When I speak to journalists, I am always on deep background. I’ll point them to people who can corroborate. But they’ll be off the record. Refusing anything but named sources in one’s information diet is fine, but most people I know who do this are remarkably inconsistent on the other axis, source quality, accepting names randos on Twitter as the word of god while rejecting respected journalism because Congressional staffers aren’t going to get themselves fired over a story.

I don't mind anonymous sources provided there is a clear assertion by the journalist that the source witnessed or had direct evidence of the thing being disclosed. Anything that, should the information be wrong, reveals that either the journalist or the source was lying.

A source 'familiar with' does not reach that bar.

"A source who wishes to remain anonymous witnessed..." Is acceptable.

"Subject disclosed to an anonymous source...."

With the current source decaration they could make any claim they wanted in the story. They coud declare alien invasion and when called out say there was a person on Reddit familiar with the situation, they were wrong about everything and had no credibility, but they were familiar with the situation.

When the battle is to come up with the most significant claim the quickest, there needs to be stronger standards for the accuracy of the claim