This past week I was passionately critiqued by Trump supporters and Trump critics—and it was a significant learning experience. It wasn’t easy to read some of the comments: the Trump supporters told me I was being ruled by my fears and emotions and piling on with the hysterical media; the Trump critics, except for a few people, empathized with my reactions to Trump, but indicated that unless a disaster actually occurred, my complaints and worries were about a potential and to-date unrealized future. (Almost everyone, especially in the latter group, understood my detesting Trump’s tweeting, his misstatements and his boorish behavior.) I also appreciated @iWe’s post on our reactions to Trump, and his reasoning made sense.

I found myself carefully considering all this input, because I was experiencing a dissonance between the values I hold dear, such as cherishing truth and rational analysis, and the pieces I was writing. So my analysis is still limited, and conclusions are few, but I wanted to share them.

When I examined my reactions to the claim that I was “piling on,” I realized these people were correct, even if that wasn’t my intention. I knew on some level that the media reporting was hysterical and unprofessional. So I decided to take one current national issue and examine the tactics that were used to report on it, information that was collected and conclusions that were drawn. The degree to which these journalistic tools were being abused was shocking. I decided to review the story on Trump’s sharing information with the Russians.

I began by tracing when the report first emerged. Every news outlet that I could find reported that the original story came from the New York Times. This was the opening paragraph to the paper’s May 16 story:

The classified intelligence that President Trump disclosed in a meeting last week with Russian officials at the White House was provided by Israel, according to a current and a former American official familiar with how the United States obtained the information. The revelation adds a potential diplomatic complication to an episode that has renewed questions about how the White House handles sensitive intelligence.

This single paragraph has several weaknesses. The first problem is that the writer speculates on a “potential diplomatic complication,” but he has no way of knowing if it will be one. Then he tries to give the story credibility by noting not just one, but two people, who could supposedly confirm the story. The first person is by definition a leaker, who was willing to confirm the sharing of classified intelligence in spite of the fact that leaking is illegal; the person was likely not at the meeting, so did not hear what was said. The second person, who was also not at the meeting, supposedly knew how the information was obtained. Whether either leaker was “credible” is impossible to determine, since we don’t know who they were. To say the least, their motives were questionable.

The next step was to analyze how news sources were so certain that Israel had provided the intelligence information to the US.

Israel is one of the United States’ most important allies and runs one of the most active espionage networks in the Middle East. Mr. Trump’s boasting about some of Israel’s most sensitive information to the Russians could damage the relationship between the two countries and raises the possibility that the information could be passed to Iran, Russia’s close ally and Israel’s main threat in the region.

Israeli officials would not confirm that they were the source of the information that Mr. Trump shared, which was about an Islamic State plot.

Let’s take a look at these paragraphs. First, will this disclosure be passed on to others? No one knows. Also, describing Mr. Trump’s comments as a “boast” doesn’t sound like an unbiased description to me. Finally, it would probably not be to Israel’s advantage to confirm or deny the information.

And then there’s this qualification:

At least some of the details that the United States has about the Islamic State plot came from the Israelis, said the officials, who were not authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

So how much, if any, of the intelligence details came from Israel? 5 percent? 50 percent? 95 percent? And this comment was also provided by officials who wished to remain anonymous. We have no way of knowing if there were any officials, how high up the chain of command they were, or whether they had direct access to this information.

Then we have another news source that says it wasn’t Israel who provided the information:

According to the report, ‘veteran Jordanian intelligence officials’ claimed that the numerous media reports that the information Trump disclosed to the Russians originally came from Israel are false. Speaking to Al Jazeera anonymously, the Jordanian officials said that they ‘don’t believe Israel has any high level spies’ inside ISIS.

One source told Al Jazeera that when it comes to ISIS, ‘Unlike Jordan, Israel relies on its electronic surveillance collection and its intelligence-sharing arrangement with its Arab partners.’ They also said that Jordan, on the contrary, relies on human spies on the ground who infiltrate groups like ISIS.

Anonymous sources. Again. And one could question the credibility of Al Jazeera.

We then read about Israel’s reaction. One source says that Israeli officials are gravely concerned, and then explains what the Israeli ambassador had to say:

In a statement emailed to The New York Times, Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, reaffirmed that the two countries would maintain a close counterterrorism relationship.

‘Israel has full confidence in our intelligence-sharing relationship with the United States and looks forward to deepening that relationship in the years ahead under President Trump.’

In the same article, this comment appeared: “Despite the gaffe, Amnon Sofrin, former head of Mossad’s intelligence directorate, said the issue was unlikely to be touched on when Trump visits Israel. ‘None of us in Israel’s intelligence community likes this event. But I think it can be put aside.'”

The most insightful article was an Israeli opinion piece about a BuzzFeed report:

The Israeli sources that BuzzFeed quoted appear not to have had the high level access to confirm details of the story. The US officials who were the source of the story don’t seem to have more information on it. So what was this all about? Is it designed to make ISIS suspicious of its own people? Is a spy’s life really in danger? Beyond a known laptop plot, what did the Russians learn? Does it overshadow Trump’s visit? Why doesn’t Israel seem to care? We’re left with a tautology: We don’t know what we don’t know.

So what are my conclusions after investigating this one issue? Here are my plans for now:

1. I will do my best to ignore Trump’s tweets and behavior.
2. Issues identified by “anonymous sources” aren’t credible until they are backed by hard data.
3. I will decide whether every “crisis” deserves my immediate attention; if not, I will put it aside in case additional relevant information surfaces.
4. If I decide an issue rises to the “serious” category, I will make an effort to investigate the information that supports it. Until it is supported by data, I will disregard it.

I note the additional wisdom of the opinion writer at the Jerusalem Post referenced previously: “When media rely on anonymous sources with unclear or exaggerated access, we are left with more questions than answers.”

I agree.