I think there are a few corner cases which it is worthwhile to consider:
A whistleblower providing objective evidence of wrongdoing. Here, the accused should just respond to the evidence, not the messenger.
A case relying entirely on the testimonial of the accuser. Here, the credibility of the accuse depend entirely on the reliability of the accuser. The accuser has every right to confidentially talk to trusted third parties about their accusations. But once the accusations are made public to be judged either by a court of law or the court of public opinion, the public also deserves to know from whom the accusations come and judge their reliability as a witness.
Of course, in the real world, it is often a mix of the two. Just about any evidence a source might hand to an investigator could be faked, or even just taken out of context, so the investigator has to trust their source to some degree.
I am sure that the US would have loved to have wikileaks reveal their source for the collateral murder video just to make sure that that person actually had a security clearance, they would not want wikileaks being taken for a hike by some enemy psyop with video editing software. In that case, revealing the source would be silly.
On the other hand, in a they said / they said situation, things differ. If X is anonymously accused by someone who can only provide their own testimony, I think that we should not update from that more than infinitesimally. If the anonymous accuser convinced an investigator who will provide their own name, that is a bit better, but still not much, because we would not only have to trust that the investigator is truthful, but also that his character judgement is sound.
TL;DR: provide evidence, testify on record or shut up (in public).
I think there are a few corner cases which it is worthwhile to consider:
A whistleblower providing objective evidence of wrongdoing. Here, the accused should just respond to the evidence, not the messenger.
A case relying entirely on the testimonial of the accuser. Here, the credibility of the accuse depend entirely on the reliability of the accuser. The accuser has every right to confidentially talk to trusted third parties about their accusations. But once the accusations are made public to be judged either by a court of law or the court of public opinion, the public also deserves to know from whom the accusations come and judge their reliability as a witness.
Of course, in the real world, it is often a mix of the two. Just about any evidence a source might hand to an investigator could be faked, or even just taken out of context, so the investigator has to trust their source to some degree.
I am sure that the US would have loved to have wikileaks reveal their source for the collateral murder video just to make sure that that person actually had a security clearance, they would not want wikileaks being taken for a hike by some enemy psyop with video editing software. In that case, revealing the source would be silly.
On the other hand, in a they said / they said situation, things differ. If X is anonymously accused by someone who can only provide their own testimony, I think that we should not update from that more than infinitesimally. If the anonymous accuser convinced an investigator who will provide their own name, that is a bit better, but still not much, because we would not only have to trust that the investigator is truthful, but also that his character judgement is sound.
TL;DR: provide evidence, testify on record or shut up (in public).