[kube-system]

"King Features" in the above quote is a contemporary example. Regardless, my point is not that these syndications are impossible to identify (as is the same with CNN's featured links), but that they are similarly opaque. Syndication as a concept isn't something that is obvious to a person of average media literacy, and neither is a tiny byline that states "via AP".

[refulgentis]

To me, it's clear that is attribution, and not attributing, or actively misattributing via signing your brand to other companies output, is the key to the article.

[kube-system]

Print media does it (and things worse than this) too:

https://pressgazette.co.uk/comment-analysis/national-press-b...

And under work-for-hire arrangements, putting your name on something that someone else wrote is not even necessarily incorrect, either. Not every case of reprinting stories in a newspaper is a big reputable newspaper printing a story by a big reputable news syndicate who is licensing the story to multiple customers.

I write copyrighted material all day, but since it is for hire, the person who has hired me owns the copyright to it, and puts their name on my work. And US law provides no right for me to be attributed.

I appreciate the criticism of CNN in this case, but I just don't think this is somehow an egregious outlier in the history of media practices.

[ghaff]

When I came into my former company, I took a fairly hard line that I wanted bylines on stuff I wrote--which wasn't the norm at the time but I mostly got because I was somewhat known and browbeat people into it. Still did some ghostwriting for various execs and for web copy that wasn't bylined.