What’s the point of learning APA or MLA citation in high school and college but journalists don’t even bother with it?
Because journalism doesn't use the same type of citation as an academic paper. It's an entirely different type of writing, for a different purpose, and a different audience.
I'm not 100% sure if previous poster is annoyed at the same thing as me, but if that is the case, we're not annoyed at the newspapers not giving names to their anonymous sources.
It's when they do science reporting and say "a new study says blah" without linking to the study. Or they paraphrase a law proposal submitted by some lawmaker without linking to the original text. Or they repeat something they got from another news source without pointing it out. And even if they do, as the previous poster mention, it is subject to link rot. Frankly I think they do that because of the attention economy. Less eyeballs leaving their site.
Because journalism doesn't use the same type of citation as an academic paper. It's an entirely different type of writing, for a different purpose, and a different audience.
If you want to know why journalists use anonymous sources, you could just Google it: https://www.nytimes.com/article/why-new-york-times-anonymous...
But I suppose complaining on the internet and making up false equivalencies is better for feeding one's righteous indignation.