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The news industry makes a lot of sense when viewed as a category of entertainment.

Reporters write stories and people read them to be entertained. Newspapers make money when more people read the stories.

No wonder that newspapers don't cite others... That's just an advertisement for their competitor.

This isn't the only way to view the news industry but it certainly explains a lot.

There's also a professional divide between "journalists" and "bloggers" [0]. If anyone can start their own website and write stuff, without getting any kind of qualification or accreditation, and without following any editorial policy or maintaining any kind of journalistic integrity, and still get credited with a story, then journalism itself has an identity crisis.

Meanwhile, (some) journalists at (some) news organisations are being forced to write stories that have no integrity under an editorial policy that is designed to promote a partisan point of view.

There's no working business model for real investigative journalism, but our democratic systems need real investigative journalism in order to function properly and hold politicians to account. Nothing else does.

Independent journalists can make this happen, but how do we recognise a "real" independent journalist doing real investigative journalism from an activist blogger with an axe to grind?

[0] I'm not saying that the author is not a journalist, or inferring that they're a blogger.

> Meanwhile, (some) journalists at (some) news organisations are being forced to write stories that have no integrity under an editorial policy that is designed to promote a partisan point of view.

Let’s not forget the credentialed journalists, backed by well-funded media orgs, fully equipped with narratives—and not shy about targeting everyday people they simply don’t like.

I’m sure that opinions vary widely on this, but I follow people and not companies.

With platforms like substack, X, and LinkedIn it seems easier than ever for an independent journalist to cultivate an audience.

As long as they create quality content, I’m more than happy to subscribe to whatever platform they choose to use.

True quality (especially once you get into the niches) is extremely valuable/interesting and to paraphrase Van Gogh, wheat is wheat, even if townsfolk see it as grass at first.

> With platforms like substack, X, and LinkedIn it seems easier than ever for an independent journalist to cultivate an audience.

Cultivating an audience is one thing but serious investigative journalism often takes considerable amount of time and money. Most journalists I’ve seen on Substack and similar platforms seem to mainly do commentary, summaries of topics, interviews, and the like. There is a place for that of course but it isn’t really filling the need for investigative journalism too well at the moment.

And it is also easy to waste time on multi year projects that does not fit you current audience. If you present the result you need to slant it in the correct way to sell subscription. This is very visible with journalist that live on the whim donations.

You see people become more and more extreme because that is what get them donations. This might just be what works with humans.

The difference between the casual blogger and the professional journalist are not of nature, but degrees on different axes.

The main difference from a societal point of view are obviously all the privileges and duties given to a pro in a field, be it writing or anything else actually.

Independence is ever denial or lie when it comes to social interaction. No one is an island, or if you prefer, under the sea even island are connected on solid grounds and all kinds of life forms are able to travel from one island to an other. There is nothing as an absolutely isolated zone.

Also you can be trappist, but simultaneously claiming to be the president of the universe won't hold much attention.

The divide is almost entirely in status - not in actions or morals. It’s important to remember they are competitors and both have an interest in guarding their audience.

More cynically, almost all news these days is PR. There is very little new information entering the system from journalists - just synthesis of information provided to them. So traditional journalists are not unlike bloggers in this way either.

There are obviously some extremely high profile incidents of journalists being forced to promote an ostensibly partisan view in recent times, but that's generally only when the ownership flip flops on their views. And the reason for this is quite insidious. Knowing somebody's partisanship, biases, and other interests in pretty easy in modern times for people who like to be visible which is, more or less by definition, always true for journalists. So if you want bias [x] or partisanship [y], you simply only hire people of such partisanship or bias. So there's only a problem when you change your mind about the 'right' biases.

And I don't think there's any legacy media outlet that's really independent now a days. They've all gone hardcore partisan one way or the other, and all frame things in strong accordance with US geopolitical policy. For instance imagine how absurdly different the coverage would look if what was happening between Israel and Gaza was instead, otherwise identically, happening between China and Xinjiang (Uyghurs).

If qualification, accreditation, integrity is overseen and regulated and handed out by multinational corporations and organizations, owned by and run for billionaires with shady connections and hidden backroom deals among governments, bureaucrats, corporations, the rich, etc., then that really does not "qualify" them to report on very much at all except what maintains the status quo and advances the interests of the ruling class.

A least with independent journalists there is a chance they might not be compromised. Not so, corporate journalists.

> There's also a professional divide between "journalists" and "bloggers" [0].

There doesn't have to be. No reason to gatekeep it. Anyone doing investigative work, and publishing their findings in a structured way qualifies as a journalist. In fact, the more journalists there are speaking truth to power, the more we all benefit.

> No wonder that newspapers don't cite others... That's just an advertisement for their competitor.

Just read the CBS article linked by the author. As she mentions it always cited WaPo. And it now it properly cites her, too:

"The Rwanda arrangements were first reported by the Washington Post, which also cited work by independent journalist Marisa Kabas, who had uncovered the recent deportation from the U.S. of an Iraqi national to Rwanda."

I'd be more impressed if they'd used a hyperlink. But that's apparently forbidden in modern journalism.

It is not worth the bother. I really wish I had a source for this because it stills feels important, and I value links more than most.

Links would be nice but it does not add enough value to be worth it, it actually costs too much and is easy to mess up. The ones who care will search for it, and the great majority can not be bothered. Source: internal statistic from a webbserver, with fact heavy articles.

There were some types of articles that needed source material. But these kinds not so much. I say this because I was involved in a project that worked on QA and maintaining links. We wasted money on that project.

> Just read the CBS article linked by the author. As she mentions it always cited WaPo. And it now it properly cites her, too:

I wouldn't say it properly cites her. It says that the Washington Post reported it first, which is nonsensical because in the very same sentence it says that Washington Post cited Kabas.

> That's just an advertisement for their competitor.

I think the simpler explanation is just laziness and no positive incentive or obligation, as opposed to proactive competitive practices..

Thanks, that's a really interesting perspective. None of the parts were new to me but the framing has got me thinking about it in a new way. I am now wondering what different incentives would align it more with my values or orient it towards societal outcomes that I care about?

Modern news sites refer to other new sites frequently. "as reported by _____" is seen frequently. links to other sites' Twitt..er, X feeds are also common.

This is totally ahistorical. Regional newspapers would “break” stories that would then get picked up by national outlets.

In that system it was the standard to reference the paper that first reported the story.

People understandably have a hard time conceptualizing a highly dynamic and diverse news media landscape these days, but back when it was working like it was supposed to —- before Clinton-era reforms destroyed the laws protecting against consolidation -— it was not as simple to suppress a story because you had actual competition who would profit if you didn’t.

In other words, news wasn’t always so distinctly “entertainment” and the rules which govern news items in a landscape of less than a handful of media conglomerates are nothing like what used to govern in a less starkly dystopian version of the same.

It is not the first time I have heard a local issue in the US by cited as a source of a global problem. I am fairly certain that Clinton had nothing to do with this global problem, he was president during a time were lots of things changed.

More and more is opinion which is cheap and in many cases can be outsourced for no money down. Then you have sponsored articles that are just ads disguised as news.

I love the quote of one of the comments, the odd mix of wistful promise yet shuddering, which sent me down a context-sourcing rabbit hole:

Quote: This is very much a "the new world struggles to be born, now is the time of monsters" moment, but you are weathering it as well as anyone I've seen. (Commenter L.O.)

It's funny that universities will throw you out immediately for plagiarism (some will throw you out if you're aware of it but don't report it), but major publications will do it (this isn't the same as scholastic plagiarism, but it's the journalistic equivalent) out in the open and shamelessly with no repercussions.

> throw you out immediately for plagiarism

Only by twisting the meaning of plagiarism to be defined as word-for-word.

Universities intensively train students to accept plagiarism so long as the copy is sufficiently reworded (and hopefully referenced). That sick and pointless system is ironically being exposed by student usage of LLMs.

The main issue is that students don't have original ideas, at least not way into their master's project.

This means that every single thing they write throughout their studies is some regurgitation of stuff they find elsewhere.

To avoid having a reference after every single sentence, we need to allow them to pretend that some of the stuff they read is common knowledge, and can thus be passed on as such, without reference.

But if someone else actually wrote the sentence, that would be plagiarism, hence writing it in your own words.

> (and hopefully referenced)

If it's cited, it's usually by definition not plagiarism. Omitting the reference is passing the work off as your own, but providing that information is giving credit to where it is due.

It is indeed worthwhile to point out that universities care less about the actual idea of taking someone else’s work, but rather more about the idea of doing so without credit. In the charitable sense, this is what science is built on. In the less charitable sense, this is what science is built on

You don't pay for your news? Well, you get what you pay for.

There’s really very little objectivity in the study of English writing. It would make sense that teachers would gravitate to the only real objective part of their discipline - citations - in a desperate attempt to be able to reliably test students. No surprise the profession has embraced citations to the point of absurdity.

Granted, teaching soft skills is hard but English teachers seem to have universally given up trying at all.

The whole point of the humanities is to deal with topics that are more subjective by nature. That's what makes them beautiful. It's a feature not a bug. If you want some objective facts about language study Linguistics.

There used to be. There once was a host of rules one had to follow, from spelling to sentence structure. Students were tested on thier objective ability to recognize and correct grammar. That is now dead. Schools accept junk so long as it nails the citation format. Students are taught that they can rely on culture and common knowedge rather than bother with proper language.

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I can clearly understand why this journalist is mad - she broke the story but she isn't getting the benefits (readership, money) from it. That would feel unfair for sure.

But the complaint that bigger outlets didn't immediately follow her story by crediting her seems like an understandable situation from the other outlets' point of view. Who will take the heat if it's wrong? A popular outlet that runs with it will get shit on if it's wrong, even if it's citing the independent journalist as the source (in a way they won't if they were just following another popular outlet).

So these outlets need to either 1) verify it on their own, or 2) cite another popular outlet.

It'd still be courteous to name the original reporter, but until she's built enough clout and reputation to stand on her own as a credible source, it seems structural that this will keep happening.

It’s not understandable, it’s abusive. These large outlets have the resource to both verify, credit the original work, and deal with the fallout. That they choose not to comes from avarice that should be regulated or litigable.

Site seems to be down or overloaded so here's an archive link: https://archive.is/ziyRe

It shocks me to this day that news articles and journalists barely cite their sources. The best I have seen is shitty hyperlinked sources l, which are subject to link rot over time. Thus losing the context/source if underlying paper goes under or company decides to overhaul content system.

What’s the point of learning APA or MLA citation in high school and college but journalists don’t even bother with it? Insane to me.

Would address the complaints of the author _and_ help readers "trust but verify" the claims. Of course, some sources can’t be cited properly (ie, "source close to inner circle of the family") but at least we can discern whether "journalist" did their DD or copied the source from another journalist (or just pulled it out of their ass)

Sadly I think people are confusing ‘citing sources’ with ‘journalistic sources’ which are two different things.

Journalists are generally very good at attributing information to journalistic sources. That is, when they relay a claim someone has made, they state who made that claim - ideally by naming them, but if the person making the claim wishes to remain anonymous and the journalist chooses to respect that anonymity, by attributing the information to e.g. ‘sources familiar with the matter’; in such a case the journalist is asserting ‘I know this person is in a position to know this information, but I can’t tell you who that is’.

That’s all fine. And has nothing to do with APA or MLA citation standards though.

When it comes to citing reporting from other media, there’s definitely some sloppiness. In general the instinct is to use the same ‘journalistic sourcing’ standard as above, but caveat it with a sort of hearsay warning: ‘according to reporting in the Washington Post, sources familiar with the meeting said “…”’. And that’s where Marisa Kabas’s complaints lie: she wants to get that level of attribution which print journalists typically accord one another, and not be relegated to ‘an independent journalist’.

But when it comes to citations, the thing you’re most right about where journalists often do not cite their sources is in the form of linking to primary material they used in preparation of the report. Academic papers, government reports, court judgements, official transcripts of speeches… there’s a lot of primary documents it would be great to be able to get hold of if you want to dig further into a story.

If they cite their sources, next time you might just check the sources instead of them, or be able to tell when they're making shit up, or be able to see what they're careful not to say. Hiding the sources and being the middleman for truth gives journalists continued employment and increases their value.

> next time you might just check the sources instead of them

That’s really not the point of journalism.

Not every story makes it to HN’s front page let alone every document. That kind of filtering for interesting info has real value as I don’t want to read every court document, press release, etc for relevant information.

Providing summaries of stuff that happened for people who don't have time to actually look at original sources or sort the wheat from the chaff but still want to pay attention is a useful service, but an awful lot of what passes for journalism these days is just a train of people summarizing or rewriting another person's summary of a rewriting of a summary. If you check multiple news sites on a regular basis, it's easy to find nearly-identical articles popping up with little-to-no difference in content that masquerade as original or at best obliquely name drop another outlet or journalist in the middle of a sentence in the middle of a paragraph near the end of the article.

Sure, and well before LLM’s computer programs were writing junk articles on what happened in a football game and such. But how companies fill a 24/7 news cycle is only vaguely related to journalism. The AP news wire has done wonders to these companies bottom line by minimizing the need for actual reporting vs simply repackaging existing content.

Still someone needed to find the underlying interesting bit of information before everyone else could add their own spin to it.

It seems you think most journalists are benevolent. The parent poster is making the point that some journalists seek power by filtering and manipulating the conversation. That also seems reasonable. You can look at some cases of hoaxes perpetuated by the media that were clearly designed to create controversy and enhance the writer’s profile at the expense of what actually happened.

Not benevolent, the goal is generally somewhere between entertainment, advertising, and propaganda.

My point was nobody comes back if it’s not generally interesting, that’s the baseline for the industry.

I think this is the reason why articles about recent research in 99% of cases don't cite the research itself past something vague like 'Researchers from Harvard University have discovered..'.

It's maddening when you then have to look for the paper using the article's few hints, but usually turns out that the paper's claims are far more careful/'smaller scale' than the news article's claims.

I think they just don't want those precious eyeballs leaving their site.

> What’s the point of learning APA or MLA citation

To give teachers an objective criteria to grade with - in an otherwise subjective assignment.

Journalists protect their sources all the time. This is common practice in journalism and it actually helps to keep things neutral. It also helps to protect the innocent.

If a journalist protects her sources then she can rely on a steady stream of information from them. If she divulges or betrays those sources, they could be reluctant to feed her further information. A source may be at political or legal risk for leaking to the press. The journalist therefore acknowledges those risks by protecting the identities of the sources.

It is the editorial board of the news outlet who is responsible for vetting sources and fact-checking. Another very important function of journalism is analysis. The editorial board and the reporters are collating various sources of information and providing their expertise by analyzing these facts, distilling them and presenting them to the public with a unified front.

It is true that an encyclopedia such as Wikipedia has different standards, and generally citations on an encyclopedia must be transparent and open. Encyclopedias are tertiary sources, not journalism, and they rely on that analysis and presentation by journalistic sources in order to present comprehensive information on a topic.

Now with all that being said, TFA seems to be about an independent journalist who is the victim of widespread plagiarism. That isn't nearly the same thing. If this journalist is getting ripped off by major news outlets, that is certainly a problem. Every journalist deserves a byline and credit for writing those stories. This journalist is not a source, in herself, but rather producing print-ready material that should not be ripped off, willy-nilly, by any outlet that thinks they can get away with it. If these allegations are true, then that is quite unjust.

They're talking about source documents, not people who are sources.

What’s the point of learning APA or MLA citation in high school and college but journalists don’t even bother with it?

Because journalism doesn't use the same type of citation as an academic paper. It's an entirely different type of writing, for a different purpose, and a different audience.

If you want to know why journalists use anonymous sources, you could just Google it: https://www.nytimes.com/article/why-new-york-times-anonymous...

But I suppose complaining on the internet and making up false equivalencies is better for feeding one's righteous indignation.

I'm not 100% sure if previous poster is annoyed at the same thing as me, but if that is the case, we're not annoyed at the newspapers not giving names to their anonymous sources.

It's when they do science reporting and say "a new study says blah" without linking to the study. Or they paraphrase a law proposal submitted by some lawmaker without linking to the original text. Or they repeat something they got from another news source without pointing it out. And even if they do, as the previous poster mention, it is subject to link rot. Frankly I think they do that because of the attention economy. Less eyeballs leaving their site.

Open source journalism is the only kind of open source I can stand behind. Completely. Anything else isn't really journalism.

Um, No True Journalist?

Jornalists who hide their sources are usually also manipulated by those sources. How do you make sure as a journalist to get access to high ranking sources within the powers that be? You write the stories they want, or they're not talking to you anymore.

Every journalist will experience politicians and other powerful people wanting to tell them things "off the record". If they enter into those kind of agreements they are also betraying their profession and their audience.

If you are a journalist working with a source who asks to stay anonymous your number one job is to ensure that they aren't lying to you in order to to advance their own agenda.

Obviously they have an agenda, and want to advance it, so you need to figure out what that agenda is.

The next challenge is confirming that what they are telling you is true, to an appropriate level of confidence at least. Your professional ethics and your editor (and your legal team at larger publications) won't let you publish if you can't do that.

There are many ways you can do that - ask them to show you supporting evidence (usually documents) for example - but the most common is to try and find a different source who can confirm what they are telling you is true.

If you can get two sources - anonymous or not - to confirm the same detail and you're reasonably confident that those sources don't know about each other that's often good enough to get to something you can publish.

Unless the source is a whistleblower, their agenda will usually be dirty if they want to be anonymous. And then you're at their whim, because they control the flow of information. If they're showing supporting documents, those documents should be open sourced* to the public or they shouldn't be seen by the journalist.

* As much as needed for the public to be able to verify.

> are usually also manipulated by those sources

Citation needed.

Why are you asking questions whose answers you are not capable of understanding?

An anonymous source has the power to decide what information she lets the journalist have, and thus she controls the exchange. If the journalist does something to displease the source, then the journalist is cut off from the information.

Agreed. This person has never been a journalist.

/ Former journalist

At $100k / resettlement it might be the world's cheapest citizenship by investment program. The closest I can think of is the Comoros program which I believe Saudi or another Arab country used to get rid of a bunch of immigrants.

You don't get citizenship. Just jail time.

Esp. without due process. "A judge ordered his release". Which triggered Trump to send him to Guantanamo 2.0 Because who is some rogue judge vs the executive.

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Isn't it for journalists' protection that they try to remain semi anonymous or at least out of the limelight? You just have to look at Assange for an example of what happens when you try to become a well known person representing certain topics.

The vast majority of journalists are proud to put their name to their reporting. Cases where a journalist tries to stay semi-anonymous are rare, outside of reporting on despotic regimes, organized crime or other scenarios where there is a legitimate high-risk safety threat.

In this case, the journalist wants credit ("first reported by") from other news organizations for doing the reporting work first. She has a public blog, I don't think she's worried about being known.

It's different than a journalist doing work where their identity could be problematic.