Lesson 02 · 4 min · 6 things to do
The wire moves first
Trace one agency's sentence through a hundred outlets.
Forty news sites carry the same sentence about a summit, word for word. What is the most likely explanation?
- Yes.A handful of agencies supply raw copy to thousands of outlets by subscription. Identical wording is not collusion; it is one reporter's sentence with forty mastheads on it.
- Not quite.Plagiarism between outlets happens, but it does not produce forty identical copies within the same hour. A shared supplier does.
- Not quite.That happens too — and then the identical text is usually in quotation marks, attributed to the government. Wire copy appears as the outlet's own reporting.
A few wire agencies do the original reporting that most outlets publish. When they are right, everyone is right at once. When they are wrong, so is everyone.
One agency files one sentence. Slide forward and watch what happens to it.
1 hour6 hours24 hours15 of 60 · outlets carrying the sentence
1 hourFifteen sites carry it verbatim, credited to the agency at the foot of the page.
40 of 60 · outlets carrying the sentence
6 hoursForty carry it. Some have rewritten the opening, and the credit has dropped off several.
57 of 60 · outlets carrying the sentence
24 hoursNearly sixty. Columns now cite it as established fact, sourced to "reports".
Sixty outlets now say it. How many independent checks have there been?
- Yes.Repetition is not corroboration. Sixty outlets agreeing tells you about the plumbing between them, not about the world.
- Not quite.Publishing is not checking. Most of those outlets have no one within a thousand miles of the event.
- Not quite.Challenges do come — and they typically arrive days later, to a much smaller audience than the original.
Move the control to see what changes.
The agency issues a correction the next morning. What usually happens to the forty copies?
- Yes.The correction travels through the same pipes as the error but with a fraction of the push. This asymmetry is the single strongest argument for waiting a day before believing a striking claim.
- Not quite.Some large outlets do pull corrected wire copy automatically. Most republished, rewritten and aggregated versions have left the pipe entirely.
- Not quite.It occasionally does, when the error was famous. As a rule the correction is smaller, later and quieter.
Which of these are signs that a report is ORIGINAL, and which that it is downstream?
A named reporter with a dateline from the place.
"According to reports", with no report named.
A quote the writer says they obtained.
An agency credit at the foot of the article.
A document the outlet says it has seen.
Yes.Downstream copy is not dishonest — it is how most news reaches most people. But it carries the strengths and the errors of a source you are not being shown.You find eight articles making the same claim. Six credit the same agency, one cites "reports", and one has its own reporter on the ground. How many independent sources is that?
sourcesYes.The six are one source. The vague one is probably the same source again, so it counts for nothing. Only the reporter on the ground adds anything — and 'eight articles agree' turns out to mean two.Why does a wire agency's copy tend to be cautiously worded?
- Yes.The business model requires selling the same sentence to a left-wing paper, a right-wing paper and a state broadcaster. Caution is what survives that.
- Not quite.They are often extremely careful, and it is not a personal quality — the caution is built into what the product must be able to do.
- Not quite.No such law exists in most countries. The constraint is commercial, which is stronger and more consistent than a rule would be.
Lesson complete
Forty outlets agreeing is usually one source, repeated.
Next: Access is a currency →