Speech: The Evils Of No Attribution

In writing this story, one of us had this transitional paragraph:
 
Maybe it’s the level of acceptance in our country. Or perhaps it’s the fact that alcohol is glamorized. 

And that's a big problem. The first and most fundamental problem is that it's an unattributed statement. Who said that? We need to be clear that we are reporting and sharing our observations of what others say and do, and we're not simply preaching our own personal viewpoints.

Attribution helps make that crystal-clear. But the way we've written it here, it could easily seem like we're taking sides and just stating our opinions.

Let's think back to the early days of this class. We talked about attribution being necessary, unless the fact is one that's undisputed (such as, the sun rises every morning) or one witnessed by the reporter (you can just state the score of the football game you were covering, without adding, the scoreboard said).

But this goes an extra step: it's an unattributed opinion. First, the reasons for alcohol being popular among youth is not an established fact, like that two cars crashed at an intersection or a store went out of business. It's an interpretation by one individual: Izzo.

Second, we acknowledge that it isn't established by starting the sentence with, Maybe ... We can't be more clear that we're not sure.

This sure as hell needs an Izzo said somewhere.

Overall, we're still a bit sloppy on attribution. Attribution is important, so that the audience is clear where the information is coming from. Really, virtually every paragraph after the lede and nut graf should have some level of attribution.

And certainly, every graf that contains a fact or a statistic or a quote or an opinion must have attribution, without exception.

Attribution is important, because in journalism it's not enough to have information; we must be persuasive to our audience that the information is correct. One way we persuade people is by answering to our audience, this is how we know that. Because so-and-so said. Or it's according to this-and-that document. We didn't make this shit up; this is where it';s from.

That's attribution.

We're journalists. We don't come up with (or make up!) facts or statistics or quotes or opinions. We find those, and then we share those, and as we share those, we let people know from where we got those.

That last step is attribution.