Contemporary NGO–Journalist Relations: Reviewing and Evaluating an Emergent Area of Research

Powers, Matthew

doi:10.1111/soc4.12267

Cited by 22 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…The movement offers another example of the role played by non-news organizations or hybrids as anchors of professional journalism, something also seen in the case of investigative news nonprofits in the United States (Graves and Konieczna 2015;Konieczna and Robinson 2014), and of NGOs involved in journalistic work in conflict zones or undercovered regions (Powers 2015b). In a parallel to the present study, Powers (2015a, 13) finds that the working values of human rights NGOs engaged in forms of news production "overlap and extend key journalistic values," such as accuracy and pluralism, even as their missions also yield differences in values and practice.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Boundaries Not Drawn

Graves

2016

Journalism Studies

158

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The last five years have seen a global surge in political fact-checking, reporting that specializes in debunking political misinformation. A growing occupational movement, originating in the United States but increasingly international in scope, has sought to legitimize fact-checking as unbiased journalism, to establish common standards and practices, and to secure reliable funding for this emerging genre. As a genuinely transnational professional movement which includes practitioners from multiple journalistic cultures as well as other fields, fact-checking offers a new site to consider whether and how professional journalism is meaningfully becoming globalized. This paper models a novel approach to mapping a diverse organizational landscape in terms of institutional ties to the fields of journalism, academia, and politics. Drawing on fieldwork from two international gatherings of fact-checkers, I array fact-checking outlets on a ternary graph and review their competing understandings of the mission, the target, and the practices of fact-checking. I highlight areas of convergence as well as divergence in this organizational milieu, focusing particular attention on boundaries not drawn-the willingness of professional journalists in this global movement to share jurisdictional authority with non-journalists. I conclude with suggestions for a comparative research agenda focused on this emergent area of practice.Journalism Studies, 2016 http://dx.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Boundaries Not Drawn

Graves

2016

Journalism Studies

158

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“…Beyond that, we know from our interviews that even in highly competitive media environments, NGOs still take pride in placing stories in mainstream news agencies and media outlets as these promise higher levels of outreach. NGOs' own media products or outlets try to respond to the lack of attention from traditional media (Powers 2015), but attention from traditional media is still a crucial metric of success. 1 Interviews lasted between fifteen and forty-five minutes, and were mostly conducted in English and digitally recorded.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In times of increasing economic pressure on media markets worldwide, there is a growing research interest in the relationship between journalists and strategic actors that advocate for certain interests-oftentimes connected to concerns about the quality and independence of journalism (Powers 2015). As both professions pursue their respective goals and interests, the relationship cannot be free from conflict.…”

Section: Conceptualizing Coproductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Networks of Coproduction

Lück

Wozniak

Weßler

2015

The International Journal of Press/Politics

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This study examines the interrelations between journalists and communication practitioners from environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Taking the annual United Nations climate change conferences as a case in point, we show that the exceptional circumstances of these events foster a temporary blurring of the professional boundaries between both actor groups that partly results in a joint production of interpretations. Based on seventy-eight semistandardized interviews with journalists and NGO representatives, we identify four distinct coproduction networks that pair particular types of journalists and NGO communicators. Our analysis shows that (1) the journalistic beat, (2) the type of media journalists work for, (3) journalists' and NGOs' perceived target audiences, and also (4) the NGOs' strategic orientation toward either lobbying or popular mobilization are decisive for the formation of these networks. Our study helps to systematically explain message production in a transnational context and provides a deeper understanding of the relationship between journalism and public relations.

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“…1 My argument is that information subsidies that play to the strengths of NGOs' logics while also following the rules of news outlets' information logics create a win-win scenario for these two fields as well as for the broader goals of pluralism and accountability they share. These information subsidies form part of the trend towards NGO journalism, or the adoption of journalistic values and practices by the NGOs who increasingly supply our news (Powers 2015a;Wright 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Source credibility as “information subsidy”: Strategies for successful NGO journalism at Mexican human rights NGOs

McPherson

2016

Journal of Human Rights

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This article draws on Gandy's (1982) influential concept of "information subsidies" to examine strategies Mexican human rights NGOs employ to get their information into the news. By building their credibility as sourcesthrough interpersonal relationships with journalists, through authority with human rights leaders, and through associations with NGO networks-NGOs provide a verification subsidy that shortens the time journalists need to evaluate the sources of their information. By playing to NGOs' strengths, namely their symbolic and social capital, this type of information subsidy holds promise for pluralism and accountability in the public sphere. This promise varies, however, according to what kind of pluralism we mean: namely, pluralism visa -vis the field of power, pluralism within the field of human rights NGOs, and pluralism of access to human rights accountability. It also varies according to the resources of the NGO in question, which affect the NGO's ability to demonstrate credibility and thus to provide information subsidies. The article's focus on the information subsidies provided by subordinate journalistic sources, particularly those that address information values about sources rather than about content, as well as on the centrality of credibility in communication across fields, further develops these concepts in media sociology.

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Contemporary NGO–Journalist Relations: Reviewing and Evaluating an Emergent Area of Research

Cited by 22 publications

References 35 publications

Boundaries Not Drawn

Boundaries Not Drawn

Networks of Coproduction

Source credibility as “information subsidy”: Strategies for successful NGO journalism at Mexican human rights NGOs

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