That would be good journalistic practice, but that is not what Ben Goldacre is talking about in the blog post submitted here on HN. He is talking about news stories that purport to report on the result of a research study and what he is looking for is a citation (or a link, as appropriate to the journalistic medium) to the published research study. Not doing that doesn't pass the smell test for Goldacre.
but there is no reason to hide the published study from the consumer of the journalistic report. You are referring to persons as "sources," the same way I did when I was a journalist, while Goldacre is referring to publications as sources.
If they interviewed one of the scientists whose name was on the paper, wouldn't that count?
My answer, as a former journalist, is that whether or not that would count would depend on how well the reporter prepared for the interview. Good preparation for an interview of a scientist who just published a news-making paper would be reading the paper before the interview.
It's just as easy to cite papers on the radio as in print to make the paper findable, by saying something along the lines of "a paper by A. Smith and B. Jones published in the 1 April 2001 issue of Science." That's not a complete citation format, but Goldacre's complaint in the blog post submitted here is about mentions of papers where perhaps an author was mentioned, and perhaps a journal title was mentioned, but the date of the paper was not mentioned, and a link to the paper found in a press release was not reproduced in the online version of a print publication that often carries links to other online content.
After edit: I agree with you that you are responding to an exaggeration in a comment to the submitted article, with an example of a news organization that does better at fact-checking than the news organizations mentioned in the submitted link, and I too think there are happy exceptions to the tendency in some places for journalism not to cite published research. Here's wishing for more journalism to emulate the best current examples of careful research and meticulous citation of sources.
> If they interviewed one of the scientists whose name was on the paper, wouldn't that count?
No.
If you're reporting on science, for example, the interview is unlikely to provide sufficient information. The interview is information for telling a story. Why? Because journalists aren't subject-matter-experts - they're story-tellers.
> Finally, I think you missed his point- not all news organizations are going the tabloid route.
You miss the point. The fact that some news organizations don't trade coverage for access does not imply that those organizations are producing good news. It just means that they're not committing a specific (albeit common) sin.
In other news "both sides don't like my coverage" does not imply "my coverage is good/fair/balanced/etc".
However, it would be nice if you provided a link to all of the interview, not just the results of your edit.
That would be good journalistic practice, but that is not what Ben Goldacre is talking about in the blog post submitted here on HN. He is talking about news stories that purport to report on the result of a research study and what he is looking for is a citation (or a link, as appropriate to the journalistic medium) to the published research study. Not doing that doesn't pass the smell test for Goldacre.
http://bengoldacre.posterous.com/if-you-dont-link-to-primary...
Of course, even if the published study is cited, it still has to be examined carefully,
http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html
but there is no reason to hide the published study from the consumer of the journalistic report. You are referring to persons as "sources," the same way I did when I was a journalist, while Goldacre is referring to publications as sources.