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by Ajedi32 83 days ago
They could do some actual journalism, find out the answers to some of these obvious follow-up questions, and report on them. Or, failing that, link to the press report since it seems like as is they aren't really adding much beyond that.

But my original complaint about editorializing was about the title the submitter wrote on HN, not the article title.

1 comments

What if they couldn't grt an answer, should they just not publish in that case? And why would they link to the press release, they are not a propaganda office.
They could at least raise the questions in the article instead of leaving readers with the impression they didn't even try to find answers. Worst case, you write "the person we spoke to declined to comment".

> why would they link to the press release, they are not a propaganda office

Just reporting the contents of the press release as if it were your original reporting is worse IMO. At least reading a press release you know the source of the information and what their agenda is.

Not every single article needs to be Woodward and Bernstein dude. Sometimes you just need to report what happened, what someone said. If that ends being an incomplete or incongruous picture, you gotta chalk it up sometimes to the nature of such matters in the world, not a deficiency of the journalism. Your argument could be applied to literally any piece of journalism! In general, answers to possible questions are not finite, metaphysical things that we can always fully account for, and its not a news articles job (which isn't even a long form investigation style piece!) to try.

I know, of course, you are not arguing uncharitably here, so I can only assume this is the first news article you have ever read.

Yes, I'm fully aware this is an extremely common problem. I'm just saying if the article adds nothing over the press release it's reporting on (and even actively removes important context) then we should just link to the press release.