For those who’ve missed earlier installments of this missive, here’s the basic argument: Journalists fail miserably when they treat news stories as vehicles for their own opinions. That’s why the “great editor in the sky” created columns.

You know a piece of journalism is especially shoddy if there’s no attribution. In other words, the writer never answers the question, “Says who?” For example: “This is the worst administration in the history of the free world, says (a State Department career employee/U.N. bureaucrat/Brookings Institution wonk/Democratic strategist/angry guy I met at Burger King/illiberal blogger/my editor/my next-door neighbor/all the people I drink beer with after work).

Today’s candidate for the “Says who?” award is Newsweek‘s Michael Hirsh. Consider this paragraph from his cover story:

The violent takeover of Gaza by Hamas is not just a death knell for Israeli-Palestinian peace, splitting Bush’s dream of a Palestinian state into two armed camps. It is also, along with the quagmire in Iraq, a historic rebuff. In his second Inaugural Address, the president embraced the promotion of democracy as his top priority, declaring: “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.” But in Iraq and the Palestinian territories, as in Russia, Pakistan and other places, liberty is retreating. And the fact remains that those places where Washington has most actively and directly pushed for elections—Iraq, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza—are today the most factionalized, chaotic and violent in the region.

Who calls the Hamas takeover a “death knell for Israeli-Palestinian peace”? Who called Iraq a “quagmire”? (Does anyone even know what a quagmire is — beyond its utility as a synonym for the Vietnam War?) Who called this a “historic rebuff”? And so on.

Perhaps Mr. Hirsh simply lost his cool for a paragraph. Let’s look at the next one:

Why does the disaster in Gaza matter? In part because the defeat of the secular—and more moderate—Fatah forces could, along with the insurgents’ success in Iraq, inspire Islamist radicals in the region and around the world. Hamas is not the Taliban, and it knows that an uptick in rocket attacks against Israel will be met with a harsh response. But, as Bush said in his second Inaugural, the whole point of promoting freedom is to blunt the hopelessness and anger that breed radicalism. Gaza faces 50 percent unemployment in the best of times. Qaeda-like splinter groups that have carried out kidnappings of foreigners have already begun to appear. Further isolating the territory is not likely to fill its residents with faith in the future.

Who says Fatah’s defeat could “inspire Islamist radicals”? Who says Hamas knows an “uptick in rocket attacks” would yield a “harsh response”? Do you get the impression Mr. Hirsh didn’t actually talk to anybody with any expertise on this subject?

What’s inexcusable about this sourceless “news” is that Newsweek should be able to find people to stand behind these assertions. Surely there’s some source who’s willing to be quoted or paraphrased expressing these sentiments. Those sources enable the reader to determine whether the information has any value.

My favorite line in Mr. Hirsh’s piece is this one: “Let’s face it: Americans have always made crummy imperialists.”

To that, I add: “Let’s face it: Writers with no sources have always made crummy news stories.”