The Telegraph's "Scoop"

Just a friendly reminder that for a British paper, "sources close to the administration," i.e. not in it and with no first-hand knowledge of anything ... could be anyone at all. I don't know what the internal discussions are like, but I'm quite sure the Telegraph doesn't either. Maybe Obama has had a personality change overnight and is "furious". Or maybe Alex Spillius is inferring things and calling it reporting.

The Telegraph has realized that if they can use their looser sourcing standards to get links from big right-wing websites in America, they're going to do much better financially and beat their British competitors in traffic. Hence their recent penchant to hype stories based on sources no US paper would begin to credit.That doesn't mean they're wrong. It does mean a grain of salt is necessary.

(Now the Ahmadinajew story really is a scoop.)