Narrowly (skipping the question of whether this journalist should have included copies of evidence), GP is right: most journalists with verified source material quote it/assert what it contains, rather than linking or copying it verbatim. That’s how serious journalism has always worked. The reputation of a newsroom is understood to back up a reporter’s assertion about their source.

Whether or not it should work that way is a separate question. But claiming that raw sources not being included is cause for suspicion is incorrect.

Addendum: A significant exception to that rule is when the journalist themselves is the source or an involved party in the story, e.g. when Jeffrey Goldberg from the Atlantic was included in a Signal chat with US government officials discussing war plans: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-a...

In such cases, the journalist likely will publish raw data/screenshots, since they're functioning both as the source and the reporter.