In journalistic parlance “reporting” means going out, witnessing events, interviewing people, doing research, and writing up the results in a coherent whole. Fashions in journalistic writing have changed over the years. A half century the “5Ws” (who, what, when, where, why) prevailed in the writing of a lead paragraph. It’s a style that goes back thousands of years and ultimately derives from classical rhetoric.
More recently stories must be told from a point-of-view. The 5Ws have been supplanted with an account of how one or more people feel about the events being reported.
Opinion writers have relied on reporters following best practice, feeling free to quote reporters’ stories uncritically.
“Re-reporting” means going back over a reporter’s work, re-interviewing people and doing your own research. Opinion writers have generally not been obligated to re-report the stories that form the foundation of their writing.
It used to be that opinion was confined to the editorial page and the front page held reported news stories. That’s no longer the case.
What happens when opinion writers must re-report every story? I think it’s not going to happen. They’ll just continue to cite the bad stories over and over again.
You mean re-reporting isn’t exposing all the hoaxes?