Why do they do this? Can’t they at least add their own input on the topic instead of copy-pasting from CNN? How do all of these sites stay in business if they all are free and all post identical articles? I was a reporter for a radio show before, the number one rule was to never plagiarize.
It’s free. It’s automated. Most people don’t care. It drives ad revenue.
Without seeing a specific example, here is the general overview:
The copy they reprint is provided to them by syndicated subscription. They have no legal right to alter tt. They also have no reporters in the field assigned to gather any additional information that would be relevant to the content. If it is intended to be an opinion piece, it is bylined by the writer who has responsibility for the opinion.
A great majority of the news you see originates with one of a very small number of news agencies, such as UPI, Reuters, AFP, or the like. Thousands of news organizations contract to get their news from those sources.
The only editorial discretion a news site has is to decide whether or not to air a story at all, but they can write their own headline, which may be biased…
Alternately, they might not have any legal right to run it at all, and are just outright stealing it. The person who’s profiting from the theft might not even know what articles they’re running: They just have a script sieve through the web to randomly pick things to steal.
As mentioned, if they’re stealing content it’s free. If they are licensing the content it’s much less expensive than creating your own organization to create content and has none of the headaches.
If they are legally licensing the material through syndication, they have to show the originating source somewhere. If you don’t see the source the odds are overwhelming that it’s been stolen. The problem today is that it’s just as easy to include the (CNN) that appears at the start of an article in the cut and paste and fool you.
I see this for a lot of science articles. Universities seem to often have an office responsible for press releases.
Here’s an article on Science Daily, and the corresponding news release from the university. Skimming, they’re at least almost identical, although Science Daily did provide an overview. They also provide a link to the original materials.
In the case of science releases, this seems to mostly be a good thing. The people writing it, or at least approving it, understand it.