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Comment by LurkersWillLurk | Hacker News Reader

We need to push back on this nonsense in journalism in which journalists don't include a link to the opinion when writing an article describing that opinion.

There is not enough information included in the article to meaningfully comment on the situation.

Edit: here is the order, which is very short: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.222257/...

The opinion is under seal, and the parties have been directed to raise objections to unsealing it, if they wish.

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Available here: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.222257/.... As a sibling comment noted, the actual opinion is under seal, as evidenced by https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18455532/tiktok-inc-v-t... "SEALED MEMORANDUM OPINION. Signed by Judge Carl J. Nichols on 9/27/2020. (This document is SEALED and only available to authorized persons.) (zcal) (Entered: 09/27/2020)".

Unsealed court opinon:

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.222257/...

Nichols says while emergency economic powers of the president (IEEPA) give Trump broad latitude on national security, TikTok falls under an exemption for "informational materials," like a news wire and "personal communication"

Maybe not in this specific instance, but the times I have tracked down original sources they often disagree with the way the journalists have framed things. They know most people won't bother to do any original research or even read past the headline in a lot of cases. It's easier to tell people what to think than give them the facts and let them reach their own conclusion.

Ars Technica is generally pretty good about linking to the actual rulings. For this particular matter, they summarized the ruling but didn't link to it unfortunately [0].

[0]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/judge-will-rule-...

Ditto for scientific papers. I want the DOI and/or a link to the original (ideally open access!) paper which the article has been written about.

Amen. It's very frustrating when you're skeptical of a news item and it's essentially impossible to find the original source as it is not linked and apparently impossible to find with the information given. It doesn't stop the item from trending on social media if it sounds good though.

Worse is when you agree with the reporting but don’t follow up to check as there’s no link.

The problem with not having a link isn't when you're already skeptical but when you aren't.

That's an interesting observation... it's true I don't check the news I find plausible as much as the news I am already sceptical about, while I mostly become sceptical about the news items not because of the reporting/writing itself, but because of the alleged facts not matching my expectations / biases.

It's a messy problem, as checking news items takes a lot of effort and it's just impossible to deal with the news volume nowadays. Ideally I'd love to see some cooperative effort to check news items by many people with different ideologies/biases, but I think there's currently not enough manpower for that and it's also very easy to end with a biased set of checkers.

I think the judge said the opinion is temporarily under seal for some reason.

The Verge backed it up in their article. It’s unclear who’s in the (virtual?) courtroom or how they sourced this info, but it kind of makes sense. Courts aren’t well-known for publishing courtroom activities in real-time and online (Zoom) trials that result in the death penalty are getting extra attention even as other cases (Assange) apparently suffered from a lack of press coverage or public attendance. Hard to say what the right answer is here, but I agree that a small (as short as necessary) press release from a courtroom website would be appreciated for any decision. In this case though, it’s hard to say a decision either way isn’t political, seems to me that would be why it’s still under seal?

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