Business journalists and their sources: An overview of their relationship, interdependency, and eth (2012)

Undergraduate: Victoria Stilwell

Faculty Advisor: Chris Roush
Department: Journalism & Mass Communication

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The relationship between business journalists and their sources has long been studied, but the implications of that relationship for business reporting has received little attention. This research investigates the interactions between business journalists and their sources, the resulting interdependency and how that interdependency plays out in coverage. Members of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers completed a survey that sought to answer three primary questions: how important do journalists deem their sources to the news-making process, do sources pressure financial journalists into writing stories that could result in their financial gain and have journalists ever written stories in order to stay in good standing with sources at the expense or benefit of the story's subject. Research found that business journalists heavily depend on sources for their jobs even while their sources to do not, skewing the interdependency of the relationship. As a result, business journalists are pressured into writing stories at the behest of a source, even if it results in some gain for a source or story subject.