The media needs to get more credible technology consultants they can turn to. The days when a brief but imprecise description was acceptable are over. In this

The media needs to get more credible technology consultants they can turn to. The days when a brief but imprecise description was acceptable are over. In this case 'direct collection' i.e. a backdoor didn't make sense for a lot of reasons and didn't square with the program was described in other sources that came out after the slides were released. But the real problem is secrecy. This is a complicated program with many actors and the media can't be expected not to report information clearly contained in leaked NSA slides even if they can't get the context 100% right.