As a reporter, I can tell you that your comment stems from a common fallacy: y’all think you know better than reporters what our jobs are and what the dynamics of our publishing platform entail. For some reason, everyone feels like they would know how to be a journalist better than the actual professionals.

That said, reporters have most probably nothing to do with what you’re decrying. Linking policies are not the reporter’s business. There are probably multiple layers of SEO “experts” and upper management deciding what goes on page and what not. Funnily enough, they might be super anal about what the story links, and then let Taboola link the worst shit on the Internet under each piece… So please, when you start your sentence with “reporters” please know that you’re criticizing something they have no power to change.

How is providing factual information (e.g., "The full court ruling is available at https://court.rulings/case_123456.pdf", or at least "The case is number 123456.") not part of the reporter's job? No need to link to it, just provide the fact.

I sympathize with how annoying it must be to have other people messing up your work, but also, if your name is at the top of the page, and there's not really any other way for readers to know anyone in particular that is taking responsibility for any specific detail on that page, it's obviously going to be your reputation on the line to some extent.

It doesn’t matter. From the general population point of view, whoever writes the article is the “reporter”, and “they” don’t provide the links. You can argue otherwise and it won’t change the optics.

This comment deflects from the very real original comment's gripe with not linking to the original source.