Impersonal Attribution

Continuing my unending diatribe on the mass media, take a look at this headline from Boomberg news:

Representative Ney to Plead Guilty in Abramoff Case, People Say

Who say, exactly? I mean, thanks for ruling out that it was a monkey that said it, because I wasn’t sure. The first paragraph tells us that “People” referred to “people with knowledge of the probe,” but of course that’s hardly any better.

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