Well, when you post, you can either day "there is a rumor going around that [whatever]", or you can say, "I spoke to someone who was at the scene and part of the recovery crew. He does not want to go on the record himself, but he told me [whatever]."Sometimes a "rumor" is actually the observations made by a well qualified on-scene observer who feels that they cannot state this for the record. And sometimes it is completely made up stuff by someone who is out to get someone.
And unless you are deeply involved in this and know the people involved it's really hard to judge what is what.