Assessing the Credibility of Computer-Assisted Reporting

Abstract

This study finds stories using computer-assisted reporting are as credible as stories based on anecdotal evidence or authoritative sources. It is no longer enough to report fact truthfully. It is now necessay to report truth fact. - Robert Hutchins report on press freedom, 1947 Computer-assisted reporting, or CAR, began some 10 years ago and has been gaining acceptance and momentum ever since. Through database and statistical analysis, good CAR reporters use raw data to support their own conclusions. Many reporters find this development to be ideal - they do not have to be as dependent on official and expert sources, press releases, government statistics or anecdotal evidence to tell their stories. Now, in addition to such sources, reporters can rely on their own evidence from independent data analysis, allowing them to become more participants in news-making process rather than mere observers. This new approach is challenging traditional philosophy of detached, objective journalism. Indeed some scholars believe this transformation is a struggle about soul of journalism in 1990s.(1) If media in general act as a searchlight on society, then CAR gives individual reporter a high-powered, hand-held flashlight. Although these types of data-intense stories might have advantages from a journalist's perspective, very little research has considered effects this type of story might have on audience. Using an experimental design, this study seeks to measure readers' perceptions of computer-assisted stories, specifically those in which newspaper reporter independently analyzed data and drew conclusions based on such findings. Will a move away from traditional objective-style reporting strengthen or weaken credibility of journalism? In addition, this study will measure participants' story ratings of other outcomes important to journalists: newsworthiness, liking, quality, readability, and understanding of computer-assisted stories. Supporters of such techniques say that reporters can provide independent, outside viewpoints that are not vested in a particular controversy. Critics, on other hand, fear that journalism may be overstepping its bounds by advocating a position and discarding traditional objectivity. Thus, while some view such proactive journalism as a means to abate declining newspaper circulation, others suggest abandoning objectivity will further reduce newspaper credibility. Objective journalism Most media scholars point to beginnings of objectivity as a direct reaction to rampant factionalism of mid-1800s and subsequent advent of penny press.(2) Oliver Wendell Holmes popularized notion of free expression in his 1919 dissenting opinion where he borrowed John Milton's of ideas metaphor.(3) Milton argued that all sides of an issue must be heard in order to find truth because falsehoods will be exposed in marketplace.(4) Objective reporting, interpreted by publishers and editors as neutral, unbiased reporting, became norm by early 1900s.(5) Specific rules and conventions regarding journalism as a profession arose from principle of objectivity. Gaye Tuchman(6) described how journalists rely on objectivity as a strategic ritual and a defense against criticism. She also found that most news organizations strategically identify centralized sources that are accepted as appropriate sites at which information should be gathered.(7) Similarly, Herbert Gans(8) showed that journalists use a predictable set of criteria in deciding what is news by reporting facts as gathered from sources of recognized authority. Studying this system of newsgathering and how news content is structured, Michael Schudson argued that the process of news gathering itself constructs an image of reality that reinforces official viewpoints.(9) Many scholars have criticized objective journalism because it maintains status quo and encourages establishment to dominate marketplace of ideas. …