What Savvy News Readers Notice

A friend who works in Washington told me something interesting about how he reads news reports. There’s the first order information - “XYZ agency is considering ABC rule”, etc. - that most readers absorb. But more sophisticated readers will pick out second order information, which is often much more interesting - “who are the sources for this reporting, and what are their motivations?”, “how did this article come to be written?”, “what may result from this article’s publication?”. My friend says that he reads the news primarily for this second order information.

For example, when this article came out about Bill Gates’ contacts with Jeffrey Epstein, most people reacted only to the face-value information. But savvy readers noticed that the sources for the articles must have been Gates Foundation employees who were now trying to harm Mr. Gates’ reputation. From this second-order information, it was possible to infer the deep rift that had formed in the Gates Foundation.

The first thing to recognize in a report is whether or not it is original (or “exclusive”). Most news articles are rehashing someone else’s original reporting, often with some new details or a stronger partisan slant. These types of articles usually include a sentence like “as reported by [publication]”, with a link to the original. It’s important to track reports back to their original source so that you can better assess their credibility and because the original report usually contains the most detail and second order information. (Publications that sometimes break news are called “news leaders”).

The sources that contribute to a report is another important thing to consider. It’s not by random chance that someone comes to be quoted by a reporter in an article. The sources in a report are somehow linked to the reporter. Over the course of their career, reporters develop relationships with people who have access to news-worthy information. A news organization’s stable of reporters is also a portfolio of intelligence sources, lines of information into the organizations that the organization covers.

Often times sources have sought to develop a relationship with the reporter - for access to information, to influence the reporting, to elevate their profile, etc. If someone is quoted by name in a story (eg. a partner at a law firm comments on a regulatory issue, an executive at a company comments on a business trend), you may infer that they have a strong network and are savvy.

A former congressman I know told me about his relationship with a journalist who would write articles about his work (on a very under-the-radar issue only interesting to people in a certain space, as is 99% of the work of government). The journalist was very supportive of the congressman’s work, so the congressman gave him special access - always gave quotes for stories, brought him on work trips, connected him to associates. The journalist’s stories served to attract allies for the congressman and to build firepower for the narratives behind the congressman’s work. (In case it’s unclear, this is totally ethical and normal).

Sometimes a source provides background information to generally inform the reporter’s understanding, without being quoted. Other times a source is quoted without being named (eg. “people familiar with the matter”), or a reporter references or presents information without describing how it has been obtained (eg. “emails reviewed by the Journal”).

But the source is usually not a great mystery - just ask yourself who would have access to the information being disclosed. Suspects include the principals involved, their deputies and staff, outside advisors, and close associates of the aforementioned. This post is a good example of this kind of second order analysis.

People leak for lots of reasons. Sometimes those reasons are irrational, such as to feel important or settle a grudge. (One classic example of this is in stories about discord in a workplace, quoting “current and former staff”). People also leak for rational reasons - to establish credibility and develop a relationship with a journalist contact, to make certain information common knowledge, and to add firepower to their favored narratives.

Sometimes an actor will try to enter information into the public record without it being attributed to them. For example it’s believed that Russian intelligence used the persona of a hacktivist whistleblower to published hacked emails. In stories about foreign governments, the background source is very often from a US intelligence agency, even if the quoted sources are all from think tanks and so on. (For example, I personally doubt that this article would have been written without consultation with US intelligence agencies).

Sometimes there’s something that the author wants to say but can’t (because it’s only a hunch or open secret with weak sourcing, or because they were told “off the record”), so they’ll gently gesture at something by placing two facts together and letting you read in between the lines.

Something else to consider is why the article was written in the first place. How did the story get on the journalist’s radar? Maybe the story came from their editor, from their network, or was a special personal interest. The main value of some PR firms is the personal relationships they have with journalists that help them get stories written.

Consider for what purpose the article was written. Some are for a very specific intent - to influence the thinking of a specific influential individual, to seed discourse with new arguments, etc. Sometimes an article is written just to link to a website, for SEO. Often someone will write an article and then shop it around to different publications. Sometimes an organization like a PR firm will write an article and then find an author and publication for it.

Hopefully considering these dynamics will make it more fun for you to read the news. Don’t go thinking that every article has a deep, dark, conspiratorial backstory - most articles are just written for the purpose of getting eyeballs, all their sources are named, and the idea for the article came from the editor or from Twitter. But there’s always a story behind the stories that you read, and these are some dynamics to be aware of.