After Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier dropped a questionably sourced article charging President Trump with directing his personal attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project, the news cycle centered on examining the credibility of the piece. If special counsel Robert Mueller's response is indeed accurate, then the BuzzFeed piece was yet another sham, and at least one anonymous source burned Cormier and Leopold, who told different cable news networks different explanations for their sourcing. It could mark the death-knell of the two reporters' careers and seriously call BuzzFeed News' legitimacy into question.

CNN's Senior Media Reporter Oliver Darcy published a piece following the scoop digging into Leopold's " checkered past," namely instances of unsatisfactory attribution and sourcing. Darcy praised the reporting pair's track record on Trump/Russia scoops, but noted on Twitter, "the intense attention has also resurfaced Leopold's checkered past."

It was obviously worth examining the credibility of the reporters, but Leopold's past didn't really "resurface." Darcy dug up details because Leopold's name was in the news. It's all fine and good to comment in the affirmative, "Perhaps we should consider whether or not this reporter is credible." But to act as though these facts passively re-emerged, just by chance, is just intellectually dishonest.

Todd Packer occasionally resurfaces in Scranton. Carter Baizen occasionally resurfaces in the Upper East Side. Gene Parmesan occasionally resurfaces in Newport Beach. Facts, inanimate objects with no power to emerge on their lonesome, do not resurface. Reporters dig.

Most of the time, this digging is warranted. We should know if our elected officials engaged in corruption or dishonest business dealings. But digging through decades-old tweets of Kevin Hart's just in time for him to host the Oscars isn't tantamount to them being revealed on their own. Kyler Murray's teenage tweets did not magically " resurface" the night he won the Heisman Trophy. It's a conscientious effort to try and find some incriminating detail in someone's past at the moment of their greatest success.

Reporting involves agency. Articles don't just passively publish. Journalists ought to label their actions as such.