You bank a lot on your instincts, which, at this point, are usually deeply hampered by exhaustion. It is what the New York Times Delhi bureau chief, Jeffrey Gettleman, once described as the “transitive property of trust.” Reporters invest their lives in it all the time, he said. People you trust put you with people they trust who pass you to others they trust. The longer it gets, the more you hope the chain will hold.
