Wire copy and independent sources: why counting articles misleads

News agencies such as the Associated Press, Reuters and AFP, and in India PTI, ANI and IANS, sell their reports to other outlets, which publish them, often with little or no change. That is wire copy. It is how most outlets cover events they have no reporter at.

Forty articles carrying one agency report are one account of events, not forty. If you count articles, a single report reprinted widely looks like broad, independent agreement. If you count only independent voices, you see how many newsrooms actually reported the story themselves.

The same goes for disagreement. A story that looks split by article count may be one wire version against one independent version, each reprinted many times.

Check the byline and credit line.

Most outlets credit the agency; some do not.

Compare the text.

Near-identical paragraphs across outlets are usually one source.

Count outlets, not articles.

And count an outlet only once per version of the story.

Keep wire reports visible.

Agency reporting is often the most careful. The point is to count it once, not to discard it.

Alethman marks wire reports and counts independent voices, so a story’s reach and any split are measured in newsrooms, not reprints.

How Alethman counts