This is an unfortunate meme of modern journalism - not including direct link to sources, not showing the video, not showing the photos, being as obtuse as possible, and for what? No idea.

I've been observing this trend all over lately and I don't like it as well. So many people don't care at all whether the information they are getting is true or just fantasized by some "journalist" on a paycheck with a page views KPI. It feels like it is much more important to media/publishers to entertain rather than inform/educate audiences, even at the price of their (long term) reputation.

I've noticed this happening with game reviews as well. Even if a review is well written and quite long, it will include one random screenshot where it's not even entirely clear what you're looking at, or a link to stock trailer. It's so weird to me, I used to peruse reviews when I was younger and look at screenshots to get a feel for what the game looks like, and now we have seemingly unlimited space for pictures on online articles but there's fewer, not more of them.

I usually scroll fast through such stories looking for photos. I wonder if that's the intent: Don't include the photo and readers actually give your article a full view instead of leaving after seeing the photo (and presumably not earning your ads viewership).

Also data claims without a repo to reproduce.

Most news come either from news agencies ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_agency ) and and are rewritten by news sites and papers.

Basically they get a text that states facts and they rewrite it.

This happens since actual reporting is costy: paper press has no money to send people everywhere. In fact many websites dont even pay to the agencies - they just parrot the news from other paper or website. This article quotes the "Guardian" and few other sources. So it seems it is not an original source.

Being an original source is not only costy. Problem is that others will parrot you - and you dont get any money for that.

Putting some interns to sit all day and parrot 4 articles per day is surprisingly easy if you can get some photos.

On a side note: I read an article when a real reporter joined a boiler room website, where they were paid to manufacture 4-8 fake articles per day. Basically fake news, attacks on political opponents, "commentary" and similar. They basically were paid to invent lies all day - with one caveat - try to not get sued. Hard to debunk a room that produces say 6 x 4 = 24 fake articles per day. That's how those russian KGB propaganda mills operate. They mostly parrot and quote each other. Some unknown website writes blantant lies, this is parroted to an article - and then those fake news sites parrot it more and quote some source that nobody from Italy heard about (often the source intentionally gets lost in the cycle of quotes). You can easily generate lies that cause outrage.

Newsletters, especially paid subscriptions, are thriving right now. It seems some people grab onto actual reporting when they find it.

I can't think of any newsletter I have read that does reporting, as distinct from commentary/analysis.

Aka “malignant citogenesis” to the xkcd generation.

And then autoplaying an unrelated video on the page to boot.

It could be due to the original source being bound to some usage restrictions.

Here's the basket - https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/02/fruit-basket...

It sounds that only grape seeds and doum nuts were what remained of the fruit.

Weird, I only see two images, the first headline one is of the (strikingly vibrant orange I thought) basket in situ.

If it's the one with this caption:

> Researchers excavating the sunken ruins of Thônis-Heracleion have discovered an array of archaeological treasures. (Christoph Gerigk © Franck Goddio / Hilti Foundation)

That is obviously not a wicker basket. It looks like red-figure pottery.

Compare this quote from the article:

> Other objects found on or surrounding the tumulus included ancient pottery, bronze artifacts and figurines depicting the Egyptian god Osiris.

> “We found hundreds of deposits made of ceramic,” Goddio tells the Guardian. “One above the other. These are imported ceramic, red on black figures.”