As Newsbusters asks, “How often do you see MSM sources giving direct links to websites outside their own site?”
How many times have you seen a story mentioning a website, maybe even including the name of the website somewhere within the story, yet the story won’t give the full address? Also, how many times do you see a web posting that actually includes a hypertext link to any website outside any paper’s site? Not very often. But today the Washington Post has given John Edward’s anti-war website a big boost by not only writing a story about it, but creating a direct link to it at the end of their story.
I wonder how many conservative or pro-war websites they have helped advertise in the past with a direct link?
Now, before it seems that I am decrying a paper linking to any other site, I have to say I am not against the concept. But there has been a practice by most newspaper websites of never linking to a source outside the paper’s (except for paid advertisers) and they almost never create a link to a site that is in the news, causing their readers to make their own efforts to seek out the website in discussion.
It’s the exception that illustrates the rule.
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