I recently saw an example of cyclical reporting. One news source reported on an event. Another news source had a story on the same event, with most (if not all) of the second story’s info being cited from the first.

Then the first source runs a follow-up article on the story citing the second source.

Will #2 have a similar follow-up to cite #1? Has this created a perpetual motion machine?

And we wonder how bad information is created and spread. The first source is mostly reliable in this instance. The second source tried to be reliable, but I know it has a tendency to interpret things a little differently. It becomes the game of telephone from there.

With this practice of newsgathering, why run any news at all?