Local news source opinions of their newspapers

Newspaper Research Journal, Summer 2000 by Bergen, Lori, Lafky, Sue A, Weaver, David

This study examines the opinions of local newspaper sources by asking them to evaluate both the stories for which they served as sources and the local newspapers where the stories appeared. Sources are generally pleased, finding fault with sins of omission rather than commission.

How does the experience of being a news source affect the evaluation that people make of the media? How much more - or less - tolerant are news sources when evaluating controversial journalistic practices? What is the effect on these evaluations of a good personal experience versus a bad personal experience with the media?

Many people who have been sources for news stories come away feeling less than satisfied with the final story. For example, some sources may feel that their position was misrepresented or portrayed inaccurately, that the wrong emphasis was placed on some aspect of the story, or that their privacy was invaded. Others may feel satisfied with the portrayal of their position or the portrayal of their role in a news event. Might those evaluations affect the opinions about media credibility that sources hold?

This study examined opinions of local newspaper sources by asking them to evaluate both the stories for which they served as sources and the local newspapers where the stories appeared. In addition, these news sources were asked to evaluate certain investigative reporting techniques and the roles of the news media in general.

While it is possible that people who have been regular news sources may be more tolerant of media practices because they will have first-hand experience with the shortcomings and strengths of reporters, it also may be that a direct personal experience with being a source will lead to an even more critical evaluation of journalists and their news gathering techniques.

Related studies

Most of the studies on news sources don't directly address the issue of how news sources regard journalistic roles and practices as compared to the more general public. Instead, the studies of news sources tend to analyze who is being relied upon in terms of age, gender, race, official vs. non-official status, or amount of power, for example. There are some studies of public attitudes toward the news media that are specifically about media credibility. Many of these (up to the mid-1980s) are discussed in a working paper published by the Gannett Center for Media Studies at Columbia University in New York in 1986 entitled The Media and The People: Americans' Experience with the News Media: A Fifty-Year Review by D. Charles Whitney.1

Although it is difficult to summarize the many different findings from a variety of studies reviewed in this paper, Whitney writes:

Recently, several studies have suggested what might be an obvious point that people's attitudes toward the media depend upon their experiences with the media, particularly where the 'experience' involves more than passive reading, watching or listening.2

Whitney cites a 1980 Gallup poll that found "those who feel that the press has been inaccurate in treating news items relating to their own lives are more likely to favor curbs on the press than are those who feel the facts were dealt with accurately."3

Whitney also cites a 1985 Gannett Center survey that found that those with more frequent and more favorable contacts with news media tend to be more favorable in opinions about them, and those with more frequent and less satisfactory contacts tend to be among their most intense critics.

Whitney reviews a study by Sharon Dunwoody and Byron Scott4 about the role of scientists as sources. They found that the more contact scientists had with science reporters, the more critical they became of science reporting, but their willingness to act as sources actually increased as the frequency of their contact with the media increased.

Another study by William Tillinghast5 found that among regular news sources in San Jose, California, the number of errors they were likely to report in news items was inversely related to the number of years they had served as news sources - the more years, the fewer errors reported.

From these two studies, Whitney concludes in his review that where experience with the news media is intense, as it is for news sources,

Considerable sophistication develops along with that experience, people becoming both more skilled at dealing with the media and more aware of the news media's limitations. It may be that whether positive or negative assessments emerge among such people is dependent upon the nature of their specific media contacts.6

To support this last point, Whitney cites a 1985 report from the Gannett Center for Media Studies7 that is based on summer 1985 surveys of residents of Baltimore, Maryland, and Toledo, Ohio. These surveys found that being a news source, or being written about, does affect one's opinion of the news media in a generally positive way. Those who had been quoted in news stories were significantly more likely to say, "It's important to have a free press even when the press acts irresponsibly" (68 percent agreed, compared to 52 percent of those who had not been sources). News sources were more likely to say that their newspapers were factual, but also more likely to say that they were biased. News sources were more likely to say that they would trust the news media (90 percent vs. 74 percent of others) rather than a government official. Whitney concludes from these findings, "... we can say with some confidence that favorable experiences as a news source are associated with positive media attitudes."8 But he cautions that unfavorable experiences with media are linked to highly unfavorable opinions.