Making Sources Visible: Representation of Evidence in News Texts, 2007–2019

ABSTRACT

Journalistic work is shifting toward more aggregative and intertextual forms, using published sources more often within their news routines and stories. This study examines that shift through the lens of evidence. It applies the concepts of evidentiary distance and ancillary evidence — that is, evidence about evidence — to news texts to explore their originality and transparency, and it approaches those texts as central sites in which journalists outline the basis for their knowledge claims and make the case for their epistemic authority. A content analysis of news texts from newspapers and digital newsrooms in 2007, 2013, and 2019 shows firsthand evidence is rarely presented. Non-mediated attributed speech is by far the evidence most often presented, but it has become less common over time, with corresponding increases in mediated speech and thirdhand evidence. Ancillary evidence describing evidentiary sources or evidence-gathering processes is also fairly rare. Results suggest that evidence in news stories is becoming intertextual but remains rather opaque, with digital and legacy news organizations becoming more similar over time.

KEYWORDS:

• Aggregation
• ancillary evidence
• attribution
• evidence
• news texts
• original reporting
• transparency

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Robert McMahon, as well as Patrick Walters and Trystram Spiro-Costello, for their coding assistance. The authors are also grateful to Zvi Reich and the journal’s anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).