Lately, though, I’ve wondered whether some journalists are relying too much on the “ask anyone” method of citation. Its more sophisticated form appears in a passive-voice clause that includes the word “widely”: “widely believed,” “widely suspected,” “widely thought,” “widely considered,” and so on.

Clearly, there are some beliefs or suspicions that really are shared “widely,” and there is nothing wrong with saying so. When a Telegraph reporter writes that Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is “widely believed to have been shot down by a surface-to-air missile fired by Russian-backed separatists,” that’s reasonable. The connection can’t be documented with finality, not yet anyhow, but almost everybody believes it.

Just as often, though, that little word “widely” seems designed to appear to do the work of citation or argument without actually doing it. You can sense the author’s thought process: If he writes “U.S.-British relations are thought to be at their most strained in decades,” the obvious question is, “Thought by whom?” But if he inserts a “widely,” the problem somehow goes away. “U.S.-British relations are widely thought to be at their most strained in decades.” Ah, well, if it’s “widely” thought, it’s probably close to the truth.