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858 points colesantiago | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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supernova87a ◴[] No.45109304[source]
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.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?

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Hard_Space ◴[] No.45109478[source]
> 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.

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mike_hearn ◴[] No.45113269[source]
They didn't cited papers directly even before the web. It's not a bounce or engagement issue.

Journalists don't make it easy for you to access primary sources because of a mentality and culture issue. They see themselves as gatekeepers of information and convince themselves that readers can't handle the raw material. From their perspective, making it easy to read primary sources is pure downside:

• Most readers don't care/have time.

• Of the tiny number who do, the chances of them finding a mistake in your reporting or in the primary source is high.

• It makes it easier to mis-represent the source to bolster the story.

Eliminating links to sources is pure win: people care a lot about mistakes but not about finding them, so raising the bar for the few who do is ideal.

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1. skylurk ◴[] No.45113828[source]
What distinguishes journalists from storytellers?
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2. rurban ◴[] No.45123562[source]
Journalists have an agenda. And they are not independent.