Probably my biggest pet-peeve of trying to find or verify anything on the internet nowadays is that newspapers never seem to link to or cite (in any useful manner) any primary sources they use, unless weirdly if any of those primary sources come from Twitter.
There have probably been hundreds of times by now that I have seen an interesting economic or scientific claim made by The New York Times, or some other popular (or niche) newspaper, wanted to find the relevant paper, and had to spend at least 10 minutes on Google trying to search between thousands of identical newspaper articles for the one paper that actually says anything about what was actually done.
More often than not, the paper is a lot less interesting than the newspaper article is making it out to be too.
They also do this with court filings/rulings. The thing they do that’s most annoying is that they’ll have a link that looks like it should be to the filing/ruling, but when clicked it’s just a link to another earlier news story on the same site, or even sometimes a link to the same page I’m already on!
Most regular readers have never (and will never) read any judicial opinion and instead rely almost entirely on the media to tell them (usually in very oversimplified, biased, and incoherent ways) what the Supreme Court held in a particular case, for example. The vast majority of people who have any interest whatsoever in reading court documents are lawyers (or police officers, paralegals, sports and music agents, bankers etc) generally accustomed to finding those opinions quickly using stuff like casetext, courtlistener, as well as probably a half dozen other paid websites laypeople like me don’t even know about. The demand for linking the actual ruling or opinion is just too low for journalists to care about.
As a result, stuff like courthousenews and the commentary available on the Volokh Conspiracy unsurprisingly becomes crucial for finding some higher-level insights into legal matters.
For opinions that’s right—for news stories about complaints being filed, they are sometimes not publicly available online, or the story might not have enough information to find them, e.g. what specific court they were filed in, the actual legal names of the parties, etc.
citing is good for journalistic ethics, but linking is bad for search engine optimization—at least this is what many websites seem to believe. the idea is that a link to an external source provides PageRank to that source that you could have provided to a different page on your website instead.
if anyone in the future tries to find X, as a journalist, you want them to find your article about X, not X itself. journalism is a profit-making business, not charity.
Is it? That’s definitely what my English teacher wanted me to believe, but since every newspaper does it, all the time (except when someone Tweets something) I don’t see how it could be against journalistic ethics.
Indeed, I think there’s a strong undercurrent in most mainstream newspapers that “the people” are not smart enough to evaluate primary sources directly, and need journalists & communicators to ensure they arrive at the correct conclusions.
Unfortunately, I tend to treat any non-independent science related media as brain poison. It tends to be much more hype or misunderstanding than value. Which is a shame, because there is so much interesting and true science that can be minded for content.
To elaborate on @the gears to ascension’s highlighted text, often Wikipedia cites newspaper articles when it makes a particular scientific, economic, historical, or other claim, instead of the relevant paper or other primary source such newspaper articles are reporting on. When I see interesting, surprising, or action-relevant claims I like checking & citing the corresponding primary source, which makes the claim easier for me to verify, often provides nuance which wasn’t present in the Wikipedia or news article, and makes it more difficult for me to delude myself when talking in public (since it makes it easier for others to check the primary source, and criticize me for my simplifications or exaggerations).
Probably my biggest pet-peeve of trying to find or verify anything on the internet nowadays is that newspapers never seem to link to or cite (in any useful manner) any primary sources they use, unless weirdly if any of those primary sources come from Twitter.
There have probably been hundreds of times by now that I have seen an interesting economic or scientific claim made by The New York Times, or some other popular (or niche) newspaper, wanted to find the relevant paper, and had to spend at least 10 minutes on Google trying to search between thousands of identical newspaper articles for the one paper that actually says anything about what was actually done.
More often than not, the paper is a lot less interesting than the newspaper article is making it out to be too.
They also do this with court filings/rulings. The thing they do that’s most annoying is that they’ll have a link that looks like it should be to the filing/ruling, but when clicked it’s just a link to another earlier news story on the same site, or even sometimes a link to the same page I’m already on!
Most regular readers have never (and will never) read any judicial opinion and instead rely almost entirely on the media to tell them (usually in very oversimplified, biased, and incoherent ways) what the Supreme Court held in a particular case, for example. The vast majority of people who have any interest whatsoever in reading court documents are lawyers (or police officers, paralegals, sports and music agents, bankers etc) generally accustomed to finding those opinions quickly using stuff like casetext, courtlistener, as well as probably a half dozen other paid websites laypeople like me don’t even know about. The demand for linking the actual ruling or opinion is just too low for journalists to care about.
As a result, stuff like courthousenews and the commentary available on the Volokh Conspiracy unsurprisingly becomes crucial for finding some higher-level insights into legal matters.
I don’t think those groups of people are the only one who have an interest in being informed that’s strong enough to read primary sources.
For opinions that’s right—for news stories about complaints being filed, they are sometimes not publicly available online, or the story might not have enough information to find them, e.g. what specific court they were filed in, the actual legal names of the parties, etc.
I don’t understand how not citing a source is considered acceptable practice. It seems antithetical to standard journalistic ethics.
citing is good for journalistic ethics, but linking is bad for search engine optimization—at least this is what many websites seem to believe. the idea is that a link to an external source provides PageRank to that source that you could have provided to a different page on your website instead.
if anyone in the future tries to find X, as a journalist, you want them to find your article about X, not X itself. journalism is a profit-making business, not charity.
Is it? That’s definitely what my English teacher wanted me to believe, but since every newspaper does it, all the time (except when someone Tweets something) I don’t see how it could be against journalistic ethics.
Indeed, I think there’s a strong undercurrent in most mainstream newspapers that “the people” are not smart enough to evaluate primary sources directly, and need journalists & communicators to ensure they arrive at the correct conclusions.
Unfortunately, I tend to treat any non-independent science related media as brain poison. It tends to be much more hype or misunderstanding than value. Which is a shame, because there is so much interesting and true science that can be minded for content.
I do the same for the most part. The way this comes up is mostly by my attempts to verify claims Wikipedia makes.
To elaborate on @the gears to ascension’s highlighted text, often Wikipedia cites newspaper articles when it makes a particular scientific, economic, historical, or other claim, instead of the relevant paper or other primary source such newspaper articles are reporting on. When I see interesting, surprising, or action-relevant claims I like checking & citing the corresponding primary source, which makes the claim easier for me to verify, often provides nuance which wasn’t present in the Wikipedia or news article, and makes it more difficult for me to delude myself when talking in public (since it makes it easier for others to check the primary source, and criticize me for my simplifications or exaggerations).