This Is Why Young People Don't Read Newspapers

Recently, I wrote about how important the difference between sourcing and linking is to young people. I wrote about how skeptical my generation is, how we are never surprised to find politicians, journalists, teachers, anyone, lying to us. I wrote about how linking to sources provides our skepticism with somewhere to go. This article on MSNBC's website is the perfect example.

This article asserts that "many detainees rejoin fight" without ever taking the time to define the term "rejoin fight." It credits, or sources, the appropriate people, but does not provide a single link to these sources. So the article carries absolutely no weight, whatsoever. If we do not know how the Pentagon determines that an individual has rejoined the fight, well, we really cannot make up our own mind as to whether or not that claim is true.

This is why I feel so passionately about linking to sources. In this case, it appears that this report is unreleased as of yet. Clearly, this is simply a journalist reporting on what the Pentagon says. This journalist did not take the time to ask the Pentagon to clarify what rejoining the fight means. Is this that awesome investigative journalism I keep hearing about? Is this the standard that I am supposed to save? Give me a break. This article is pure propaganda. I am predicting, right now, that this term includes things like; he met someone that might be a terrorist in a bar, he wrote something for a newspaper that was anti-American, he gave a speech chastising the US for torture, and so on, and so on...

They did it before...

three of the former detainees included in one of the 43 reports were described as having "returned to the battlefield" because they were in a documentary about Guantanamo, as well as five who were included because their lawyer wrote a letter to the editor about Guantanamo and two who had never even been in Guantanamo