Abstract
ABSTRACTThis 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 sources — through 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 vis-à-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.
Highlights
In theory, human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and news outlets interested in journalism that supports democracy should be efficient collaborators
If we look at pluralism of voice within the human rights NGO field, we see that the uneven distribution of resources allows some NGOs much more voice than their poorer peers
By shedding light on source strategies — and not just powerful sources, but rather the competitive and collaborative activities of a field that tends to critique the field of power—this article has helped redress the imbalance of the sociology of journalism, which has been weighted towards journalists over their essential collaborators — their sources (Gandy 1982; Schlesinger 1990)
Summary
Human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and news outlets interested in journalism that supports democracy should be efficient collaborators. In terms of the latter, “They get elements for their articles,” this NGO interviewee said, “And we have the possibility of positioning articles through advance information and their trust.” In some cases, a natural affinity exists because human rights reporters have switched professions to become human rights defenders and vice versa These individuals understand the logics of both fields, but, beyond this, they have social capital — networks — in both fields and can serve as an interpersonal credibility bridge between the two types of institutions. Even if hierarchy is deemphasized within NGO networks (Sikkink 1993), it is a strong organizing principle in journalists’ relationship with the constituents of the human rights NGO field This “hierarchy of credibility” (Becker 1967) is a product of limits on journalists’ time to evaluate new sources and NGOs’ differential abilities to provide information subsidies. This includes the cases’ alignment with the goals of the larger NGO, as illustrated by one human rights defender’s reasons for uploading the press releases of less digitally literate NGOs to her NGO’s website: “It is an act of solidarity, to reinforce the work in certain topics that are strategic for us — like economic, social and cultural rights, labour, torture.” Another factor is the credibility of the smaller NGO and the credibility of the subject or witness of the human rights violation; it is a given that credibility evaluations occur at each point along the human rights communication chain — and that resources matter every time
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