reporting means stating facts, not speculating. when i assigned reporters to events i reminded them that “if it happens you report it” without embroidery. you also don’t leave anything out. because of the proliferation of talking heads it seems every journo thinks s/he is an analyst, a commentator, an interpreter.

too few journos nowadays think “reporter” has sufficient cachet and consequently fantasize themselves into a role where they overstep the bounds. in fact, the ability to separate and clearly present just the facts is more difficult than spewing one’s opinion – with the facts added for the sake of plausibility.

By announcing a piece of material, non-public information without attribution, he is abetting his source in disclosing news that would potentially impact his employer’s investments, Chomp cperitors’ prospects for a buyout, Apple’s business prospects, etc. (I’ll note that I speculated, entirely without indicating any investment implications, about better business approaches on the blog of a VC fund guru, only days before the Chomp news broke. It would be disingenuous to claim that the topic was without investment implications.) And yet MG broke the story without any particular concern for normal concerns of Reg FD or other concerns.

In that sense, failure to link to irresponsible news leaks could be seen as a professional courtesy, not drawing attention to somebody out of his depth in blending investment advocacy and journalism.

http://articles.boston.com/2012-02-25/bu siness/31098778_1_center-for-housing-pol icy-housing-costs-area-median-income

http://www.nhc.org/media/files/Landscape 2012.pdf

On Saturday I ran across an article titled, “A steep roof over their heads — Housing is taking bigger bite of income”

Seems that “nearly a quarter of working households…spend more than half their income on housing”. Typically of newspaper journalism, this is a report on a report. Yet the link to the original report was NOT provided in or around the article.

As a result, the writer successfully buried a key qualification in the last sentence of the seventh paragraph. “The report defines working households as those who work at least 20 hours a week and earn no more than 120 percent of the area median income.” It omitted an additional clarification, that only 1/3 of the households in the US are “working households” by this definition.

The original “study” was clearly designed to generate shocking headlines, raising sympathy points for a certain political position. By failing to prominently note the qualifications (which are front-page sidebar on the original report), the journalist here played the dupe.

Lies, damn lies, statistics, and journalists… Bad mix.

Yes, but I argue that the first two of those examples demonstrate failures of our technology that are rapidly being fixed, while printing it out is going to become increasingly rare — as we take better advantage of the online medium, print is going to look worse and worse.

In other words, should the traditional journalism industry really be arguing for backwards compatibility when there are online-only news outlets that don’t have to?

- whether to link to whoever broke the story
- linking as sourcing

I’m going to tackle only the second idea here.

Perhaps it used to be that “the WSJ said it” was good enough. Considering the well-documented decline in trust of news media, it may not be good enough now. I don’t think it’s good enough.

Now of course there are cases where the reader really must rely on the credibility of the journalist. Anonymous sources, and moments where the journalist is a first-hand witness to events that were not otherwise recorded come to mind. But asking the readers to “just trust us” is like pulling rank: while it’s always at least a formal possibility, you want to do it as little as possible because it spends social capital.

This “show don’t tell” ideal is deeply developed in other fields, such as scholarship (citations), science (detailed methodology, original data), and online security (a good system is one which relies on trusting as few actors as possible.)

When I say “all statements need to be attributed,” I am suggesting that this ideal apply to journalism as well.

Regarding your “are you stating X or, or stating that Y says X” point: the clearest thinking I’ve seen on this topic comes from logicians, AI practitioners, and intelligence analysts. In these fields, it’s standard to say that “there are no facts, only assertions.” The question of “according to who?” is deeply embedded in the idea of an assertion; IMHO what journalists are really in the business of doing is assembling evidence, not facts. If that’s the case, I want to see the evidence, when at all possible.

To make a long story short, I believe that users are willing to grant us journalists a certain amount of trust — but only a certain amount. We shouldn’t abuse that by asking them to trust us any more than is strictly necessary.

Yes. This is a telling moment. I think you’re overlooking something about why that happens. Well, not overlooking it, really; it’s just folded into your phrase: CYA. Here’s what I mean: Some sourcing has nothing to do with transparency, with informing the users, with showing your work or building trust or even reporting the news.

Rather, it serves an unannounced and not always conscious agenda: the production of newsroom innocence. As in, we’re not saying this, Mr. Y is saying it. This trick doesn’t actually work, in the sense that readers finding a false fact in your news account will probably fault you for it, whether you attributed it or not. In the real world, if Mr. Y is wrong, your story is wrong. Bur the production of innocence doesn’t care about that. Because the product is an internal one. It makes the newswriter feel more innocent. Social scientists would say it’s a ritual that provides “psychic rewards.”

By posing your question, “are you standing firm on the statement or the fact that he said it?” you were messing with that feeling of innocence. This causes confusion.

http://www.monbiot.com/2012/02/20/plutoc racy-pure-and-simple/

He also lists all of his monetary interests:

http://www.monbiot.com/registry-of-inter ests/