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By the way, a pet peeve of mine right now is that reporters covering court cases (and we have so many of public interest lately) never seem to simply paste the

By the way, a pet peeve of mine right now is that reporters covering court cases (and we have so many of public interest lately) never seem to simply paste the link to the online PDF decision/ruling for us all to read, right in the story. (and another user here kindly did that for us below: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205/gov.uscourts.dcd.223205.1436.0_1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223... ) It seems such a simple step (they must have been using the ruling PDF to write the story) yet why is it always such a hassle for them to feel that they should link the original content? I would rather be able to see the probably dozens of pages ruling with the full details rather than hear it secondhand from a reporter at this point. It feels like they want to be the gatekeepers of information, and poor ones at that. I think it should be adopted as standard journalistic practice in fact -- reporting on court rulings must come with the PDF. Aside from that, it will be interesting to see on what grounds the judge decided that this particular data sharing remedy was the solution. Can anyone now simply claim they're a competitor and get access to Google's tons of data? I am not too familiar with antitrust precedent, but to what extent does the judge rule on how specific the data sharing need to be (what types of data, for what time span, how anonymized, etc. etc.) or appoint a special master? Why is that up to the judge versus the FTC or whoever to propose?

ElijahLynn 1y ago
So true, I think it should be mandatory to put "sources:" as a consistently placed section in all "news" articles.
- warkdarrior 1y ago
  Google's AI summary includes links to sources: https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+latest+court+ruling+on+google+and+chrome https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+latest+court+rul...
  - mort96 1y ago
    We're talking about secondary sources (news papers) linking to primary sources (a PDF of the court ruling). You showed a tertiary source (Google search) linking to a secondary school (BBC).
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Hard_Space 1y ago
> By the way, a pet peeve of mine right now is that reporters covering court cases never seem to simply paste the link to the online PDF decision/ruling for us all to read right in the story. I presume that this falls under the same consideration as direct links to science papers in articles that are covering those releases. Far as I can tell, the central tactic for lowering bounce rate and increasing 'engagement' is to link out sparsely, and, ideally, not at all. I write articles on new research papers, and always provide a direct link to the PDF,; but nearly all major sites fail to do this, even when the paper turns out to be at Arxiv, or otherwise directly available (instead of having been an exclusive preview offered to the publication by the researchers, as often happens at more prominent publications such as Ars and The Register). In regard to the few publishers that do provide legal PDFs in articles, the solution I see most often is that the publication hosts the PDF itself, keeping the reader in their ecosystem. However, since external PDFs can get revised and taken down, this could also be a countermeasure against that.
- kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
  Articles about patent infringement are similarly annoying when the patent numbers aren't cited. This is basic 21st century journalism 101. We aren't limited to what fits on a broadside anymore. We need an AI driven extension that will insert the links. This would be a nice addition to Kagi as they could be trusted to not play SEO shenanigans.
  - GCUMstlyHarmls 1y ago
    I think they're called broadsheets unless you're in the headline!
  - baq 1y ago
    If news on the web was journalism instead of attention seeking for ad revenue you’d be right. Agree on the extension idea, except I’m not sure I want to see the original sensationalized content anyway. Might as well have the bot rewrite the piece in a dry style.
    - 1y ago
Barbing 1y ago
Shoutout Ars Technica, where they never seem to sweat the… lost ad revenue? diminished time on page?… and give the PDF link.
- ninkendo 1y ago
  Sure, after you dismiss the pop-up telling you to become an ars subscriber. I’m only angry about this because I’ve been on ars since 2002, as a paid subscriber for most of that time, but I cancelled last year due to how much enshittification has begun to creep in. These popups remove any doubt about the decision at least. (I cancelled because I bought a product they gave a positive review for, only to find out they had flat-out lied about its features, and it was painfully obvious in retrospect that the company paid Ars for a positive review. Or they’re so bad at their jobs they let clearly wrong information into their review… I’m not sure which is worse.)
  - chneu 1y ago
    Lol if you aren't blocking those popups by default. Lots of extensions will take care of that for ya.
    - ninkendo 1y ago
      No, my policy is to just not go to websites that don’t respect me. It basically means I don’t use the web very much, but it’s probably better for me in the long run anyway, at least that’s how I see it.
      - baq 1y ago
        I started buying paper journals, dismissing ads by flipping pages is much better UX
whycome 1y ago
Not just court cases. But so many situations where the primary sources are relevant. Most recently, I’ve seen journalists refer to questionable social media posts that they frame in a certain way but the actual posts don’t align with that frame
matt3D 1y ago
They don't necessarily want to be the gatekeepers of information, they just want your next click to be another news story on their website. External links are bad for user retention/addiction. This also has a side effect of back linking no longer being a measure of a 'good' website, so good quality content from inconsistently trafficked sites gets buried on search results.
Workaccount2 1y ago
Never link outside your domain has been rule #1 of the ad-driven business for years now. Once users leave your page, they become exponentially less likely to load more ad-ridden pages from your website. Ironically this is also why there is so much existential fear about AI in the media. LLMs will do to them what they do to primary sources (and more likely just cut them out of the loop). This Google story will get a lot of clicks. But it is easy to see a near future where an AI agent just retrieves and summarizes the case for you. And does a much better job too.
- supernova87a 1y ago
  I guess they are unable to value the function that I am more likely to read and trust stories from their website if they give me the honest info about where their stories come from that I can further read (and rely on them to always point me to as a guide).
  - permo-w 1y ago
    they likely, and probably correctly, do not want you as a customer. people who are discerning and conscious like this generally use an adblocker, and even if you don't, are generally less easily influenced by adverts in the first place. most people like this tend towards wealthy, so it's a valuable demographic if they can get past those two issues, but they're not easy to get past
    - supernova87a 1y ago
      You made me snort with laughter with how right you were. I in fact have 2 adblockers on, and I actively ignore and sanitize some of my history (like Youtube) to not get directed towards advertising or other rabbit holes I don't want to see, even though I never click a single ad. But I do pay for quality journalism / news websites!
  - idle_zealot 1y ago
    People like you are factored in. There just aren't enough of you for your preferences to impact editorial policy.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> reporters covering court cases (and we have so many of public interest lately) never seem to simply paste the link to the online PDF Would note that this significantly varies based on whether it's ad-driven or subscription-based/paywalled. The former has no incentive to let you leave. The latter is trying to retain your business.
gpt5 1y ago
[flagged]
- supernova87a 1y ago
  Is it not sad/telling that the reporter of the story couldn't summarize this in the story, but the bot here can? If there were an indicator of the future to come...
  - gpt5 1y ago
    I'm not a bot, despite the name. But I do find it is ironic that the HN crowd is downvoting the comment providing the summary.
supernova87a 1y ago
By the way, the worst laughable offenders of this idea are local TV news stations. As if to get the real insight on some world issue, I'm going to "stay up to date by going to KTVU.com for the latest on this breaking story!".
- ultrarunner 1y ago
  Eventually, I think people will come to understand that local stations are entertainment outlooks, not informational outlets.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    That's certainly no more accurate of the news division of KTVU, a local Fox-owned station, than it is of the the national “News” network with the same corporate parent.
rafram 1y ago
I’ve noticed this in New York Times articles in the last couple years. Articles are heavily interlinked now - most “keyword” terms will link to a past article on the same topic - but the links rarely leave the Times’ site. The only exception is when they need to refer back to a prior story that they didn’t cover, but that another publication did. Sources are almost never linked; when they are, it’s to a PDF embed on the Times’ own site. I assume they and all the other big publications have SEO editors who’ve decided that they need to do it for the sake of their metrics. They understand that if they link to the PDF, everyone will just click the link and leave their site. They’re right about that. But it is annoying.
- skrtskrt 1y ago
  It's also a political tool. About a year ago when the NYTimes wrote an article called liked "Who really gets to declare if there is famine in Gaza?", the conclusions of the article were that "well boy it sure is complicated but Gaza is not officially in famine". I found the conclusion and wording suspect. I went looking to see if they would like to the actual UN and World Food Program reports. The official conclusions were that significant portions of Gaza were already officially in famine, but that not all of Gaza was. The rest of Gaza was just one or two levels below famine, but those levels are called like "Food Emergency" or whatever. Essentially those lower levels were what any lay person would probably call a famine, but the Times did not mention the other levels or that parts were in the famine level - just that "Gaza is not in famine". To get to the actual report took 5 or 6 hard-to-find backlinks through other NYTimes articles. Each article loaded with further NYTimes links making it unlikely you'd ever find the real one.
  - lazide 1y ago
    The editorial board would probably prefer the NYTimes not get murdered by the current political climate - which of course is part of why the political climate is what it is.
  - mike_hearn 1y ago
    It's true that they do this sort of thing for political reasons, but it sounds like the original NYT report wasn't meant to be merely a paraphrase of a specific UN report? In which case, it would be legitimate to cite other sources and report that they disagree?
jt2190 1y ago
> … reporters covering court cases… never seem to simply paste the link to the online PDF decision/ruling for us all to read, right in the story This is an editorial decision and not something individual reporters get to decide. Headlines are the same.
- anticensor 1y ago
  It is also meant to lessen the legal burden: when they don't link to primary source, nobody can claim the is inaccurate, missing essential facts or made up.
  - jt2190 1y ago
    I can’t comment on this as I don’t know the case-law well, but I’m struggling to understand how citing but not linking to a source lessens the ability of anyone to make claims about accuracy, whether in a court of law or in the court of public opinion. Can you provide details?
1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
"Why is it up to the judge versus the FTC or whoever to propose?" The data sharing remedy and other remedies were not the judge's proposals. They were proposed by the parties.
- supernova87a 1y ago
  yup, I just saw that in reading the ruling in more detail.
joshu 1y ago
for what it’s worth, reporters don’t get to include links in their articles. Usually the web producer does it.
dragonwriter 1y ago
> I am not too familiar with antitrust precedent, but to what extent does the judge rule on how specific the data sharing need to be (what types of data, for what time span, how anonymized, etc. etc.) or appoint a special master? Why is that up to the judge versus the FTC or whoever to propose? The judge doesn't propose, he rules on what the parties propose, and that can be an iterative process in complex cases. E.g.. in this case, he has set some parameters in this ruling, and set a date by which the parties need to meet on the details within those parameters.
nkurz 1y ago
> By the way, a pet peeve of mine right now is that reporters covering court cases (and we have so many of public interest lately) never seem to simply paste the link to the online PDF decision/ruling for us all to read, right in the story. I have the same peeve, but to give credit where it is due, I've happily noticed that Politico has lately been doing a good job of linking the actual decisions. I just checked for this story, and indeed the document you suggest is linked from the second paragraph: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/02/google-dodges-a-2-5t-breakup-00540419 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/02/google-dodges-a-2-5...
electronicbob 1y ago
> By the way, a pet peeve of mine right now is that reporters covering court cases (and we have so many of public interest lately) never seem to simply paste the link to the online PDF decision/ruling for us all to read, right in the story. Usually I would agree with you, however, the link is in the article hyperlinked under "Amit Mehta" in the 3rd paragraph. Now could the reporter have made that clearer...yes, but it's still there.
TallonRain 1y ago
I've noticed this too and I agree it's unacceptable practice. Journalism in general has become wildly resistant to properly citing their sources (or they simply make their citation as difficult to find as possible through various obfuscation techniques) and this is making independent validation of any information online that much more difficult while further entrenching a culture of "just trust me, bro" on the internet in general. It's a deeply infuriating and destructive practice that needs to die out. At least when I was in school & university, properly citing your sources was everything when it came to writing any sort of report or essay. How the adtech industry managed to quietly undo that standard expectation so thoroughly for the sake of engagement metrics is rather nuts to me.
random3 1y ago
I was pleasantly noticing earlier how Quanta Magazine does a great job of linking to papers directly in the article.
varenc 1y ago
It's intentional. They don't want you engaging with content off their site. I hate it.
eviks 1y ago
> never seem to simply paste the link There is a link right there in 3rd paragraph: "U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta", though strangely under the name... > I would rather be able to see the probably dozens of pages ruling with the full details rather than hear it secondhand from a reporter at this point. There is no way you'd have time for that (and more importantly, your average reader), but if you do, the extra time it'd take you to find the link is ~0.0% of the total extra time needed to read the decision directly, so that's fine? > with the full details You don't have them in those dozens of pages, for example, the very basics of judge's ideological biases are not included.
Aurornis 1y ago
> I think it should be adopted as standard journalistic practice in fact -- reporting on court rulings must come with the PDF. Bafflingly, I’ve found this practice to continue even in places like University PR articles describing new papers. Linking to the paper itself is an obvious thing to do, yet many of them won’t even do that. In addition to playing games to avoid outbound links, I think this practice comes from old journalistic ideals that the journalist is the communicator of the information and therefore including the source directly is not necessary. They want to be the center of the communication and want you to get the information through them.
- nolist_policy 1y ago
  They can't meaningfully link to the paper, because they relinquish all their copyright on the paper to the journal.
yxhuvud 1y ago
Not all courts post their judgements online with full access for everyone.
Natsu 1y ago
I would go so far as to inherently mistrust any legal reporting that does not link to the ruling or trial footage at this point. I've watched multiple public trials and seen reporting that simply did not reflect what actually went on.
ChaoPrayaWave 1y ago
Maybe the media is just worried that if they include the original link, readers won’t bother with their few hundred words of ‘interpretation’ anymore.
camillomiller 1y ago
As a reporter, I can tell you that your comment stems from a common fallacy: y’all think you know better than reporters what our jobs are and what the dynamics of our publishing platform entail. For some reason, everyone feels like they would know how to be a journalist better than the actual professionals. That said, reporters have most probably nothing to do with what you’re decrying. Linking policies are not the reporter’s business. There are probably multiple layers of SEO “experts” and upper management deciding what goes on page and what not. Funnily enough, they might be super anal about what the story links, and then let Taboola link the worst shit on the Internet under each piece… So please, when you start your sentence with “reporters” please know that you’re criticizing something they have no power to change.
- mquander 1y ago
  I sympathize with how annoying it must be to have other people messing up your work, but also, if your name is at the top of the page, and there's not really any other way for readers to know anyone in particular that is taking responsibility for any specific detail on that page, it's obviously going to be your reputation on the line to some extent.
- widhhddok 1y ago
  This comment deflects from the very real original comment's gripe with not linking to the original source.
- inigoalonso 1y ago
  How is providing factual information (e.g., "The full court ruling is available at https://court.rulings/case_123456.pdf https://court.rulings/case_123456.pdf", or at least "The case is number 123456.") not part of the reporter's job? No need to link to it, just provide the fact.
- frontfor 1y ago
  It doesn’t matter. From the general population point of view, whoever writes the article is the “reporter”, and “they” don’t provide the links. You can argue otherwise and it won’t change the optics.
- 1y ago
renewiltord 1y ago
Actual answer is that majority journalists are summarizing other journalists who are summarizing someone they asked about the original content. They have never seen it themselves so can't link it.
AdamN 1y ago
> they must have been using the ruling PDF to write the story Oh you sweet Summer child :-) The worst is with criminal cases where they can't even be burdened to write what the actual charges are. It's just some vague 'crime' and the charges aren't even summarized - they're just ignored.
mort96 1y ago
> I would rather be able to see the probably dozens of pages ruling with the full details rather than hear it secondhand from a reporter at this point And the reporter would rather you hear it second hand from them :) I agree, online "journalists" are absolutely terrible at linking to sources. You'll have articles which literally just cover a video (a filmed press conference, a YouTube video, whatever) that's freely available online and then fail to link to said video. I don't know what they're teaching at journalistic ethics courses these days. "Provide sources where possible" sounds like it should be like rule 1, yet it never happens.
pentakkusu 1y ago
Not trying to be snarky but it is quite obvious that giving you the ability to make your own conclusions is never the goal of regular news sites.
lxgr 1y ago
I feel like way too many journalists or editors still see hyperlinks as a way of "sending traffic to competitors", and as such to be avoided at all cost.
idiotsecant 1y ago
It's simple - the reason there's no PDF is that most people don't want one. If they did, the reporter would be incentivized to include it. You're complaining about them not serving a tiny, tiny minority of readers.
throwaway48476 1y ago
Journalists actively hinder readers from finding the primary source because their coverage outranks it. If readers regularly saw the primary source they would realize how dishonest the Journalists are.
giancarlostoro 1y ago
This is my pet peeve about most news articles. Give. me. raw. sources. Not edited clips, RAW CLIPS AND LINKS. I'm so tired of sensationalized news, I always look for raw sources or I assume there's a spin on the story. If someone made a news site that actually gave you raw sources, I would subscribe to them for life.
Self-Perfection 1y ago
What if we made crowdsourced database of external links to sources? Like SponsorBlock for skipping sponsored sections in YouTube videos.

ElijahLynn 1y ago

So true, I think it should be mandatory to put "sources:" as a consistently placed section in all "news" articles.

warkdarrior 1y ago
Google's AI summary includes links to sources: https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+latest+court+ruling+on+google+and+chrome https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+latest+court+rul...
- mort96 1y ago
  We're talking about secondary sources (news papers) linking to primary sources (a PDF of the court ruling). You showed a tertiary source (Google search) linking to a secondary school (BBC).

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

Hard_Space 1y ago

> By the way, a pet peeve of mine right now is that reporters covering court cases never seem to simply paste the link to the online PDF decision/ruling for us all to read right in the story. I presume that this falls under the same consideration as direct links to science papers in articles that are covering those releases. Far as I can tell, the central tactic for lowering bounce rate and increasing 'engagement' is to link out sparsely, and, ideally, not at all. I write articles on new research papers, and always provide a direct link to the PDF,; but nearly all major sites fail to do this, even when the paper turns out to be at Arxiv, or otherwise directly available (instead of having been an exclusive preview offered to the publication by the researchers, as often happens at more prominent publications such as Ars and The Register). In regard to the few publishers that do provide legal PDFs in articles, the solution I see most often is that the publication hosts the PDF itself, keeping the reader in their ecosystem. However, since external PDFs can get revised and taken down, this could also be a countermeasure against that.

kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
Articles about patent infringement are similarly annoying when the patent numbers aren't cited. This is basic 21st century journalism 101. We aren't limited to what fits on a broadside anymore. We need an AI driven extension that will insert the links. This would be a nice addition to Kagi as they could be trusted to not play SEO shenanigans.
- GCUMstlyHarmls 1y ago
  I think they're called broadsheets unless you're in the headline!
- baq 1y ago
  If news on the web was journalism instead of attention seeking for ad revenue you’d be right. Agree on the extension idea, except I’m not sure I want to see the original sensationalized content anyway. Might as well have the bot rewrite the piece in a dry style.
  - 1y ago

Barbing 1y ago

Shoutout Ars Technica, where they never seem to sweat the… lost ad revenue? diminished time on page?… and give the PDF link.

ninkendo 1y ago
Sure, after you dismiss the pop-up telling you to become an ars subscriber. I’m only angry about this because I’ve been on ars since 2002, as a paid subscriber for most of that time, but I cancelled last year due to how much enshittification has begun to creep in. These popups remove any doubt about the decision at least. (I cancelled because I bought a product they gave a positive review for, only to find out they had flat-out lied about its features, and it was painfully obvious in retrospect that the company paid Ars for a positive review. Or they’re so bad at their jobs they let clearly wrong information into their review… I’m not sure which is worse.)
- chneu 1y ago
  Lol if you aren't blocking those popups by default. Lots of extensions will take care of that for ya.
  - ninkendo 1y ago
    No, my policy is to just not go to websites that don’t respect me. It basically means I don’t use the web very much, but it’s probably better for me in the long run anyway, at least that’s how I see it.
    - baq 1y ago
      I started buying paper journals, dismissing ads by flipping pages is much better UX

whycome 1y ago

Not just court cases. But so many situations where the primary sources are relevant. Most recently, I’ve seen journalists refer to questionable social media posts that they frame in a certain way but the actual posts don’t align with that frame

matt3D 1y ago

They don't necessarily want to be the gatekeepers of information, they just want your next click to be another news story on their website. External links are bad for user retention/addiction. This also has a side effect of back linking no longer being a measure of a 'good' website, so good quality content from inconsistently trafficked sites gets buried on search results.

Workaccount2 1y ago

Never link outside your domain has been rule #1 of the ad-driven business for years now. Once users leave your page, they become exponentially less likely to load more ad-ridden pages from your website. Ironically this is also why there is so much existential fear about AI in the media. LLMs will do to them what they do to primary sources (and more likely just cut them out of the loop). This Google story will get a lot of clicks. But it is easy to see a near future where an AI agent just retrieves and summarizes the case for you. And does a much better job too.

supernova87a 1y ago
I guess they are unable to value the function that I am more likely to read and trust stories from their website if they give me the honest info about where their stories come from that I can further read (and rely on them to always point me to as a guide).
- permo-w 1y ago
  they likely, and probably correctly, do not want you as a customer. people who are discerning and conscious like this generally use an adblocker, and even if you don't, are generally less easily influenced by adverts in the first place. most people like this tend towards wealthy, so it's a valuable demographic if they can get past those two issues, but they're not easy to get past
  - supernova87a 1y ago
    You made me snort with laughter with how right you were. I in fact have 2 adblockers on, and I actively ignore and sanitize some of my history (like Youtube) to not get directed towards advertising or other rabbit holes I don't want to see, even though I never click a single ad. But I do pay for quality journalism / news websites!
- idle_zealot 1y ago
  People like you are factored in. There just aren't enough of you for your preferences to impact editorial policy.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

> reporters covering court cases (and we have so many of public interest lately) never seem to simply paste the link to the online PDF Would note that this significantly varies based on whether it's ad-driven or subscription-based/paywalled. The former has no incentive to let you leave. The latter is trying to retain your business.

gpt5 1y ago

[flagged]

supernova87a 1y ago
Is it not sad/telling that the reporter of the story couldn't summarize this in the story, but the bot here can? If there were an indicator of the future to come...
- gpt5 1y ago
  I'm not a bot, despite the name. But I do find it is ironic that the HN crowd is downvoting the comment providing the summary.

supernova87a 1y ago

By the way, the worst laughable offenders of this idea are local TV news stations. As if to get the real insight on some world issue, I'm going to "stay up to date by going to KTVU.com for the latest on this breaking story!".

ultrarunner 1y ago
Eventually, I think people will come to understand that local stations are entertainment outlooks, not informational outlets.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  That's certainly no more accurate of the news division of KTVU, a local Fox-owned station, than it is of the the national “News” network with the same corporate parent.

rafram 1y ago

I’ve noticed this in New York Times articles in the last couple years. Articles are heavily interlinked now - most “keyword” terms will link to a past article on the same topic - but the links rarely leave the Times’ site. The only exception is when they need to refer back to a prior story that they didn’t cover, but that another publication did. Sources are almost never linked; when they are, it’s to a PDF embed on the Times’ own site. I assume they and all the other big publications have SEO editors who’ve decided that they need to do it for the sake of their metrics. They understand that if they link to the PDF, everyone will just click the link and leave their site. They’re right about that. But it is annoying.

skrtskrt 1y ago
It's also a political tool. About a year ago when the NYTimes wrote an article called liked "Who really gets to declare if there is famine in Gaza?", the conclusions of the article were that "well boy it sure is complicated but Gaza is not officially in famine". I found the conclusion and wording suspect. I went looking to see if they would like to the actual UN and World Food Program reports. The official conclusions were that significant portions of Gaza were already officially in famine, but that not all of Gaza was. The rest of Gaza was just one or two levels below famine, but those levels are called like "Food Emergency" or whatever. Essentially those lower levels were what any lay person would probably call a famine, but the Times did not mention the other levels or that parts were in the famine level - just that "Gaza is not in famine". To get to the actual report took 5 or 6 hard-to-find backlinks through other NYTimes articles. Each article loaded with further NYTimes links making it unlikely you'd ever find the real one.
- lazide 1y ago
  The editorial board would probably prefer the NYTimes not get murdered by the current political climate - which of course is part of why the political climate is what it is.
- mike_hearn 1y ago
  It's true that they do this sort of thing for political reasons, but it sounds like the original NYT report wasn't meant to be merely a paraphrase of a specific UN report? In which case, it would be legitimate to cite other sources and report that they disagree?

jt2190 1y ago

> … reporters covering court cases… never seem to simply paste the link to the online PDF decision/ruling for us all to read, right in the story This is an editorial decision and not something individual reporters get to decide. Headlines are the same.

anticensor 1y ago
It is also meant to lessen the legal burden: when they don't link to primary source, nobody can claim the is inaccurate, missing essential facts or made up.
- jt2190 1y ago
  I can’t comment on this as I don’t know the case-law well, but I’m struggling to understand how citing but not linking to a source lessens the ability of anyone to make claims about accuracy, whether in a court of law or in the court of public opinion. Can you provide details?

1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago

"Why is it up to the judge versus the FTC or whoever to propose?" The data sharing remedy and other remedies were not the judge's proposals. They were proposed by the parties.

supernova87a 1y ago
yup, I just saw that in reading the ruling in more detail.

joshu 1y ago

for what it’s worth, reporters don’t get to include links in their articles. Usually the web producer does it.

dragonwriter 1y ago

> I am not too familiar with antitrust precedent, but to what extent does the judge rule on how specific the data sharing need to be (what types of data, for what time span, how anonymized, etc. etc.) or appoint a special master? Why is that up to the judge versus the FTC or whoever to propose? The judge doesn't propose, he rules on what the parties propose, and that can be an iterative process in complex cases. E.g.. in this case, he has set some parameters in this ruling, and set a date by which the parties need to meet on the details within those parameters.

nkurz 1y ago

> By the way, a pet peeve of mine right now is that reporters covering court cases (and we have so many of public interest lately) never seem to simply paste the link to the online PDF decision/ruling for us all to read, right in the story. I have the same peeve, but to give credit where it is due, I've happily noticed that Politico has lately been doing a good job of linking the actual decisions. I just checked for this story, and indeed the document you suggest is linked from the second paragraph: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/02/google-dodges-a-2-5t-breakup-00540419 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/02/google-dodges-a-2-5...

electronicbob 1y ago

> By the way, a pet peeve of mine right now is that reporters covering court cases (and we have so many of public interest lately) never seem to simply paste the link to the online PDF decision/ruling for us all to read, right in the story. Usually I would agree with you, however, the link is in the article hyperlinked under "Amit Mehta" in the 3rd paragraph. Now could the reporter have made that clearer...yes, but it's still there.

TallonRain 1y ago

I've noticed this too and I agree it's unacceptable practice. Journalism in general has become wildly resistant to properly citing their sources (or they simply make their citation as difficult to find as possible through various obfuscation techniques) and this is making independent validation of any information online that much more difficult while further entrenching a culture of "just trust me, bro" on the internet in general. It's a deeply infuriating and destructive practice that needs to die out. At least when I was in school & university, properly citing your sources was everything when it came to writing any sort of report or essay. How the adtech industry managed to quietly undo that standard expectation so thoroughly for the sake of engagement metrics is rather nuts to me.

random3 1y ago

I was pleasantly noticing earlier how Quanta Magazine does a great job of linking to papers directly in the article.

varenc 1y ago

It's intentional. They don't want you engaging with content off their site. I hate it.

eviks 1y ago

> never seem to simply paste the link There is a link right there in 3rd paragraph: "U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta", though strangely under the name... > I would rather be able to see the probably dozens of pages ruling with the full details rather than hear it secondhand from a reporter at this point. There is no way you'd have time for that (and more importantly, your average reader), but if you do, the extra time it'd take you to find the link is ~0.0% of the total extra time needed to read the decision directly, so that's fine? > with the full details You don't have them in those dozens of pages, for example, the very basics of judge's ideological biases are not included.

Aurornis 1y ago

> I think it should be adopted as standard journalistic practice in fact -- reporting on court rulings must come with the PDF. Bafflingly, I’ve found this practice to continue even in places like University PR articles describing new papers. Linking to the paper itself is an obvious thing to do, yet many of them won’t even do that. In addition to playing games to avoid outbound links, I think this practice comes from old journalistic ideals that the journalist is the communicator of the information and therefore including the source directly is not necessary. They want to be the center of the communication and want you to get the information through them.

nolist_policy 1y ago
They can't meaningfully link to the paper, because they relinquish all their copyright on the paper to the journal.

yxhuvud 1y ago

Not all courts post their judgements online with full access for everyone.

Natsu 1y ago

I would go so far as to inherently mistrust any legal reporting that does not link to the ruling or trial footage at this point. I've watched multiple public trials and seen reporting that simply did not reflect what actually went on.

ChaoPrayaWave 1y ago

Maybe the media is just worried that if they include the original link, readers won’t bother with their few hundred words of ‘interpretation’ anymore.

camillomiller 1y ago

As a reporter, I can tell you that your comment stems from a common fallacy: y’all think you know better than reporters what our jobs are and what the dynamics of our publishing platform entail. For some reason, everyone feels like they would know how to be a journalist better than the actual professionals. That said, reporters have most probably nothing to do with what you’re decrying. Linking policies are not the reporter’s business. There are probably multiple layers of SEO “experts” and upper management deciding what goes on page and what not. Funnily enough, they might be super anal about what the story links, and then let Taboola link the worst shit on the Internet under each piece… So please, when you start your sentence with “reporters” please know that you’re criticizing something they have no power to change.

mquander 1y ago
I sympathize with how annoying it must be to have other people messing up your work, but also, if your name is at the top of the page, and there's not really any other way for readers to know anyone in particular that is taking responsibility for any specific detail on that page, it's obviously going to be your reputation on the line to some extent.
widhhddok 1y ago
This comment deflects from the very real original comment's gripe with not linking to the original source.
inigoalonso 1y ago
How is providing factual information (e.g., "The full court ruling is available at https://court.rulings/case_123456.pdf https://court.rulings/case_123456.pdf", or at least "The case is number 123456.") not part of the reporter's job? No need to link to it, just provide the fact.
frontfor 1y ago
It doesn’t matter. From the general population point of view, whoever writes the article is the “reporter”, and “they” don’t provide the links. You can argue otherwise and it won’t change the optics.
1y ago

renewiltord 1y ago

Actual answer is that majority journalists are summarizing other journalists who are summarizing someone they asked about the original content. They have never seen it themselves so can't link it.

AdamN 1y ago

> they must have been using the ruling PDF to write the story Oh you sweet Summer child :-) The worst is with criminal cases where they can't even be burdened to write what the actual charges are. It's just some vague 'crime' and the charges aren't even summarized - they're just ignored.

mort96 1y ago

> I would rather be able to see the probably dozens of pages ruling with the full details rather than hear it secondhand from a reporter at this point And the reporter would rather you hear it second hand from them :) I agree, online "journalists" are absolutely terrible at linking to sources. You'll have articles which literally just cover a video (a filmed press conference, a YouTube video, whatever) that's freely available online and then fail to link to said video. I don't know what they're teaching at journalistic ethics courses these days. "Provide sources where possible" sounds like it should be like rule 1, yet it never happens.

pentakkusu 1y ago

Not trying to be snarky but it is quite obvious that giving you the ability to make your own conclusions is never the goal of regular news sites.

lxgr 1y ago

I feel like way too many journalists or editors still see hyperlinks as a way of "sending traffic to competitors", and as such to be avoided at all cost.

idiotsecant 1y ago

It's simple - the reason there's no PDF is that most people don't want one. If they did, the reporter would be incentivized to include it. You're complaining about them not serving a tiny, tiny minority of readers.

throwaway48476 1y ago

Journalists actively hinder readers from finding the primary source because their coverage outranks it. If readers regularly saw the primary source they would realize how dishonest the Journalists are.

giancarlostoro 1y ago

This is my pet peeve about most news articles. Give. me. raw. sources. Not edited clips, RAW CLIPS AND LINKS. I'm so tired of sensationalized news, I always look for raw sources or I assume there's a spin on the story. If someone made a news site that actually gave you raw sources, I would subscribe to them for life.

Self-Perfection 1y ago

What if we made crowdsourced database of external links to sources? Like SponsorBlock for skipping sponsored sections in YouTube videos.