We’ve been noticing the culmination of a trend that has been developing in journalism for some time and appears here to stay.
Before the growth of cable TV news and internet, journalists from rival newspapers and networks took great pains to never mention the competition on air or in print. To do so would mean that you had been scooped, and worse, had been unable to match the reporting of your rival before deadline.
Phrases like: “according to broadcast reports” or “according to published reports” were used to mask the use of material from another news team.
It may be a new transparency forced by the internet, but the days of the network or the rival paper “we never speak of” are long gone.
From the NYT with a link to the Post.
The New York Times reports stories with links to the Washington Post. Woodward and Costa appear, or are at least mentioned by name, on rival networks when they publish a scoop. Washington correspondents from competing networks, regularly, and without much mention, appear on air in studios where decades ago they would have never been invited for a tour.
All friends and colleagues. All on team truth we hope.
