“An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless
17 comments
·May 3, 2025globalnode
mooreds
In this case, the journalist wants credit ("first reported by") from other news organizations for doing the reporting work first. She has a public blog, I don't think she's worried about being known.
It's different than a journalist doing work where their identity could be problematic.
null
ty6853
At $100k / resettlement it might be the world's cheapest citizenship by investment program. The closest I can think of is the Comoros program which I believe Saudi or another Arab country used to get rid of a bunch of immigrants.
salomonk_mur
You don't get citizenship. Just jail time.
xyst
It shocks me to this day that news articles and journalists barely cite their sources. The best I have seen is shitty hyperlinked sources l, which are subject to link rot over time. Thus losing the context/source if underlying paper goes under or company decides to overhaul content system.
What’s the point of learning APA or MLA citation in high school and college but journalists don’t even bother with it? Insane to me.
Would address the complaints of the author _and_ help readers "trust but verify" the claims. Of course, some sources can’t be cited properly (ie, "source close to inner circle of the family") but at least we can discern whether "journalist" did their DD or copied the source from another journalist (or just pulled it out of their ass)
AStonesThrow
Journalists protect their sources all the time. This is common practice in journalism and it actually helps to keep things neutral. It also helps to protect the innocent.
If a journalist protects her sources then she can rely on a steady stream of information from them. If she divulges or betrays those sources, they could be reluctant to feed her further information. A source may be at political or legal risk for leaking to the press. The journalist therefore acknowledges those risks by protecting the identities of the sources.
It is the editorial board of the news outlet who is responsible for vetting sources and fact-checking. Another very important function of journalism is analysis. The editorial board and the reporters are collating various sources of information and providing their expertise by analyzing these facts, distilling them and presenting them to the public with a unified front.
It is true that an encyclopedia such as Wikipedia has different standards, and generally citations on an encyclopedia must be transparent and open. Encyclopedias are tertiary sources, not journalism, and they rely on that analysis and presentation by journalistic sources in order to present comprehensive information on a topic.
Now with all that being said, TFA seems to be about an independent journalist who is the victim of widespread plagiarism. That isn't nearly the same thing. If this journalist is getting ripped off by major news outlets, that is certainly a problem. Every journalist deserves a byline and credit for writing those stories. This journalist is not a source, in herself, but rather producing print-ready material that should not be ripped off, willy-nilly, by any outlet that thinks they can get away with it. If these allegations are true, then that is quite unjust.
carlosjobim
Open source journalism is the only kind of open source I can stand behind. Completely. Anything else isn't really journalism.
kurthr
Um, No True Journalist?
carlosjobim
Jornalists who hide their sources are usually also manipulated by those sources. How do you make sure as a journalist to get access to high ranking sources within the powers that be? You write the stories they want, or they're not talking to you anymore.
Every journalist will experience politicians and other powerful people wanting to tell them things "off the record". If they enter into those kind of agreements they are also betraying their profession and their audience.
reaperducer
What’s the point of learning APA or MLA citation in high school and college but journalists don’t even bother with it?
Because journalism doesn't use the same type of citation as an academic paper. It's an entirely different type of writing, for a different purpose, and a different audience.
If you want to know why journalists use anonymous sources, you could just Google it: https://www.nytimes.com/article/why-new-york-times-anonymous...
But I suppose complaining on the internet and making up false equivalencies is better for feeding one's righteous indignation.
t-3
If they cite their sources, next time you might just check the sources instead of them, or be able to tell when they're making shit up, or be able to see what they're careful not to say. Hiding the sources and being the middleman for truth gives journalists continued employment and increases their value.
Retric
> next time you might just check the sources instead of them
That’s really not the point of journalism.
Not every story makes it to HN’s front page let alone every document. That kind of filtering for interesting info has real value as I don’t want to read every court document, press release, etc for relevant information.
t-3
Providing summaries of stuff that happened for people who don't have time to actually look at original sources or sort the wheat from the chaff but still want to pay attention is a useful service, but an awful lot of what passes for journalism these days is just a train of people summarizing or rewriting another person's summary of a rewriting of a summary. If you check multiple news sites on a regular basis, it's easy to find nearly-identical articles popping up with little-to-no difference in content that masquerade as original or at best obliquely name drop another outlet or journalist in the middle of a sentence in the middle of a paragraph near the end of the article.
nailer
It seems you think most journalists are benevolent. The parent poster is making the point that some journalists seek power by filtering and manipulating the conversation. That also seems reasonable. You can look at some cases of hoaxes perpetuated by the media that were clearly designed to create controversy and enhance the writer’s profile at the expense of what actually happened.
Isn't it for journalists' protection that they try to remain semi anonymous or at least out of the limelight? You just have to look at Assange for an example of what happens when you try to become a well known person representing certain topics.