Public Please

Have you read about a bill in an online news article and wanted to read the bill? Good luck because most online news articles neither name the bill nor hyperlink to it.

Consider the waterboarding bill that Bush vetoed. According to the Washington Post article Bush Announces Veto of Waterboarding Ban, George W. Bush vetoed a bill which bans waterboarding, a torture technique which involves drowning a detainee in a controlled manner. Dan Eggen, its author, tells us some shocking information about the voting records of some of the presidential candidates. He tells us that John McCain voted against the ban on waterboarding, while having claimed to reject torture based on his experiences as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Also, Hilliary Clinton and Barack Obama failed to vote on the bill.

As a citizen journalist, I want to read the bill for myself and review the voting records. Unfortunately the Washington Post article does not mention the bill. I searched for ‘waterboarding’ at OpenCongress.org and Thomas.gov, but did not find a bill that had been voted on by the Senate. It may be one of the bills I found, but there is no way to be sure that I picked the correct bill without asking the author of the article, Dan Eggen. So I just emailed him. I’m waiting on his response.

I tried searching for ‘waterboarding’ bill on Google News and found many articles that also fail to name the bill. Although many of these articles are produced and distributed by major newspapers and media organizations, none of them name or hyperlink to the legislation. And many do not even name their author!

• (USA Today) Bush to veto waterboarding bill by: anonymous AP writer
• (Washington Post) Vote Against Waterboarding Bill Called Consistent by: Dan Eggen and Michael D. Shear
• (Associated Press) Bush to Veto Waterboarding Bill by: Jennifer Loven
• (New York Times) Bush Uses Veto on C.I.A. Tactics to Affirm Legacy by: Steven Lee Myers
• (Baltimore Sun) Democrats condemn veto of torture bill by: James Oliphant
• (Reuters) Bush vetoes U.S. bill outlawing CIA waterboarding by: anonymous Reuters writer
• (AFP) Bush vetoes interrogation limits by: anonymous AFP writer
• (Voice of America News) President Bush Vetoes Waterboarding Ban by: anonymous VOA writer
• (BBC) Bush vetoes interrogation limits by: anonymous BBC writer

All of these articles are written by “professional” corporate journalists, and none of them adhere to the simple professional journalistic standard of citing your public sources. Many do not even take responsibility for the article by publishing their name and contact information. How hard is it to name the bill you write about and hyperlink to its text on Thomas.gov or OpenCongress.org? How hard is it to publish your name and contact information? Not hard at all. What we are receiving is not “professional” corporate journalism, but lazy corporate journalism.

Write emails to the aforementioned “professional” corporate journalists and their editors. Demand that they provide the names of the legislation they write about and hyperlinks to the text of that legislation. Demand that they, as journalists, publish their own names and contact information.

It’s really sad to have to remind the corporate media to publish this basic information.