Sourcing and representation routines in the black African press in the United Kingdom

Abstract

Literature notes that news is both a journalistic and organizational product and factors such as profits, legitimacy, and raw materials impact on news media’s gatekeeping process and the distribution of their messages. Hence, sourcing routine is not just an integral professional norm but also impacts on the diversity of sources and the representation of civil issues. However, previous studies reveal that the deployment of sourcing routine in the mainstream media prioritizes elite sources, marginalizes minority voices, and maintains ideological consistency, whereas its deployment in the alternative media creates its own hierarchical layer of non-elite sources and advances the particular media outlet’s own ideological positions. Consequently, the mainstream and alternative media entrench the marginalization of black and minority ethnics (BMEs) and misrepresent them in the public sphere. This is because their sourcing routines encompass mostly ‘… the people who reporters turn to for their information, often officials and experts connected to society’s central institutions’ (Berkowitz, 2009, p. 102). It is also because their news values prioritize news stories about elite people and nations over news stories about and of interest to BMEs. In response, BMEs established their own newspapers to contest negative representations about them and to project their own perspectives on civic issues in the public sphere.