View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Huddersfield Repository University of Huddersfield Repository O'Neill, Deirdre and O’Connor, Catherine The Passive Journalist: How sources dominate the local news Original Citation O'Neill, Deirdre and O’Connor, Catherine (2008) The Passive Journalist: How sources dominate the local news. Journalism Practice, 2 (3). pp. 487-500. ISSN 1751-2786 This version is available at http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/25977/ The University Repository is a digital collection of the research output of the University, available on Open Access. Copyright and Moral Rights for the items on this site are retained by the individual author and/or other copyright owners. 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For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at: [email protected]. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/ The Passive Journalist: how sources dominate local news Introduction Sources, as Leon Sigal has stated (1986), make the news. “Who the sources are bear a close relationship to who is news.” (Sigal, 1986: 25). “The effects of the way the reporter gathers information and the dynamics of the reporter-source relationship may be unintended, often unperceived, and sometimes unpredictable. Nevertheless they are real and a part of the power and influence of the press.” (Strentz, 1989: 22) This article seeks to find out what primary sources are defining or ‘making’ local news and if sufficient secondary sources are being used to validate a story or provide alternative views. It provides an empirical record of which sources are dominating news coverage, and from which future trends in local journalism can be measured. Exploring sources Ask any journalist, and they would probably agree that sources are everywhere. Harcup (2004: 46) lists 72 common sources of news. Sources – the people, places and organisations from whom stories originate and to whom a journalist turns to verify stories - are at the heart of news selection and production. But Bell (1991) notes that research shows that in practice journalists use a relatively narrow range of sources, favouring authoritative sources and marginalising alternative sources such as the socially disadvantaged. Journalists cannot be in all places at all times and in his study of the routinization of news, Gans (1980) recognised that, with deadlines to meet, journalists’ over-riding concern is to assess the efficiency of news sources. Thus, the journalists will assess the past suitability, productivity, reliability, trustworthiness, authoritativeness and articulateness of possible sources in making source choices, increasing the likelihood that “journalists are repeatedly brought into contact with a limited number of the same sources” (Gans, 1980: 144). Newspapers have a paradoxical role in that they exist to make profit, yet the information they provide is central to the notion of democracy. “In the ideal model of the modern capitalist liberal democracy, ‘free’ and ‘independent’ news media are usually regarded as playing an important part in maintaining the flow of ideas and information upon which choices are made” (Manning, 2001:1). Therefore research into sources can shed light on the quality of information, the diversity of perspectives and the interpretative frameworks on offer to the news consumer. Which sources are favoured and how they are used goes to the heart of the debate about power relationships in society, since sources given news access have an opportunity to set the news agenda, define the parameters of debate, and shape ideology. For Hall, certain sources become primary definers in media narratives, permitting them to establish a primary interpretation of events, setting the terms of reference and providing a “systematically structured over-accessing to the media of those in powerful and privileged institutional positions” (Hall et al, 1978: 58). Deirdre/source origin - 1 - For Gans (1980), the journalism-source relationship is a “tug of war”, with sources attempting to manage the news in order to receive favourable coverage, and journalists seeking to manage sources, in order to obtain relevant information. But it is nevertheless true that this seemingly adversarial relationship is far more cosy than many journalists would like to admit. Sources need reporters and reporters need sources in what could be described as a symbiotic relationship. A 1964 study by Walter Gieber into local news found that journalists, despite believing themselves to be freely acting agents, finding and investigating their own stories, rarely behaved independently of their sources; instead they obtained stories from sources who stood to benefit from the transaction as much as the journalist. The potentially mutual benefits of this journalism-source relationship is not problematic if it does not affect the journalist’s ability to act in the public interest. The degree to which a journalist can discharge this duty, however, will involve going beyond initial source information – routine, official, authoritative or otherwise - to verify and check facts by using other sources. This may necessarily entail adversarial, independent and investigative journalism, which Sigal (1973) termed enterprise methods, and which require time and resources. When these are at a premium, commonsense dictates that journalists will turn to those sources which are eager to provide information and that these, in turn, will become regular sources (Gans, 1980). Efficient sources can take this a step further: studies of news values have identified the production of ready-made copy as significantly increasing the chance of a story being selected by journalists (Bell, 1991; Allern, 2002). Thus journalism has entered into an unholy alliance with the public relations industry. As a profession, public relations has been developing throughout the 20th century but has rapidly expanded in the last 20 years (Davis, 2003: 28). Many books and academic studies have charted its rise in the field of political communication – in particular, how news is packaged and spun to journalists (Franklin, 1994; Jones, 1995, 1999; Barnett and Gaber, 2001). The number of information officers employed by the Central Office of Information increased from 36 in 1979 to 160 in 1996, while employment of information officers in many Whitehall departments has more than doubled (Davis, 2003: 28). But to concentrate on political communication is to ignore the wider use of public relations by a huge range of corporations, institutions and special interest groups; it has become the norm for businesses, charities and public institutions, such as the police or health service, to use PR. “Journalists face a vast world of parajournalists – public relations firms, public information officers, political spin doctors, and the publicity staffs of a wide variety of institutions, both corporate and nonprofit.” (Schudson, 2003: 3) Deirdre/source origin - 2 - Writing in the Independent, Brian Appleyard has described the elevation of the public relations professional in the hierarchy of credibility of sources. “They [PR professionals] establish their position as powerful middle-me n, brokers of stories. What they tell the journalist may not be true or it may be so tendentious as to be untrue in effect and, either way, it will be known to be serving a cause. Yet it will probably not be checked because of the strange authority of the source – an authority that arises not from truth but from his known centrality within the system.” (Appleyard, 11 February 1993) Some studies have concluded that PR has a role to play in the democratic process, providing journalists with a professional service that can explain complex issues, provide a constant flow of vital information (McNair, 2000) or provide a platform for alternative voices, such as trade unions or environmental groups (Anderson, 1997; Davis, 1998, 2002; Manning 1998, 2001; Palmer, 2000) – though a more recent study of a union’s media relations and press coverage casts some doubt on this (O’Neill, 2007). But however one views the role of PR and its relationship with journalism, it remains the case that journalists and public relations professionals “are working to different agendas” (Harcup, 2004: 25). As George Pitcher has pointed out, the professional communications industry “lacks the public interest imperative” (Pitcher, 2003: 205). In the same way that national news and the national public sphere is influenced by sources, regional press sources can shape the local news agenda and local public sphere. Local newspapers have traditionally played a significant role in recording local public life and promoting local democracy. “Local newspapers should offer independent and critical commentary on local issues, make local elites accountable [and] provide a forum for the expression of local views on issues of community concern” (Franklin, 2006, xix). To what extent are they discharging these duties? One approach is to examine the sources used in local papers. Research