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“An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

thehandbasket.co

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Re: “An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

#21

Post by Retric »

nailer wrote: post #17
Retric wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

Re: “An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

#22

Post by simonw »

globalnode wrote: post #13

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.

Re: “An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

#23

Post by mullingitover »

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.

Re: “An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

#25

Post by triceratops »

AStonesThrow wrote: post #15
xyst wrote: post #5

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…

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 lea…

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

Re: “An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

#26

Post by robocat »

mullingitover wrote: post #23

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.

Re: “An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

#27

Post by jameshart »

xyst wrote: post #5

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…

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.

Re: “An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

#28

Post by simonw »

carlosjobim wrote: post #9
kurthr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: “An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

#29

Post by jowea »

reaperducer wrote: post #14
xyst wrote: post #5

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…

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-yo…

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.

Re: “An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

#30

Post by compuser0503 »

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.

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