Are creditable newspapers a public good?

ON Sept 5, The New York Timespublished an anonymous op-ed essay by a "senior official in the Trump administration", claiming that White House staffers are "working diligently from within to frustrate" parts of the US President's agenda. The explosive article labels President Donald Trump amoral, his impulses "anti-democratic" and his leadership style "petty and ineffective".

The NYT explained that it had taken the extraordinary step of withholding the writer's identity so as to protect his or her job, and that this "is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers".

President Trump called the action "gutless".

The moral hazard of publishing the damning expose without naming the writer is clear: how do we judge its authenticity if we didn't know who wrote it? The anonymity feeds Mr Trump's claims that his detractors in the media are creating "fake news". But this is the NYT, whose journalistic inte…