Earlier quoted context omitted.
> scan of an actual document embedded into a webpage I see, download the HTML as provided by the server at the time. Then provide that separately and include the relevant text in the article. Yeah, that would be a better method.
We've had full page documents as PDFs for a long long time now. This isn't new. It's just someone wanting to be fancy/trendy/whatevs without consideration that people use the web in ways other than the designers do.
Obviously a journalist isn’t law enforcement but a good one will still gather and retain evidence. They also don’t necessarily need to be as strict as prosecutors but it’s a good standard to try to emulate. To that end, a PDF wouldn’t do.
I wouldn’t doubt that these assumptions are overly generous to the reality of their evidence-gathering; it’s a bit idealistic and the implementation is lacking, at best. But if that’s their point behind the screenshot instead of inline text, I still think they’re coming from the right place. They mostly just have a bad implementation.
But at the same time, I get where you’re coming from, even assuming more responsible intentions. A bit more applied critical thinking in such a context likely results in a better implementation. That is largely why the above assumptions seem so generous.