What does being a "reputable organization" have to do with anything? Are you saying that 100% of the articles by CTV are 100% correct simply because the "organization is reputable"? And CTV might be reputable to you but not to me. If the "report is true" as you say it is, then why not actually provide proof of that rather than just saying that "a reputable organization said so" and that "a simple Google search confirms it"? I'm not saying that scurvy happened in Canada or didn't happen, I'm just saying that I don't like your answer.

@user1271772 this comment could be phrased a lot less antagonistically.

@Pyrotechnical upon more reflection, the answer isn't so bad considering the length and contents of the question. But I really, really do not like when people say things like "CTV is reputable, therefore the article is 100% true". I don't want to sugar coat that! Hopefully DJClayworth understands that it was not personal (in fact it was quite the opposite: I am less likely to be antagonistic to DJClayworth than to 99.99% of the users on SE).

a reputable news organization fact-checks the stories it publishes and doesn't publish made up stories. That's what it has to do with "is this story true?". While CTV may occasionally publish a story that quotes only one side, or emphasizes the wrong part of a larger picture, they aren't going to publish out and out lies and made up AI nonsense. They are going to quote actual doctors with licenses and degrees, for example.

@CriticizeSEactionsmeansban No, reputable news organizations in our country still don't publish outright lies. If they do they get called on it, and can face consequences. Yes they may have biases and be selective; they may make mistakes; but they don't generally publish outright lies. And many of them reporting the same thing, including a university, increases the level of certainty. I realize that may not be true in your country, but don't assume your country is like others. And whether you agree or not is not really an appropriate discussion for comments.

@DJClayworth That country appears to be Canada. Do you follow the New York Times, for example?

@user1271772 being reputable is a summary based on past evidences provided by that entity, so it is definitely objectively one factor to evaluating the truth value of the news output. As it is just one factor, DJClayworth also provides another factor: some other secondary sources with the same claim. These two factors together is the evidence put forward by him, not reducible to "it's reputable therefore it's 100% true". The missing part here is probably how DJClayworth comes to believe that CTV is reputable. That would be a valid objection to raise (which was not the objection you raised)

@CriticizeSEactionsmeansban No I don't follow the NY TImes. I do look at it occasionally. And I have no idea what that has to do with your point.

@justhalf During COVID we saw several of these "reputable" news outlets (CTV, Global, CBC) all simultaneously saying things that were not true, so it doesn't matter if you have 100 of them saying the same thing. The comment about a "university" saying the same thing, is actually misleading, and the summary I wrote in my now-rejected edit explains why. In the end, as I said in a previous comment, the answer isn't so bad, especially considering the question itself, but it would have been better if it wasn't in so much of a "link-only" format. Even hyperlinks to titles of the articles would help.

@justhalf also, I did object to the claim that CTV is reputable, but you probably do understand that we have limited space in comments, so I just said "CTV might be reputable to you but not to me", which means that I object to the claim that CTV is reputable; but it doesn't matter anymore: there's enough sources saying that scurvy exists in Canada and I'm convinced that it does occur, but that happened after I looked at the articles, not from seeing a vague answer that just says "reputable news sources say it's true so it's 100% true". We encourage answers on SE to be self-contained.

I have to admit that the comments above have a point. While the fact that a number of reputable news outlets have reported it does make it likely to be true, this answer currently smacks of circular reasoning: "the claim is true because CTV says it's true". I'm not sure what sort of concrete evidence could be produced to prove or disprove the claim, but just pointing to other people saying the same thing doesn't seem sufficient.

Guys, obviously there is a non-zero chance that all these organizations are mistaken, or were the victim of an extremely elaborate hoax, or something like that. In my opinion the chance is so close to zero as to be negligible. If you want to argue semantics then please go and do it somewhere else. These comments have stopped being about this answer. If you want to continue this please take it to chat.

@DJClayworth perhaps you could edit your answer to say that the claim is "very likely to be true" rather than rejecting useful edits, accusing people of arguing "semantics", and ordering us to discuss this elsewhere. When comment chains are moved to chat, an automatic comment is posted saying that only comments that suggest improvements are allowed, and that's exactly what this comment is, and what your comment is not.

You've expressed your opinion and I've disagreed, and I've explained why. So you have no need to add more comments. It would be just you arguing. Anything else you want to say can go to chat.

According to my dictionary, "reputable" means "having a good reputation." Just as it takes time to earn a good reputation, it also takes time for a highly reputed news organization to lose its good reputation. A reputable source absolutely can tell lies, and it can tell them for the most self-serving reasons, but they won't continue to be called "reputable" forever if they do it too flagrantly or too often.

Obligatory XKCD: xkcd.com/978

In the case of this Q&A, there's no obvious reason for a news organization to make this up, and the underlying question is a concrete enough fact (scurvy diagnoses) that shouldn't be too hard for a journalist to check. So citing news orgs and their overall reputation is reasonable. But it's also reasonable to choose wording that doesn't imply everything published by reputable news orgs is always 100% true. And/or about the reasons why this case is particularly believable. You don't need to edit, but it would be a better answer if you did.

I am not saying "everything published by a reputable news organization is true" so please don't do the

strawman. There are multiple independent sources, even more than I cited.