Why don’t journalists link to primary sources?
Because journalists don't read primary sources. More often than not they're not even aware of them.Here's the problem: Almost all media outlets are in crisis mode so they're cutting down on their staff, meaning that a smaller number of journalists have to write the same amount of stories as before to fill the paper (or website). There simply isn't time for proper research if you have to write five articles a day.So many journalists resort to "borrowing" from other news sources, which in turn often have borrowed their article from somewhere else. An article may start as a published paper in Nature,which is then reported in popular science, which is then reported by Reuters, which is then reported in The Times, which is then reported in The Daily Mail.By the time it reaches The Daily Mail it's been through so many filters of busy journalists that the meaning has often become distorted. The journalist from the Daily Mail has no idea that there even is a primary source.