Hard facts directly discovered? Not so much.

From Things journalists believe that are untrue by Dun Surber. His is a rambling argument, but there is this observation.

By the way, rare is the news section of the newspaper that contains any news account that does not involve the government. Indeed, if you check closely, the government is the source of most news in the newspaper.

My first instinct is that of course, given the complexity of modern society, in which news arises from many complex, coupled systems, of which government is one, there will be a high portion of government sourced reporting. Government as an institution, government as its constituent members past and present, or government and its stakeholders.

On reflection, I still think that to be materially true, but Surber's challenge is an interesting one to contemplate. I took a look at half a dozen articles with Surber's observation in mind.

Two of them were local crime reporting which I instinctively assumed would be relatively free of government as source. But witnesses interviewed by reporters were witnesses already flushed out by police canvassing. Onsite interviews with officers. A couple of court records.

Not to belabor the point across all six articles but yes, government was the source, directly or indirectly, of much of the reporting.

I am not conjuring some grand conspiracy with a secret cabal determining what is fit to print.

This is more on an epistemic observation - complexity drives codependency and government is far more integral in everything than we might acknowledge.

The corollary is that it is extremely difficult to find shoe-leather investigative reporting. Virtually all the stories are press-release reporting, police-blotter reporting, government funded reporting (reporting on academic research), and simply opinions. Oh, lord, we are the age of opinions.

Hard facts directly discovered? Not so much.