Why don’t journalists link to primary sources?

New's flash: Journalist lie... err distort.

The article gives the answer: because quite often it would just be embarrasing for the "journalist". So many stories get blown up/made bigger then they actually are, to get more clicks/readers for the story.

Because journalists don't read primary sources. More often than not they're not even aware of them.

Here's the problem: Almost all media outlets are in crisis mode so they're cutting down on their staff, meaning that a smaller number of journalists have to write the same amount of stories as before to fill the paper (or website). There simply isn't time for proper research if you have to write five articles a day.

So many journalists resort to "borrowing" from other news sources, which in turn often have borrowed their article from somewhere else. An article may start as a published paper in Nature,which is then reported in popular science, which is then reported by Reuters, which is then reported in The Times, which is then reported in The Daily Mail.

By the time it reaches The Daily Mail it's been through so many filters of busy journalists that the meaning has often become distorted. The journalist from the Daily Mail has no idea that there even is a primary source.

I think one of the main reasons may be that a lot of what appears to be journalism actually isn't - it's press releases from various companies and organisations, known as "churnalism". It's surprisingly easy to find churnalism, even in what appear to be fairly authoritative news sources (see churnalism.com). If journalists routinely cited their sources they would have to admit that often large sections have been copied verbatim from the public relations output of companies.

The tragedy is that the reaction of the mainstream media to this existential crisis is to unwittingly accelerate it.

The key problem is that local news sources (newspapers especially) have traditionally had relatively exclusive "broadcast" privileges to their audience. This let them make money from the broadcast business alone: selling classified ads; re-broadcasting weather reports, national and international wire reports, syndicated comic strips, etc. This is a low cost high markup business, so media grew fat off of it, and sometimes lazy. It's easier and far more profitable to fill a paper with human interest stories and re-broadcasted content than it is to do hard nosed reporting.

The internet has vastly disrupted every manner of broadcast exclusivity in existence, especially newspapers. Classified ads are obsolete in the face of ebay, craigslist, amazon, monster, and even facebook. Day old printed weather information is similar obsolete in the face of weather.com, wunderground.com, etc. Reprinted comics are similarly obsolete in the face of online access to not only the exact same comics but also a bevy of webcomics, many of them more appealing to various individual readers than the one-size-fits-all lowest common denominator of the newspaper. The same goes for opinion pieces and re-printed news. This leaves the value of a newspaper down to nothing more than it's unique coverage capabilities (e.g. local news) and basically whatever legitimately original reporting they do.

However, as newspapers have been faced with economic doom due to the loss of most of their revenue their response has typically been to foolishly double down on exactly the traits that have gotten them into trouble in the first place. To cut back on expensive elements such as original reporting and fall back on the cheap stuff. This'll work for a while, but it won't ultimately stave off doom as increasingly people will discover the value of the paper is diminishing and becoming less relevant. People will more and more find that life is just fine with out them, the process will accelerate as more and more people of every demographic follow suit.

Meanwhile, it'll be up to others to carry and to elevate the standard of journalistic integrity.