No-one is going to go on record regarding the contents of a private meeting between the US President and the Russian ambassador, and no-one has. It is pointless to keep asking this question.
It wouldn't be "verified" if people went on the record either. Going on the record isn't some kind of magical truth serum. People can lie on the record or off it.
No, but you could weigh the information against the source/context. You can lie off record much easier, since there is less likelihood of damage to reputation.
That's a tangent anyway, if there is no verification, the only value a statement has is the authority and sincerity of the person who says it: we have neither that, nor do we even know the context (we have just the words, or interpreted statement - it's easy to cherry-pick those).
I guess you think the WP shouldn't have reported Watergate either.
"Executive Editor Ben Bradlee later recalled that many people wondered “how the Post dared
ride over the constant denials of the president of the United States and the attorney
general” as well as top presidential aides. Bradlee replied that the Post knew its information
was correct. Leads from Deep Throat as well as other well-protected sources consistently
checked out. Tapes of Nixon’s conversations show that The Washington Post was right."
I guess you've run out of things to say given this cherry-picked tangent.
> Leads from Deep Throat as well as other well-protected sources consistently checked out
I admit, I don't know much about water-gate, or if the following DW[0] paragraph is true:
"An anonymous source was not enough during Watergate. Without a second source to confirm, The Washington Post would not publish anything, even if it came from the credible Deep Throat."
>Anonymity is only required when there is one source.
Not clear what you mean by this. The WP used multiple anonymous sources for many of its Watergate stories.
>If they are multiple independent, unbiased sources, that is different.
The current stories about Trump are based on multiple sources. What gives you the idea that they stem from a single source? After all, Trump’s administration is one of the leakiest in living memory.
Right, but your statement did not make any sense. There is no connection between the number of sources used and whether or not they are anonymous.
>but also there were two important conditions: independent and unbiased.
What makes you more confident that the Watergate sources were independent and unbiased? You are trusting the judgment of the journalists in both cases.
>I don't see evidence of [multiple sources]?
Are you kidding? There are, at the very least, people who were in the meeting, and people in the Israeli intelligence community, who clearly weren't.
