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.

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.