lines of “USA says” or “China signal”, countries are not people.
I don’t understand why don’t even the best news outlets put headlines like " Official x said this on official order on USA" Or something like that.
I really don’t understand who came up with this way of reporting where they report on officials as their country and I always thought that this is dumb.
Because not all sources allow attribution.
Can you expand on that point or give example?
An MP or elected official wants to leak some information. They talk to a journalist and a condition of the information is the MP can not be named. What would you do as a journalist?
If you name your source, you will no longer get any information from them, depending on the sensitivity of the information the person may loose their position and be shoved to the back benches.
You are talking about unofficial leaks?
In that case, it’s even more important than any other case to seperate between officials and their countries.
"Ukrainian official had said that Ukraine have 1000 nuclear bombs’
Is unofficial statement marked clearly, on the other hand:
“Ukraine says they have 1000 nuclear bombs”
Is misleading and does not represent the situation correctly and would lead to people being misinformed about what is a leak and what is an official info.