Right now you’re reading a blog. You’re probably doing this for one of two reasons: mass media sucks and they don’t report 90% of the important details in a story or you just like your news delivered with an appropriate amount of sarcasm and foul language. On this site I try to correct the first problem by providing links to important details (for instance the actual bill if I’m talking about a law) while also ensure you get your file of foul language.
Sometimes the first item isn’t very easy. It’s not easy because most media outlets leave our very important details (which is why the first item I listed exists). Because of this I have a couple of simple demands to make.
First when a story is talking about a bill I want to know the name of the bill along with the senate and house bill number so I can go read the bloody thing. Simple enough isn’t it? I want to see what’s actually in the damned bill instead of taking some “journalists” word for it. This would help eliminate a majority of the hysteria that floats around with currently pending legislation. Yes I know it’s all written in legalese and I’m not a lawyer but I’m a pretty smart guy and can gleam most of the information I need out of it.
Second when a story is talking about a court case give the named of the fucking court case. This is also pretty simple. For instance is John Q. Public is suing Jane Q. Private please make a reference to the case John Q. Public v. Jane Q. Private. I want to see what’s going on with the court case from multiple sources and having the actual name of the case would be beneficial.
That’s it those are my only demands. Why are either of these things so hard to do? At most it will add a few extra bytes to the size of the story and honestly bandwidth, even for people on dial-up, isn’t going to be negatively impacted by a few bytes.