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Notes -
I'd be okay still relying on "sources who can't be named unless their info is falsified in which case we'll shout their names to the sky", but in practical terms that's probably about the same as your proposal. In this case, for example, there's still no way to tell whether the sources were lying; they could have been, or they could have overheard a change that was legitimately planned but for which the plan wasn't executed. "Trump changes his mind about changing his mind" isn't implausible.
(Or if you want to go all 5D-chess, the sources could have overheard a change that wasn't legitimately planned. Trump hates disloyalty, so perhaps he leaks different false stories to different underlings every now and then, so that the stories which make it to the news identify the underlings he should stop trusting. Not likely but not impossible.)
If it's a tabloid running a gossip story about celebrities, I automatically discount "close friend of the above parties hinted at" as the paper making it all up but using the phrasing for plausible deniability, or a scammer sold them the story which they don't care whether it's true or not, it'll sell more copies if they run it.
For media with pretensions to being serious real journalism, I expect better. Again, most times I see "unattributed sources/sources in the government who will only speak off the record", I assume it's a leak and being drip-fed to the media for ulterior motives.
So this could have been a leak, I suppose, as a trial balloon to see what reaction would be like if Trump reversed his decision. Or it could be hot air. I wish NPR and other media would be a little more picky about their sources backing up their claims, but that may be too much to expect nowadays.
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