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.
padolsey · 21m ago
> 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..
dylan604 · 1h ago
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.
mullingitover · 2h ago
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.
robocat · 1h ago
> 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.
jimbob45 · 12m ago
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.
compuser0503 · 1h ago
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 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)
jameshart · 1h ago
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.
t-3 · 3h ago
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.
Retric · 3h ago
> 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.
t-3 · 2h ago
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.
Retric · 2h ago
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.
nailer · 2h ago
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.
Retric · 2h ago
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.
jowea · 1h ago
I think they just don't want those precious eyeballs leaving their site.
AStonesThrow · 2h ago
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.
triceratops · 2h ago
They're talking about source documents, not people who are sources.
reaperducer · 2h ago
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.
But I suppose complaining on the internet and making up false equivalencies is better for feeding one's righteous indignation.
jowea · 1h ago
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.
carlosjobim · 3h ago
Open source journalism is the only kind of open source I can stand behind. Completely. Anything else isn't really journalism.
kurthr · 3h ago
Um, No True Journalist?
carlosjobim · 3h ago
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.
simonw · 1h ago
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.
carlosjobim · 1h ago
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.
orev · 3h ago
> are usually also manipulated by those sources
Citation needed.
carlosjobim · 1h ago
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.
reaperducer · 3h ago
Agreed. This person has never been a journalist.
/ Former journalist
ty6853 · 4h ago
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.
salomonk_mur · 4h ago
You don't get citizenship. Just jail time.
globalnode · 3h ago
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.
simonw · 2h ago
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.
mooreds · 2h ago
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.
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.
I think the simpler explanation is just laziness and no positive incentive or obligation, as opposed to proactive competitive practices..
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.
Granted, teaching soft skills is hard but English teachers seem to have universally given up trying at all.
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.
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)
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.
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.
Still someone needed to find the underlying interesting bit of information before everyone else could add their own spin to it.
My point was nobody comes back if it’s not generally interesting, that’s the baseline for the industry.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
* As much as needed for the public to be able to verify.
Citation needed.
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.
/ Former journalist
It's different than a journalist doing work where their identity could be problematic.