Comment by jfengel

You can say "an anonymous source". That's a standard journalistic practice.

What shouldn't be standard is "we read this newspaper article and we're going to repeat it as if we originated the story". Which is what AI news always is, in addition to the vast majority of news outlets.

The origin of most news is wire services, repeating what local reporters write. Newspapers usually at least cite the wire service. Blogs, TV shows, and others speak as if they were the originators.