To avoid over-assertion:
(vii) Don't delete attributions (30, 34).
I have argued that copy editors should retain source and agency
attributions. It is most important that source attribution (eyewitness, spokesperson, etc.) should be retained. This reminds listeners that the
news has a specific, human source . .It is a report, just one version of
events. Agency attributions are less obviously vital, but in my view still
important. If agency attributions were always retained, audiences
would have the chance to recognize two facts: that most of the world's
news originates in the Big Four agencies, and that most overseas news
enters New Zealand on a single wire. In many other countries, both
news sources and outlets are more diverse. In New Zealand, the public
can read a story in the morning paper, hear a parallel account on radio,
and watch it again on evening television news. Multiple reinforcement
from apparently independent outlets makes the story and its details
seem unassailably authoritative. But many witnesses do not make one
truth when they are all second-hand accounts based on a lone wire
containing unknown errors of fact and interpretation. Attributing a
story to its source agency would at least make this situation explicit.
Finally, the problem of non-attribution is aggravated when there is
double deletion, of both agency and spokesperson. In (43), the Press
Trust of India has taken particular care not to give its own backing to
the statement: