"I'm sure writers on politics, science, or other technical subjects would get pressed for sources even more frequently."
Hi, Randy:
Coming from a scientific (and philosophy of science) background, I couldn't pass this one up.
Speaking strictly to science journalism, you're undoubtedly right that sources are probably even more imperative. The big problem, though, is the ensuing descriptions -- from "Scientists prove ..." (the worst!) through "Scientists discover ..." (the least noxious, but still incorrect). Without beating a drum on this, scientists never *prove* anything -- that's for lawyers. And they rarely discover anything -- that's for explorers. What scientists do is to test hypotheses, then publish the Results of those tests along with their *Conclusions*. (I've capitalized in the preceding because the two are deliberately separate sections in any scientific research paper -- the former containing only demonstrable results of the testing, the latter what the researcher *believes* those results indicate.)
Usually, the only things reported in the media are the Conclusions (mere interpretations), and those are often proclaimed as if cast in stone. Our metropolitan area commercial television newscasts are especially notorious for this: one study done, and POOF -- it's a fact!
Of course, the problem there isn't embellishment or fictionalization. It's just a failure to comprehend the tenuousness of a single scientific study, combined with a quest for the sensational in science. The repeated experiments that ultimately may or may not bear out the original findings of the first study are just "old news" by then.
Cheers!
John Feeney