Same Scandal, Different Standards: The Effect of Partisanship on Expectations of News Reports about Whistleblowers

ABSTRACT

This experiment (N = 591) tests whether audiences adjust their standards for what qualifies as fair journalism based the transparency of news editors, the source of the news, and the target of an accusation. In the context of a whistleblower scandal, the results suggest the relationship between the audience member’s ideology and the news story publisher and target influence what details the audience thinks journalists should reveal. Additionally, we find transparency from editors can alter those perceptions.

Notes

¹ When considering only the participants who passed the manipulation checks (N = 239), there was a significant main effect for the editor’s note on the “reveal details” dependent variable so that those who saw the elaborated editor’s note wanted more details reveals (M = 3.14) than those who saw the short editor’s note (M = 2.45), F(1, 22) = 21.45, p < .001. There were no other main effects for either dependent variable. See Appendix B, Tables B1 and B2.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Megan Duncan

Megan Duncan, Ph.D. (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2018) is an assistant professor of journalism and mass communication. She studies how audiences understand news credibility.

Mallory Perryman

Mallory Perryman, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of broadcast journalism in the Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research focuses on public trust in news with an emphasis on perceptions of media bias.

Brittany Shaughnessy

Brittany Shaughnessy is a doctoral student at the University of Florida studying communication. Her research interests include political public relations and partisan media. She is a graduate of Coastal Carolina University and Virginia Tech.