Sadly I think people are confusing ‘citing sources’ with ‘journalistic sources’ which are two different things. Journalists are generally very good at attribut

Sadly I think people are confusing ‘citing sources’ with ‘journalistic sources’ which are two different things. Journalists are generally very good at attributing information to journalistic sources. That is, when they relay a claim someone has made, they state who made that claim - ideally by naming them, but if the person making the claim wishes to remain anonymous and the journalist chooses to respect that anonymity, by attributing the information to e.g. ‘sources familiar with the matter’; in such a case the journalist is asserting ‘I know this person is in a position to know this information, but I can’t tell you who that is’. That’s all fine. And has nothing to do with APA or MLA citation standards though. When it comes to citing reporting from other media, there’s definitely some sloppiness. In general the instinct is to use the same ‘journalistic sourcing’ standard as above, but caveat it with a sort of hearsay warning: ‘according to reporting in the Washington Post, sources familiar with the meeting said “…”’. And that’s where Marisa Kabas’s complaints lie: she wants to get that level of attribution which print journalists typically accord one another, and not be relegated to ‘an independent journalist’. But when it comes to citations, the thing you’re most right about where journalists often do not cite their sources is in the form of linking to primary material they used in preparation of the report. Academic papers, government reports, court judgements, official transcripts of speeches… there’s a lot of primary documents it would be great to be able to get hold of if you want to dig further into a story.