it is important to note that Taylor was not even the DHS Chief of Staff when his article published in 2018. Yet the New York Times billed him anyway as a “senior official in the Trump administration,” which is an awfully generous way to describe an obscure, mid-level staffer.
The overly generous use of anonymous sources is sure to have a chilling effect in the future. People just won’t take them seriously because every random nobody has been granted it.
Had Taylor put his actual name on that 2018 op-ed, the reaction from the public would have been the same as it is today — a resounding, “Who?” The New York Times surely realized this as well. Putting Taylor’s name on the story is not nearly as sexy as teasing readers with the belief that someone high up in the White House food chain was working as a double agent, a misconception the New York Times absolutely encouraged.