Anonymous Sources

I staggered back to the underground
And the breeze blew back my hair
I remember throwin' punches around
And preachin' from my chair
--The Who

Perhaps Time's 2018 Person of the Year should be the anonymous source. Without anonymous sources, the mainstream media would have few other sources to cite, and claims of many political operatives would go from being weakly substantiated to completely unsubstantiated.

The greater the ____, the greater the use of anonymous sources.

Some fill-in-the-blank possibilities: political interest, desperation to smear, propensity to lie.