Shadowy Martin advisers speak!

If Chuck Guité's testimony achieved nothing else, it forced Paul Martin's cabal of off-the-record briefers to come out into the open and for once comment under their own names. The use of unattributed quotations from "senior officials" and "party insiders" is one of the great plagues of journalism. It's one thing to protect the identity of a whistleblower who is afraid of losing his job, or any source where the information divulged is important, factual, and can be checked against other sources. But in most cases it is little more than a vehicle for partisan political operatives to launch attacks on their opponents without having to take responsibility for them. And without having to buy an ad, which is what these stories usually are.