Sources, Attribution, and Credibility

Not only do sources add to the informational value of a news story and separate it from something people can easily find by Googling it, they also reinforce both a reporter’s credibility and the public’s trust in the media overall.

For our news stories to be seen as credible by the public, we need to reveal where the information is coming from (attribution) — and why those sources are in a position to know what they are saying (credibility).

So, for the public to trust our news stories, we must attribute the facts to various sources (whether people or documents) and establish their authority to provide the information.

Today’s media environment makes it easier than ever for someone to “call out” a journalist who misrepresented information or was otherwise lazy in their reporting. In 2018, a woman in Minnesota took to Medium to write a widely-publicized account of how a reporter from the German outlet Der Spiegel was lazy and untruthful in his coverage of her community.

She writes:

Knowing that Relotius’ purpose was likely to focus on a few of our many conservative voters, I still had an ounce of faith in journalism. Maybe, just maybe, since he was a professional, award winning, international journalist and was spending not one day here but several weeks, he would craft an interesting, nuanced story about how we all somehow manage to coexist with each other in Trump’s America without burning each other’s houses down.

But I also had a distinct gut feeling that his portrayal of this town could go very, very wrong.