Newsrooms pay for scoops: will it escalate the practice? | Poynter.: We start a new week with a sobering journalistic reality. Last week, two newsrooms paid sources for exclusive content that broke big stories, and those who would not or did not pay were left quoting those who did.
A year ago, Canadian journalists said they had seen video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack but they didn’t buy the video and, despite Ford’s bizarre behavior, no images equaled no proof. So when a new video emerged showing the mayor holding a crack pipe, The Globe and Mail forked over $10,000 to an admitted drug dealer for still frames from the video.
