“In the vocabulary of the daily press ‘well-informed
circles’ have by now been relegated to a place of secondary importance. On those very frequent days when foreign and diplomatic
correspondents find themselves without any credible information to report, it
is their custom to appease their editors with modest forecasts of their
own. On these occasions, it is usual to
evoke as authority some anonymous source.
If, for instance, they have heard something from the postman, they
attribute it to ‘a semi-official statement’; if they have fallen into
conversation with a stranger at a bar, they can conscientiously describe him as
‘a source that has hitherto proved unimpeachable.’ It is only when the journalist is reporting a
whim of his own, and one to which he attaches minor importance, that he defines
it as the opinion of ‘well-informed circles.’”— Evelyn Waugh, “Well-Informed
Circles...and How to Move in Them," in The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, edited by Donat Gallagher (1983)
A Shocking and Predictable Election
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