News Sources in Foreign Reporting: a Case Study of Russian and US Quality Newspapers in 1995 and 2015

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Victoria G. Kolesnichenko

PR specialist, Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

e-mail: victoria.kolesnichenko@mail.ru

Section: Modern Journalism: Subjects and Issues

This article investigates the transformation of the journalistic sourcing practices in Russian and US foreign reporting in the course of 20 years. Content analysis of two American newspapers (The Los Angeles Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer) and four Russian ones (Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Izvestia, Novaya Gazeta and Kommersant) was conducted. Based on the results of the research, the author concludes that foreign correspondents from both countries prefer foreign news sources to domestic ones. However, judging from the news items published in 2015, there is a notable shift towards the latter in Russian newspapers. Here, official sources are inalterably at the top of the hierarchy of newsworthiness. That is also partially the case for the US, where journalists rely on the officials while gathering information about the newsworthy event. At the same time, they prefer to get comments and additional information from the witnesses and participants of the covered events. It is also clear that foreign correspondents both in Russia and in the United States rarely resort to the use of social media as quotable sources.

Keywords: foreign reporting, quality press, information sources, content analysis
DOI: 10.30547/vestnik.journ.4.2020.123147

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