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“It’s Anonymous. It’s The Economist ”. The Journalistic and Business Value of Anonymity
Abstract
The Economist is nowadays, at its 177 years, the only major news brand that remains loyal to the rule of anonymity with which it was born in 1843. As a unique exception, but also as a journalistic model admired and respected around the world, the magazine’s long romance with anonymity, and the reasons why this tradition has been maintained, despite going against the tide, makes interesting reading today, both from a professional and a business point of view. This article analyses and discusses the practice of anonymity in The Economist from its inception to the present, with the idea to connect its perceived advantages with some current debates on the problems of journalism. In order to do that, the article will focus on three editorial and business dimensions—editorial consistency, newsroom management and brand identity—with which the anonymous ethos of the weekly has contributed to strengthening its capacity to remain a unique news brand. Although the advantages of anonymity are the central point of this work, some related problems will also be noted.
... But it would have been pos si ble to tell other stories where econ o mists and eco nom ics had a more prominent role in news choice and news mak ing. We could have focused atten tion on the his tory of London's Economist, which famously recruited its writ ers and edi tors from Oxbridge col le ges with degrees in eco nom ics and in pol i tics, phi los o phy, eco nom ics as it pioneered ways to rep re sent com merce and finance, for instance with index num bers of prices (Arrese 2021(Arrese , 2022Edwards 1995). We could have picked out part ner ships between jour nal ists and econ o mists, such as the decadeslong, multibook, crosscon tent col lab o ra tion between Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner that con tin ues today as a podcast/radio show with a staff of over a dozen pro duc ers. ...
The introductory essay to the HOPE supplement on “economics as news” argues why journalism is a deserving subject for research in the history of economics. The case rests on three claims. The first is that the study of journalism gives us a view of a distinct epistemological tradition, of news epistemology, that unsettles the standard convictions of academic knowledge ways. Second, the practices of news organizations are key to understanding how these organizations transform contemporary life into news, marketable products of predictable format. The implication is that economics is featured in news when it is aligned with preexisting journalism practices. Third, journalists acknowledge the existence of domains of expertise but do not feel accountable to them. Ideas that economists may think of as their own are appropriated, repurposed, reinterpreted, and then again and again. Taken together, these arguments describe journalism as an exciting new research territory that will help us understand why so often the body of public economic knowledge diverges from the convictions of credentialed economists.
Anonymous argumentation has recently been the focus of public controversy: flash points include the outing of pseudonymous bloggers by newspapers and the launch of an academic journal that expressly permits pseudonymous authorship. However, the controversy is not just a recent one—similar debates took place in the nineteenth century over the then common practice of anonymous journalism. Amongst the arguments advanced by advocates of anonymous argumentation in either era is the contention that it is essential if the widest range of voices are to be heard; amongst the counterarguments of its critics, that it weakens the credibility of individual arguments and irresponsibly cheapens the standard of public discourse. This paper explores some implications of the controversy for the ethics of argumentation in general and virtue theories of argumentation in particular.
Arguably the first thing that a reader notices of a news item, the headline serves the semantic function of providing pertinent information and the pragmatic function of appealing to target addressees. Moreover, it often embodies the stance of the news writer or the news agency on a particular issue and could program the reader’s perception and interpretation of the ensuing news story in a pre-determined direction. In view of the distinctive significance of headlines in news discourse, in this paper, we analyze how the headlines of The Economist, an elite newsmagazine, frame China in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. The sample of headlines was examined for their structural components, syntactic features, as well as linguistic characteristics, and compared with a selection of the outlet’s headlines on COVID responses of certain other countries. Through identifying the framing patterns adopted in the headlines and unpacking the ideological overtones encoded therein, this systematic analysis has illuminated the role and effects of the tactful employment of language in constructing country image and striking a balance between purported impartiality and ideological dispositions. Its findings and implications are expected to contribute to scholarship on media framing and inform the practice of journalistic writing.
The Economist is the only major news brand today that has remained true to the tradition of anonymity with which it was born in the mid-nineteenth century. As an exception, but also as a journalistic model admired and respected around the world, The Economist’s long practice of anonymity, and the reasons that, at different times in its history, have led it to maintain that tradition, despite going against the tide, have interesting readings today from a journalistic perspective. At the same time, the analysis of how the publication has managed to relax, little by little, the no bylines rule in order to adapt to an era of increasing visibility and transparency, without losing the basic virtues of anonymity, serves as good example of the interest in managing in a strategic way personal and collective identities into the newsrooms.
The Economist posee una identidad única, distintiva, que resulta de un conjunto de cualidades mantenidas a lo largo de siglo y medio, y otras incorporadas conforme se ha desarrollado su actividad de difusión de ideas, juicios, opiniones y hechos. Al hilo de su historia, el presente estudio procura analizar la identidad de la revista desde una triple dimensión: editorial, empresarial, corporativa.
Credit attribution for journalists represents a crucial development in journalism, with numerous organizational, legal, political and literary implications. This article explores the rise of bylines and authorship in the French press during the last 250 years, as an alternative to the Anglo-American model, on which studies have focused. Findings show that bylines not only emerged much earlier in France but also represent different driving forces, functions and dynamics. While the Anglo-American rise of bylines reflected an occupational and organizational phenomenon, in which bylines were considered professional rewards, in the French case, the evolution of bylines was dependent on exogenous factors, mostly political forces that tried to discipline adversarial writers. Thus, in contrast with the quasi-linear progress of Anglo-American bylines, the French case is characterized by ebbs and flows, due to the continuous power struggle between the emerging journalistic field and the literary and political fields.
Resumen De Francisco Cañamaque, político, periodista y escritor, se estudia aquí su percepción del periodismo y su labor como director de La España (1881). Sus ideas políticas se hallan plasmadas en obras sobre de Filipinas y las guerras carlistas. Abstract We study the literary production and the journalistic side of Francisco Cañamaque, politician, and author of books about Philipines and the civil war. He was owner and director of the liberal newspaper La España (1881). Palabras clave Francisco Cañamaque Filipinas La España (1881) Periodistas en el siglo XIX Key words Francisco Cañamaque Philipines La España (1881) Journalists in the 19th Century AnMal Electrónica 37 (2014) ISSN 1697-4239 Como tantos otros personajes de su tiempo, Francisco Cañamaque (1851-1891) compaginó la labor política con la periodística, e incluso publicó algunas obras de carácter literario centradas en las guerras carlistas. Algunas cuestiones convierten a Cañamaque en un personaje cuya obra merece ser rescatada. En primer lugar, es uno de los primeros escritores que dedica un artículo completo a retratar las condiciones y características del periodista en la segunda mitad del XIX. En su Miscelánea literaria, política y social, publicada en 1876, Cañamaque publica «El periodista», una reflexión sobre cómo es el periodista y cómo se le ve desde fuera. Entre sus aportaciones, apunta el surgimiento de un nuevo modelo de periodista a partir de la revolución de 1868. Efectivamente, es entonces cuando aparecen los primeros periódicos considerados informativos, puesto que el objetivo era en ellos el lucro
The relationship between journalists and sources has been a cornerstone of journalism research, yet less attention has focused on the special case of unnamed sources in which journalists procure information through granting sources anonymity. Normatively, this exchange results in the dispersal of otherwise unobtainable information of value to the public. In practice, restricting the knowledge audiences have about news sources has led to controversy and mishaps. This paper analyzes the future tenability of this practice in the face of a changing media environment. Such notions as 'transparency' and 'anonymity' are being rethought and transformed as part of a larger sea change impacting media production and consumption. Increases in media criticism offer a further challenge to the blind trust making the withholding of names possible. What, then, will be the future of this practice that journalists have repeatedly relied on in their pursuit of holding public institutions accountable? This is not an isolated concern regarding a single practice. Rather, considerations of unnamed sources connect to questions of journalism's cultural positioning and relevancy in the 21st century.
In an effort to encourage community dialogue while also building reader loyalty, online newspapers have offered a way for readers to become engaged in the news process, most popularly with online reader comment boards. It is here that readers post their opinion following an online news story, and however much community interaction taking place therein, one thing appears evident: sometimes the comments are civil; sometimes they are not. Indeed, one of the chief defining characteristics of these boards has become the rampant incivility—a dilemma many newspapers have struggled with as they seek to strengthen the value of the online dialogue. Many journalists and industry observers have pointed to a seemingly straightforward reason for the offensive comments: anonymity. Despite the claim, however, there is a striking dearth of empirical evidence in the academic literature of the effect that anonymity has on commenters' behavior. This research offers an examination of user comments of newspapers that allow anonymity (N=450) and the user comments of newspapers that do not (N=450) and compares the level of civility in both. In each group, comments follow news stories on immigration, a topic prevalent in the news in recent years and which is especially controversial and prone to debate. Results of this quantitative content analysis, useful for journalism practitioners and scholars, provide empirical evidence of the effect that anonymity has on the civility of user comments.
The proliferation of bylines characterized the news as an imperfect, all too human account of reality, opening the way towards journalistic stardom, altering power relations within the news industry and shifting news organizations from a position behind the news to one behind the people who gather and compose it. Focusing on The New York Times as the chief case study and The Times of London as a supplementary one, findings show that the bylining process extended throughout the 20th century at a far slower pace than indicated in previous research. Bylining was a four-stage process: 1) initial avoidance of bylining, thereby fostering an anonymous, authoritative voice; 2) bylines promoting organizational goals only; 3) bylines accorded to a select few staff writers, leading to inconsistency in attribution policy; and 4) papers lose control over selective crediting due to journalists’ pressure for public acclaim. Using a multidisciplinary approach combining legal theory with the sociology and history of journalism, the article concludes that news reporters are constrained authors whose limitations are set chiefly by organizational, legal and commercial forces. These limitations not only delayed and slowed down their attribution but also continue to characterize their authorship to this day.
It's a remarkable piece of apparatus. F. Kafka, "In The Penal Colony" The hurricane of social change wrought by information technology can be viewed along with the development of permanent agricultural communities, urbanization, and industrialization as among the great transformations of civilization. It is also important, however, to ask how social and cultural factors affect the forms and processes of information technology, especially across cultures and time periods. We must avoid falling into the reductionist trap of technological determinism which involves a failure to appreciate the extent to which human choices have an effect on technical forms and impacts. This paper contains a discussion of anonymity and information technology to illustrate some general conclusions about why the issues of information technology and society are so complicated and do not lend themselves to easy solutions, and why they support neither the rhetoric of technophiles who optimistically view information technology as the solution to societal problems, nor the technophobes who pessimistically view it as a source of societal problems.
“Trolling” and other negative behaviour on magazine websites is widespread, ranging from subtly provocative behaviour to outright abuse. Publishers have sought to develop lively online communities, with high levels of user-generated content. Methods of building sites have developed quickly, but methods of managing them have lagged behind. Some publishers have then felt overwhelmed by the size and behaviour of the communities they have created. This paper considers the reasons behind trolling and the tools digital editors have developed to manage their communities, taking up the role of Zygmunt Bauman's gardeners in what they sometimes refer to as “walled gardens” within the Internet's wild domains. Interviews were conducted with online editors at the front line of site management at Bauer, Giraffe, IPC, Natmags, RBI and the Times. This article shows how publishers are designing sites that encourage constructive posting, and taking a more active part in site management. Web 2.0 and the spread of broadband, which have made management of fast-growing communities difficult, may themselves bring positive change. As uploading material becomes technically easier, “ordinary” citizens can outnumber those who, lacking social skills or with little regard for social norms, originally made the Internet their natural habitat.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of either the recent death or coming dominance of anonymity have been greatly exaggerated. This article is a beginning effort to lay out some of the conceptual landscape needed to better understand anonymity and identifiability in contemporary life. I suggest seven types of identity knowledge, involving legal name, location, symbols linked and not linked back to these through intermediaries, distinctive appearance and behavior patterns, social categorization, and certification via knowledge or artifacts. I identify a number of major rationales and contexts for anonymity (free flow of communication, protection, experimentation) and identifiability (e.g., accountability, reciprocity, eligibility) and suggest a principle of truth in the nature of naming , which holds that those who use pseudonyms on the Internet in personal communications have an obligation to indicate they are doing so. I also suggest 13 procedural questions to guide the development and assessment of any internet policy regarding anonymity.
This book confronts the promise and perils of unnamed sources in this exhaustive analysis of controversial episodes in American journalism during the George W. Bush administration, from prewar reporting mistakes at the New York Times and Washington Post to the Valerie Plame leak case and Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS News. Weaving a narrative thread that stretches from the uncritical post-9/11 era to the spectacle of the Scooter Libby trial, the book examines a tense period in American history through the lens of journalism. Revealing new insights about high-profile cases involving confidential sources, he highlights contextual and structural features of the era, including pressure from the right, scrutiny from new media and citizen journalists, and the struggles of traditional media to survive amid increased competition and decreased resources. In exploring the recent debates among journalists and critics over the appropriate roles of media, the book underscores the potential for unattributed information to be both an effective tool in uncovering necessary information about vital institutions and a means for embroiling journalists in controversy and damaging the credibility of already struggling news outlets. The book maps the varying perspectives on confidential sources to foster a deeper understanding of moments of crisis, anxiety, transformation, and power in American history and American journalism.
This article historicizes journalism's present crisis of credibility as rooted in the criticisms of partisanship and commercialization that continually arose throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It then explores how the Internet, as the most compelling solution to this crisis, developed to meet very different needs than those of mainstream journalism organizations. Following this Internet analysis and Discussion is an investigation of the invasion and gradual acceptance of nonprofessional online content from the 1990s to today. The article concludes by asserting that the Internet cannot be heralded as the solution to the crisis of credibility, largely because the crisis is not a technical one of information delivery, but an epistemological conflict at the heart of journalism practice, a conflict between the irreconcilable values of deliberation and verification.
Anonymity as a research construct provides an important avenue for addressing fundamental communication issues related to publicness and privateness made salient by the growth in new communication technologies. As communication scholars, though, we have not yet begun to develop the models and theories that are so necessary to describe, explain, and predict anonymous communication. This essay begins by distinguishing anonymity from related notions of confidentiality, privacy and publicness, and pseudonymity, and provides some vocabulary to talk about anonymization and identification efforts by message sources and receivers. Second, the essay highlights some of the limitations of current communication scholarship in this area, and proposes a redefinition and reframing of the anonymity construct to focus on perceptions of the communicators and partial anonymity based along the dimensions of source specificity and source knowledge. Finally, 10 propositions and a communication-based model of anonymous interactions are offered to highlight source decisions to anonymize or identify receiver options to accept or counter those decisions, effectiveness of source and receiver efforts, and feedback to subsequent source decisions.
Ongoing transformations of the media ecology in the direction of greater digitization have increasingly blurred the boundaries between professional journalists and other information brokers; the former now must work hard to distinguish themselves from the latter. Notable among these developments is a shift towards the individualization of journalism, with journalists seeming to spend more time building personal brands, for instance on Twitter, than on building organizational ones. Within journalism research there is a growing interest in the use of Twitter for journalistic self-promotion and branding, but studies are still scarce, and the ways in which journalistic self-promotion is discursively constituted need further empirical and theoretical attention. By means of a critical discourse analysis of the tweets of a widely followed journalist in Sweden, and through the theoretical lens of celebrity, this study aims to contribute knowledge about how journalistic self-promotion discourses evolving in the digitized media setting are constituted. The article identifies discourses that construct celebrity through (1) “fame by association,” (2) asymmetrical communication, and (3) “lifestreaming.” It concludes by discussing “celebrification” as a vital component of journalistic self-promotion discourses as well as the power aspects of ubiquitous self-promotional discourses, which are deeply embedded in the general structures of society.
A survey at 36 newspapers shows journalists feel strongly that readers should have the ability to comment online, but they also dislike the verbal ‘free-for-alls’ and personal attacks in these comments. Only 35 percent say they frequently or always read online comments on their stories.
Participants in online comment forums belonging to newspapers blame anonymity for the increasingly negative and rude comments, yet most support keeping these forums anonymous.
Findings confirm the use of anonymous sources has a negative effect on readers' perceptions of story credibility. Stories of presumably higher quality elicited more believability toward sources who disagree with the main findings of the story.
This article historicizes journalism's present crisis of credibility as rooted in the criticisms of partisanship and commercialization that continually arose throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It then explores how the Internet, as the most compelling solution to this crisis, developed to meet very different needs than those of mainstream journalism organizations. Following this Internet analysis and discussion is an investigation of the invasion and gradual acceptance of nonprofessional online content from the 1990s to today. The article concludes by asserting that the Internet cannot be heralded as the solution to the crisis of credibility, largely because the crisis is not a technical one of information delivery, but an epistemological conflict at the heart of journalism practice, a conflict between the irreconcilable values of deliberation and verification.
The DNA of any organism is incredibly complex, dynamic, and controlled. Segments of the double helix are continually being unwound and transcribed to RNA. Damage by radiation, by free radicals, and by chemical molecules reactive with DNA is constantly occurring. At intervals the whole fantastic process of mitosis, with all its possibilities of breaks, wrong connections, and so on, is initiated and completed. Every one of these functions requires the constant activity of enzymes, each functioning at the right place and the right time. How many enzymes there are, how they function, and how their amount, rate of synthesis, and specific localization are controlled—these are known in rather elementary outline for E. coli, with confirmation from some other bacteria. When specifically looked for, most of the enzymes defined for E. coli have been shown to be present in mammalian; including human, cells.
Matt Carlson confronts the promise and perils of unnamed sources in this exhaustive analysis of controversial episodes in American journalism during the George W. Bush administration, from prewar reporting mistakes at the New York Times and Washington Post to the Valerie Plame leak case and Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS News. Weaving a narrative thread that stretches from the uncritical post-9/11 era to the spectacle of the Scooter Libby trial, Carlson examines a tense period in American history through the lens of journalism. Revealing new insights about high-profile cases involving confidential sources, he highlights contextual and structural features of the era, including pressure from the right, scrutiny from new media and citizen journalists, and the struggles of traditional media to survive amid increased competition and decreased resources. © 2011 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. All rights reserved.
Long before the invention of printing, let alone the availability of a daily newspaper, people desired to be informed. In the pre-industrial era news was gathered and shared through conversation and gossip, civic ceremony, celebration, sermons, and proclamations. The age of print brought pamphlets, edicts, ballads, journals, and the first news-sheets, expanding the news community from local to worldwide. This groundbreaking book tracks the history of news in ten countries over the course of four centuries. It evaluates the unexpected variety of ways in which information was transmitted in the premodern world as well as the impact of expanding news media on contemporary events and the lives of an ever-more-informed public. Andrew Pettegree investigates who controlled the news and who reported it; the use of news as a tool of political protest and religious reform; issues of privacy and titillation; the persistent need for news to be current and journalists trustworthy; and people's changed sense of themselves as they experienced newly opened windows on the world. By the close of the eighteenth century, Pettegree concludes, transmission of news had become so efficient and widespread that European citizens-now aware of wars, revolutions, crime, disasters, scandals, and other events-were poised to emerge as actors in the great events unfolding around them.
Many academics, politicians, and journalists have spoken and written about civility in public discourse and what they think should be done about it. This article investigates what journalists perceive as the forces affecting uncivil, opinionated commentary in news, what their perceptions are of the effects of this shift on audiences and political culture, and how journalists think uncivil political talk affects journalists’ roles and authority in society. This is accomplished through a qualitative textual analysis of intramedia discussion on journalism organizations’ Web sites, journalism blogs, and news Web sites from the past decade. The analysis revealed that most, but not all, of the journalistic writing examined about civility and incivility expressed concern for incivility, a need for improvement, and a belief that journalists or their organizations are responsible for keeping things civil on their own sites. Analysis of journalists’ articles also revealed interest in academic research about civility, and some of the many ways journalists are dealing with incivility online are based on academic research. The study’s findings provide evidence of journalists’ perceptions of civility in digital news, which inform the arguments put forth by advocates for interventions to improve the quality of public political discourse.
Have the nature of printed news stories changed in competition with new media? Our content analysis of Norway’s largest morning newspaper Aftenposten in four time cuts between 1950 and 2008 revealed that the length of news stories had increased until 2008 when the newspaper had changed to the tabloid format with a mixture of both brief and lengthy articles. News stories tended to have broader time frames in more recent years. The frequency of simpler forms of news stories like reports of meetings and social events had diminished considerably. In the last 20 years, journalists have also become more visible in the text. We will look at these findings against a historical background.
The technology that allows readers to post anonymous online comments on newspaper websites gives readers unprecedented opportunities to participate, but poses challenges to the journalistic value of transparency, practice of gatekeeping, and conception of expertise. This nationwide survey of 583 US journalists explores whether the technology has affected their work practices, workplaces, or news coverage. The study, grounded in social shaping of technology theories, finds that journalists are not opposed to sharing their web platforms with readers' comments, but dislike user anonymity and ignore reader input. Despite the technological affordance that provides journalists a means to receive instant, global feedback from readers, journalists are maintaining their jurisdiction over news content and are not participating with readers in mutual shaping. This study finds that journalistic norms and conceptions of expertise prevent journalists from engaging with readers.
In an effort to clean up user comment sections, news organizations have turned to Facebook, the world's largest social network site, as a way to make users more identifiable and accountable for the content they produce. It is hypothesized that users leaving comments via their Facebook profile will be less likely to engage in uncivil and impolite discussion, even when it comes to discussing politically sensitive and potentially divisive issues. By analysing the content of discussion as it occurs in response to political news content on the Washington Post Facebook, and comparing it to that which occurs on the Washington Post website where users are afforded a relatively high level of anonymity, the present study determines the extent to which Facebook increases the level of civility and impoliteness in an area of political discussion renowned for uncivil and impolite communicative behaviour. In line with earlier theories of social interaction, the paper finds that political discussion on The Washington Post website is significantly more likely to be uncivil than discussion of the same content on the Washington Post Facebook page. Moreover, the incivility and impoliteness on the Washington Post website are significantly more likely to be directed towards other participants in the discussion compared to The Washington Post Facebook page.
Incivility in public discussions has received increasing attention from academic and popular commentators in recent years. In an effort to better understand the nature and determinants of such incivility, this study examined a 3‐week census of articles and comments posted to a local newspaper's website—totaling more than 300 articles and 6,400 comments. The results of the content analysis show that incivility occurs frequently and is associated with key contextual factors, such as the topic of the article and the sources quoted within the article. We also find that, contrary to popular perceptions, frequent commenters are more civil than are infrequent commenters, and uncivil commenters are no less likely than civil commenters to use evidence in support of their claims.
L'Internet-deuxieme generation, voulue par le president Clinton, ne pourra pas s'adresser effectivement aux citoyens ordinaires, a cause- mais ce n'est pas la seule cause- de la complexite de la technologie. C'est pourquoi il serait necessaire de prevoir un budget important pour des recherches en matiere sociale
Uncivil discourse is a growing concern in American rhetoric, and this trend has expanded beyond traditional media to online sources, such as audience comments. Using an experiment given to a sample representative of the U.S. population, we examine the effects online incivility on perceptions toward a particular issue—namely, an emerging technology, nanotechnology. We found that exposure to uncivil blog comments can polarize risk perceptions of nanotechnology along the lines of religiosity and issue support.
This study explores the issue of “civility” in anonymous comments posted to news media websites. A textual analysis of journalistic essays about the issue and more than 900 audience-member responses to those essays suggests a disconnect between professional journalists and most forum participants over the purpose of such “virtual village squares,” particularly with regard to the role of anonymity. Using the theoretical framework of “concordance,” the analysis suggests that journalists and audiences have very different conceptualizations about “civility” and the role of anonymity in civil discourse.
This content analysis of The Washington Post and The New York Times finds that the use of anonymous sources peaked in the 1960s and 1970s. The analysis also finds that contemporary journalists are more likely to explain the reason for anonymity.
As plaintiffs in tort actions against anonymous online defendants attempt more and more to unmask those defendants, courts seem to be framing guidelines for determining whether the anonymity should be surrendered. The guidelines are beginning to look like those used to decide whether a journalist would be allowed to keep sources confidential. Courts are finding that anonymous speech on the Internet is worthy of protection and that unmasking a defendant's identity requires (1) evidence of a valid case, (2) a showing of good faith by the plaintiff and (3) sufficient justification for revealing the identity of the anonymous poster. Such a development highlights the critical role Internet service providers have begun to play in defense of their online subscribers.
Many news organizations invite readers to post online comments to news stories. Comments may get posted automatically and most are signed with pseudonyms. Many are insensitive, even rude, and use speculation and language that would be rejected if written by a staff member or in a letter to the editor. Are news organizations holding true to their ethical guidelines when they publish anonymous reader comments on their Web sites while rejecting them for their hard-copy editions?
More than a decade after the adoption of the Internet by news organisations and newsrooms, journalism is still coming to terms with its implications. It offers a novel platform for reaching audiences and has become a part of newsgathering and news-processing routines. But, as the Net develops in sometimes unpredictable directions, it raises an array of new questions about practices and values, some of which go to the declared defining essentials of journalism. The new media ecology, with its additional agendas of interactivity, democracy, multimediality, and with a new domain of bloggers and citizen reporters, presents a set of issues and opportunities that extend beyond familiar boundaries. European journalists in 11 countries were asked, in an informed survey, to respond to questions concerning these developments. The results elaborate some of the tensions between “traditional” journalism, rooted in “old” media, and the new perceptions, expectations and pressures of digital journalism in an increasingly inter-connected media system.
The paper is an in-depth study of the use of unnamed sources in the reports of two big, international news agencies, The Associated Press (AP) and Reuters. Traditionally, news agencies have referred to issues of “factuality” and “objectivity” as their valued objectives (see e.g. Boyd-Barrett, 19804.
Boyd-Barrett , Oliver . 1980 . The International News Agencies , London : Constable . View all references; van Dijk, 198825.
Van Dijk , Teun A. 1988 . News as Discourse , Hillsdale, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum . View all references), and as one claim to “factuality”, journalists tend to use a wealth of direct and indirect quotes in their reports, often coming from unnamed sources. From the point of view of news rhetoric, presenting an unnamed source as a credible and newsworthy speaker calls for special strategies. Sometimes journalists emphasize that the person quoted does not want to be named, and recently AP, in particular, has resorted more and more to explaining the reasons for anonymity. Though the news agencies themselves seem to think that all the strategies boosting the standing of an unnamed speaker, and the expressions stressing the anonymity, just give necessary information to the reader, it can be argued that they also open a wealth of rhetorical possibilities, and thus can undermine the alleged factuality/objectivity of news agency discourse.
This is an observational study of the way the BBC deals with user-generated content (UGC) at its UGC hub. It finds four types of UGC. First a form of unsolicited news story: second a form of solicited content for specific extant news stories; third a form of expeditious content for specific items and features, and fourth a form of audience watchdog content. The study also finds that UGC is routinely moderated by the BBC hub and that traditional gatekeeping barriers have evolved over time to ensure the maintenance of core BBC news values. The study concludes with the view that the extensive use of UGC at the BBC hub encourages the increasing use of “soft journalism”, with as yet unknown consequences for the BBC.
As discussion intensifies, and critics exploit what they see as a serious press abuse of anonymous sources, this article explores current practices and policies, as well as examines justification for and danger of anonymous source usage. Seven guidelines are listed and discussed which may help editors and reporters decide whether to use the anonymous source: editor authorization, just cause, last resort, fullest possible identification, proportionality, just intentions, and second source verification.
Although anonymity has been studied for well over a century, scholarship on anonymous communication has been fragmented and the role of message receivers, in particular, warrants greater attention. A theoretical model is developed here explaining receiver responses to anonymous communication. The context of the communication, degree to which the source is perceived to be anonymous, receiver’s desire to identify the source, and potential ability to determine the source’s identity are posited to influence receiver attempts at identifying (or further anonymizing) the source as well as perceptions of the source, message, and medium. The study concludes by identifying instances where anonymity may be particularly beneficial or problematic for message receivers and offering directions for future research.
Grassroots journalists are dismantling Big Media's monopoly on the news, transforming it from a lecture to a conversation. Not content to accept the news as reported, these readers-turned-reporters are publishing in real time to a worldwide audience via the Internet. The impact of their work is just beginning to be felt by professional journalists, the newsmakers they cover and especially the former audience, which is now part of the process. The tools are still in the early stages, however, creating substantial needs - and opportunities - for technologist and the new grassroots journalists.
Abstract Anonymous,communication,on the Internet offers new opportunities but has ill- understood risks. This article helps to ground the policy debates by examining some fundamental,aspects of anonymous social behavior and current controversies over anonymous communications. It is a companion to the article, “Anonymous Communication,Policies For The Internet.” It examines the social character of anonymous communication,and the ways that anonymous communication,has played important roles for professionals such as journalists and police. It also explains some of the new technological supports for anonymous communication on the Internet. The openness, decentralization, and transnational character of the Internet challenge the efficacy of traditional control mechanisms and have raised issues related to accountability, law enforcement, security and privacy, governmental empowerment, and e-commerce. Yet, to ban or restrict all anonymous,communication,online because of the harms it could bring would deny its benefits to those people who may legitimately gain from it. This article helps to understand how to balance these positions.
Unmasking the Identities of Online Commenters: Newspapers Struggle to Decide When to Fight Subpoenas, When to Comply
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Talk to the Newsroom: The Use of Anonymous Sources
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For the Post, Anonymous Sources Remain a Problem
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El director de ‘The Economist’ describe la revista más influyente del mundo
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revista más influyente del mundo." La Vanguardia (Revista), September 28.
Newspaper as Property
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Bagehot, W. 1863. "Newspaper as Property." The Economist, December 12.