> As if people will just wander onto their site, and as long as they can't find the exit they'll be stuck there forever.

The digital equivalent of casinos' lack of windows.

Not linking to a company described in a news article can be annoying but it's not always some casino mentality code they have against outlinking to maximize internal pageviews -- in many cases it's also journalism trying to hold onto some standards of not just being a shill for the interview subject.

Not linking to a company described requires a very conscious effort. It's obvious that when you want to tell people "hey, look at X", you want to point people towards X somehow. If you don't do this, then it means you have some ulterior motive for not doing that.

On Wikipedia they call it citing sources. Journalism would certainly do very well to practice that.

The BBC somehow survives now that it's actually linking to papers referenced, entities discussed in the article, etc.

Well being state funded probably helps in that regard

I'd think that would work against the claim being asserted - that external links affect neutrality - given how closely people watch the BBC for any possible bias and berate it for assumed bias (with or without cause).

That and losing money doesn't look entertaining through a window

@Zikes: I HATE this! I've complained on TC about them not linking to Kickstarter projects and instead linking to other stories about Kickstarter on TechCrunch. I feel like they've gotten better at linking to Kickstarter/Indiegogo for projects lately but they still are guilty of this tactic consistently.