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Comment by foxbarrington | Hacker News Reader

A common reaction I get to https://forty.news is that the stories “need sources” which I always find funny. I don’t hear the same demand of sources from every other news outlet (I find it extra weird because all FN’s stories are 40 years old, simple to verify, and can’t push an agenda the same way).

Totally agree with you: all newspapers should cite sources. What’s silly to me is how selectively people care—big outlets get to hand-wave the “trust me” part even when a piece is basically a lightly rewritten press release, thinly sourced, or reflecting someone’s incentives more than reality.

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For Forty News I don't think the "need sources" requests are for contents of the news stories. It's about where did these stories come from? How can I know these were ever actually published. As it currently is, I can't tell if these were pulled from real newspapers or AI generated to write a simulation of what the story might have been like if it were condensed to 10 sentences.

> all newspapers should cite sources.

You'd lose a lot of valid sourcing if you made this a requirement. For example, the Catholic Church scandal investigation would never have seen the light of day if the key legal sources corroborating the story had to give up their identity as part of the process. Speaking off the record is often where a lot of those kinds of stories come together.

And the reaction around the world to that story, the thousands of victims that came forward, resoundingly confirmed what people were saying on background.

You can say "an anonymous source". That's a standard journalistic practice.

What shouldn't be standard is "we read this newspaper article and we're going to repeat it as if we originated the story". Which is what AI news always is, in addition to the vast majority of news outlets.

The origin of most news is wire services, repeating what local reporters write. Newspapers usually at least cite the wire service. Blogs, TV shows, and others speak as if they were the originators.

Oh I see what you're saying now, totally agree with that.

Well yeah because investigative journalism and original reporting outside of the spectacle of buying a plane ticket to a warzone or weather disaster to the reporter can have a dramatic background is too expensive when people come to you in droves with literally pre-written articles you can rubber stamp and publish.

Which by the way if you ever want to get in the paper that's how, it's super easy. AI will help you learn how to write in the right tone/voice for news if you don't know how.

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