Analysis - Attribution
By Zach Batia
In the Vox article detailing Trump's admission that he spoke with the President of Ukraine about potential campaign opponent Joe Biden, the author uses a variety of sources and methods of attributing them.
No attribution is used in the lede, but in the following paragraph the author attributes the most notable information in the report (That Trump pressured the Ukrainian leader eight times to launch an investigation) to a Wall Street Journal article.
In total, I counted 11 unique sources that the author attributed information from, scattered fairly evenly throughout the article, although the most significant information came earliest in the piece. I also counted three additional attributions to other Vox articles. All of the external sources are linked directly from the article, but the more notable sources such as CNN's State of the Union and NBC's Meet the Press are the only ones explicitly named in the report. This is likely because the more well known sources will more easily establish credibility with readers.
Almost all of the attributions come from comments made by individuals, mainly government officials and lawmakers whose statements are mostly found later in the article, or from the president himself. The most significant information, the explicit claim of the eight coercion attempts, is the only info that is attributed to another news source. Given that the attributions used by the author come from notable individuals on both sides of the aisle, the information comes across as effective and non-biased.
By Zach Batia
In the Vox article detailing Trump's admission that he spoke with the President of Ukraine about potential campaign opponent Joe Biden, the author uses a variety of sources and methods of attributing them.
No attribution is used in the lede, but in the following paragraph the author attributes the most notable information in the report (That Trump pressured the Ukrainian leader eight times to launch an investigation) to a Wall Street Journal article.
In total, I counted 11 unique sources that the author attributed information from, scattered fairly evenly throughout the article, although the most significant information came earliest in the piece. I also counted three additional attributions to other Vox articles. All of the external sources are linked directly from the article, but the more notable sources such as CNN's State of the Union and NBC's Meet the Press are the only ones explicitly named in the report. This is likely because the more well known sources will more easily establish credibility with readers.
Almost all of the attributions come from comments made by individuals, mainly government officials and lawmakers whose statements are mostly found later in the article, or from the president himself. The most significant information, the explicit claim of the eight coercion attempts, is the only info that is attributed to another news source. Given that the attributions used by the author come from notable individuals on both sides of the aisle, the information comes across as effective and non-biased.
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