>Especially in stories involving classified information it's very rare to get unequivocal proof at first. For better or worse leaks are how stories break, and the leakers are careful about how they do it so to avoid criminal charges.
>Given this, all you have is the reputation of the person doing the reporting. Historically have they shown good judgement in discarding the crackpots and do many of their breaking stories from unnamed stories subsequently turn out to be true?
I think we're back to an Appeal to Authority.
No one is claiming that a journalist’s reputation removes the burden of proof.
If you read what I said, it's the opposite ("In this case I think Hersh's reputation isn't what it used to be") but the point is that reputation is a signal that something is worth paying attention to in the absence of any other useful information.
I often think "false appeals to a logical fallacy without understanding nuanced argument" should be a fallacy itself. Nothing wrong with understanding logical fallacies of course - but often people just mindlessly use them without understanding what the fallacy says.
Expert witness in legal trials is a good counter-example to this fallacy for example. Expert witness testimony is given extra weight because of their reputation in the field. Sometimes this is wrong, but often it is not.
Which seems little different to an appeal to authority. Maybe you better understand the nuance between an appeal to authority and an appeal to someone's reputation as an authority.