Like every major-league journalism mess-up, of which there are way too many to mention here, the indiscretions of journalists are missed or magnified by either laziness or bias on their editors’ part.

So I somewhat cringe when a news agency caught with its pants down trumpets the solution of putting more editors on it. After all, the scandal would never have happened had the editors actually done their jobs.

Thus is the case with Newsweek, which announced changes in its policy on anonymous sources following its irresponsible and retracted falsehood that cost at least 15 lives in rioting. The solution? Let’s put the editors on it, as if that has worked in the past.

Newsweek Chairman and Editor-in-Chief Richard M. Smith told readers in a letter in today’s edition that only the editor or managing editor, “or other top editors they specifically appoint,” will have authority to allow an anonymous source in a story. Also, the cryptic phrase “sources said” will never again appear in the news magazine.

Trust me kids, this will not be a well-oiled machine. Anonymous sources are like crack cocaine to big-time MSM journalists — many just can’t kick (or at least curtail) the habit, and the deluge of said sources in Newsweek copy will hit the editors like a tidal wave. It likely will be a full-time job in and of itself double-checking the veracity and the motives of unnamed informants.

Smith’s pledge stops short at serious reform by not requiring a second independent source to verify the original’s claims — he only promises a “renewed effort” to do so.

In short, these “reforms” are slapping a Band-aid on a sucking chest wound. It’s Newsweek’s mindset, which automatically grabbed onto this story because of a media-wide belief that U.S troops are bad people who do bad things to innocents, that created its PR monster. A more critical intellect in the newsroom would have prevented this mess from ever happening.