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.
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.