Justifications for Doubting News Sources

• In Event: ICA Interactive Paper/Poster Session II
  In Interactive Paper Session: Journalism Studies Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

Reporters’ trust in their sources is crucial to explore not only in order to understand the ways different sources are given access to the news, but how in these times of change journalism can continue to provide trust-worthy, reliable information to the public. Though researches into trust of journalists in their sources are not scares, one debate into where trust is located – in sources or information – remains unresolved, and an epistemologically vital aspect of it, reporters’ justifications for trust, remains understudied. Based on reconstructions of interactions between news reporters and 180 of their news sources, the paper presents qualitative categorization of reporters’ justifications for doubting their sources, as well as preliminary quantitative codification of the type of sources more likely to be doubted and the news practices reporters employ differently when dealing with information that arrives from them.

Author

• Aviv Barnoy, Ben-Gurion U of the Negev