The decision of whether or not to launch a ICBM is a binary one.
Take the issue of the illegal drugs. Imagine that Alice first version of the story was as unspecific as it’s written. One day in Kate writes in and says “It’s ADHD medication + antibiotics and not really illegal material”. Then Alice sends an email saying “”It’s ADHD medication + antibiotics and not really illegal material”.
If Ben then publishes a story saying “It’s Alice position that it’s illegal drugs and Kat’s position that Alice wasn’t asked to bring over illegal drugs” Ben would likely get pushback for that. In an actual court case, it can be argued that Ben misrepresents the evidence available to him.
It sounds like you’re describing a situation like:
A: [to B, in advance] they asked me to bring drugs into the country illegally.
C: [to B, in fact checking] yes, but the drugs were over-the-counter medications and we thought it was legal.
A: [to B, after fact checking has begun] C told me about the drug thing and asked me to retract my claim. I didn’t lie to you, but I probably should have mentioned that they were OTC and C didn’t know they were legal.
With this strategy B would ignore that A agrees with C’s clarification. And would also ignore it if instead it had been:
A: [to B, after fact checking has begun] C told me about the drug thing and asked me to retract my claim, but is thinking of a different time; I was taking about the crack.
If it’s important to A that C cannot retaliate against them to shut them up and they’ve decided to use the precommittment process I’m proposing, this requires giving up some flexibility. In this case the time for B to get clarity from A on exactly what they’re claiming would have to be before starting the adversarial fact checking process. Once it has started, all B can do is consider what they heard from A before fact checking and what they’re hearing from C now and choose between keeping the claim, weakening it, clarifying it, or dropping it.
Note that weakening it is quite tricky: you can’t do it in a way that makes it sound like A is claiming something different than they already endorsed before fact checking, so if you do want to keep the claim I think clarifying it will often make more sense. In this scenario I think I’d go with something like “A told me C asked them to bring drugs into the country illegally. During fact checking C agreed that it wouldn’t have been legal, but also said they were over-the-counter medications and at the time they made the request they believed bringing them in was legal.” And then potentially adding “Due to the precommitments to our sources I described above, I have not asked A whether they agree with C’s description of the situation, but even if C is correct I think it demonstrates a reckless attitude toward the sensitive matter of bringing controlled substances between jurisdictions.”
The decision of whether or not to launch a ICBM is a binary one.
Take the issue of the illegal drugs. Imagine that Alice first version of the story was as unspecific as it’s written. One day in Kate writes in and says “It’s ADHD medication + antibiotics and not really illegal material”. Then Alice sends an email saying “”It’s ADHD medication + antibiotics and not really illegal material”.
If Ben then publishes a story saying “It’s Alice position that it’s illegal drugs and Kat’s position that Alice wasn’t asked to bring over illegal drugs” Ben would likely get pushback for that. In an actual court case, it can be argued that Ben misrepresents the evidence available to him.
It sounds like you’re describing a situation like:
With this strategy B would ignore that A agrees with C’s clarification. And would also ignore it if instead it had been:
If it’s important to A that C cannot retaliate against them to shut them up and they’ve decided to use the precommittment process I’m proposing, this requires giving up some flexibility. In this case the time for B to get clarity from A on exactly what they’re claiming would have to be before starting the adversarial fact checking process. Once it has started, all B can do is consider what they heard from A before fact checking and what they’re hearing from C now and choose between keeping the claim, weakening it, clarifying it, or dropping it.
Note that weakening it is quite tricky: you can’t do it in a way that makes it sound like A is claiming something different than they already endorsed before fact checking, so if you do want to keep the claim I think clarifying it will often make more sense. In this scenario I think I’d go with something like “A told me C asked them to bring drugs into the country illegally. During fact checking C agreed that it wouldn’t have been legal, but also said they were over-the-counter medications and at the time they made the request they believed bringing them in was legal.” And then potentially adding “Due to the precommitments to our sources I described above, I have not asked A whether they agree with C’s description of the situation, but even if C is correct I think it demonstrates a reckless attitude toward the sensitive matter of bringing controlled substances between jurisdictions.”