The Newsweek controversy has reopened a debate about what standards are necessary for publication, especially when there is only one source for an assertion, and that source will not go on the record.

I have argued that a media outlet should be allowed to tell its readers something that violates journalism’s “two-source” rule, if it considers the information reliable — as long as the outlet clearly informs its audience that it has no way of verifying the claim. For example, Captain’s Quarters recently published detailed information about the Gomery inquiry in Canada based upon a single source that the Captain deemed reliable. I think that decision made sense.

The L.A. Times editors who approved this article evidently agree:

A lawyer who helps represent a dozen detainees at Guantanamo Bay said Monday that on two separate occasions two prisoners told her that guards and interrogators desecrated the Koran. She spoke on condition of anonymity because high-level talks were underway with the State Department to win the release of her clients.

The lawyer acknowledged that she did not see damaged copies of the Islamic holy book. But she said she did not believe the prisoners could have collaborated on the story, because they told her the stories in separate interviews and they were not housed together.

There was no way to independently verify the lawyer’s statements.

Make a mental note of this example. Remember it the next time that the L.A. Times claims it couldn’t report something favorable to the Bush Administration because it came from only one source.

But I have no problem with this approach — as long as it is followed consistently. For me, the key is to tell readers what you know and what you don’t know. If you don’t pretend that an assertion has undergone more thorough scrutiny than it really has, then the reader knows how much weight to give the assertion.

In my view, being transparent about such matters is much better than simply asking the audience to trust a given media outlet to have done its vetting properly — because there is not a media outlet in existence whose vetting has not been shown wanting on occasion.

I’m not unsympathetic to the argument that certain types of allegations are so serious that they should be subject to the strict “two-source” rule. And anyone who does favor a strict application of that rule should agree that the Newsweek allegation was serious enough to require that standard. But I generally favor greater transparency over mechanical application of rules.