Official comments are all well and good, but what about those juicy stories that you can only get by promising a trusted source that he or she won't be named? "Anonymity, I think, is vital," says Thorsen. "I'll give it to anyone who I trust is not bullshitting me. I mean look at reporters for major newspapers --they go to jail before they reveal their sources, if they know they're valid. Why should we be any different?"

EGM's Boyer agrees. "Usually any of these sources are pretty trustworthy, and we're willing to grant them anonymity for juicy rumors," he said. "Readers know what they're getting into because we publish this stuff in a special rumor section ... Sometimes rumors come from industry folks who may leak info before they're supposed to -- as dictated by, say, an embargo or certain marketing milestone -- so we protect their identity by putting the info in our rumors section rather than as a news item."

Others don't necessarily agree. "Most rumors are pretty inconsequential," says Steve Bauman, former editor of Computer Games Magazine. "We're talking about games here, not national security issues. Printing a rumor of a sequel should elicit, 'Well, duh' reactions... hell, it'd be bigger news if someone announced that they weren't doing a sequel."

That doesn't mean you can just print anything that sounds plausible, though. Being able to trust your source is of prime importance. "If it's an Xbox 360 rumor from billgates@yahoo.com, maybe you shouldn't run it," Bauman said. "If it's from someone you can verify would know this kind of information, by all means run with it. But briefly consider that if it isn't true, it's your own credibility you're putting on the line"

In the end, when in doubt, it's probably better to sit on a rumor that might be false than to run one that might be true. "When it comes to reporting on rumors, I tend to err on the side of caution," Zenke said. "If it sounds even slightly fishy, I'll keep it off of the site. If it's something so obvious that anyone could have seen it coming, I'll keep that off the site too since I assume an official announcement along those lines will be made shortly. Deciding what falls into that middle ground is hard, sometimes, but I try to make my best effort."

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Media Coverage is an opinion column. The opinions expressed in this column are solely the opinions of the columnist and are not necessarily the opinions of GameDaily.com.