I unfortunately have to agree with your last paragraph. Plenty of my colleagues are absolutely doing an abysmal job, and many others follow a deeply self-righte

I unfortunately have to agree with your last paragraph. Plenty of my colleagues are absolutely doing an abysmal job, and many others follow a deeply self-righteous agenda. They are the vocal minority, and not the majority, and that’s really hard to bring across. My original annoyance with the tone of the comments I replied to is the deeply populistic undertone and the idea that a giant MainStreamMedia connection is trying to influence minds and steer public discourse. Could be that’s it also a personal trigger. I am NOT happy with where the journalistic profession is at right now, but I also don’t think we should just throw away the baby with the bathwater. When it comes to sources, I believe it’s just an editorial choice by the publishing companies that’s more of a custom coming from the days of paper journalism than anything else. Journalists on average have absolutely no control over the links they can put in a piece. So the issue was just addresses to the wrong people. The reason why that is, is that the OP clearly doesn’t know much of how the journalistic profession works from the inside as it is today. That was my claim. I am sick and tired of people that express their “here’s how you should do journalism” as if they had any idea how a newsroom actually works. They do not know the profession, they do not understand the complexities behind the publication of an article, and yet they feel that based on that “frontend” they should express their unifying theory of journalism.