The Dangers Of Circular Reporting

There are many dangers of circular reporting. Circular reporting is when a someone writes an article and another person writes another article using the information from the first article and the author of the first article sites the second article as a source. Sound confusing? I have a hard time with it too. Let’s break it down.

If I wrote an article about the platypus and I wrote “Paul the Platypus, who lives in at the New Hampshire Wildlife Refuge, loves to swim and eat crawfish all day.” and my friend saw that and he wrote an article that includes “Paul the Platypus of New Hampshire Wildlife Refuge is one example of what platypi love to do all day.” If I said that I got the information about Paul the Platypus from my friend’s article, that would be circular reporting.

I find this disturbing and I feel like this happens a lot in newspapers and articles all over. I’m sorry if I didn’t describe it very well! 🙂