Journalism

I'm so dissatisfied with journalism.  It needs a complete overhaul.  Journalists love to control what you know. As well as choosing what to report and how to report it, it is normal for them to jealously withhold the source of their information, so that we can't easily find and see it for ourselves, check the veracity of what they say.  There is a pretence that they are focussed on giving you the facts. Actually, they're disguising how selective and interpretive they're being.  While they may do a useful job of interpreting, analysing and summarising information, it would be nice if we could more often decide these kinds of judgements for ourselves.

Where do they get their stuff from?  Let's look at that.

Journalists should be expected to reference their sources.  If protection from danger can be cited as a reason for not disclosing, fair enough.  Otherwise, we should be told.  This goes especially for "reports", which seem now to be the stuff of most reporting.  If you, as an organisation, issue a "report", maybe reporters will report it.  (Or maybe not; what gets reported or not is another issue.)

Full access to the report should be possible, through links.

It seems to me that they can't normally admit to functioning subjectively; so often, their point of view is masqueraded as objective, the definitive truth, when usually it is anything but.  Any time a journalist asserts something, it should be referenced with a superscript, eg ⁽¹⁾ , and then ⁽²⁾ , explained at the end of the article.

Journalists want to make their mark, show off their skill at making a good read, at the expense of accurate, well organised copy.

I would love to see something along the lines of:

Look at what I've found: "[the article]".  Bearing in mind [this], [this] and [this], it looks as if [that], probably for [this reason]. In my opinion, [....].

That would have the enormous benefit of honesty, and would much lessen the tendency journalists of trying brainwash you, persuade you in more or less devious ways.