The true price of checkbook journalism

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A Toronto newspaper pays $10,000 for photos of the city's mayor holding a crack pipe. A popular web site pays for a tape of an NBA team owner's racist rant. Poynter's Al Tompkins worries that those purchases could reflect "the cost of the steady, slow decline of journalism credibility. Audiences say they believe less of what journalists report. So to get the public to believe us, must we amp up the evidence, even if it means paying a drug dealer for a set up photo?"

May 27, 2014

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