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Diversity of Journalisms. Proceedings of ECREA/CICOM Conference, Pamplona, 4-5 July 2011
Results
Sources and intensity of research: Close to 30% (333) of the 1125 analyzed news
items were directly based on the documents published by Wikileaks. But almost half of
those (156) were found in the British Guardian alone. The Guardian based 58.6% of its
articles on the original documents. Although the documents were available freely on
the Internet, only a few of the other newspapers bothered to analyze them themselves.
Even those other media which officially cooperated with Wikileaks used only few
documents directly as sources for their publications in December 2010: Le Monde in
23.6% (13), Der Spiegel in 23.5% (4), and El Pais in 33.3% (18) of their articles,
respectively. Surprisingly, two newspapers which had no official cooperation with
Wikileaks used the original documents in more of their articles as sources than some of
the cooperating newspapers did: The British Times (45%) and the Swedish Svenska
Dagbladet (29.1%). The German newspapers WAZ and FAZ completely ignored the
original documents: Only one article in each of the two German newspapers used
original documents as sources. Instead; many newspapers quoted other conventional
media (La Libération 73.8%, Le Monde 56.4%, FAZ 48.9%, Dagens Nyheter 26.7%,
ABC 24%, WAZ 20%; overall average 22.4%), even Le Monde quoted The Guardian
frequently or interviews published in other media. Other frequently used sources were
press releases and press statements (on average in 22.4% of news items). A typical
example is the FAZ publishing a piece by the German news agency dpa summarizing
an article from The Guardian about the content of an embassy cable – neither the news
agency nor the newspaper editors took the time to check the original document on the
Internet, let alone fact check the statement regarding its accuracy.
The lack of original research is remarkable considering that many editors emphasized
the necessity of in-depth research and fact checking by journalists during the
discussion around the Wikileaks publications. Only about 26.9% of all news items dealt
with the original documents, 21.1% reported “second-hand” about the documents and
51.9% did not mention the documents at all (because they reported about the
organization Wikileaks in general or the criminal case against Assange). Most
newspapers showed a similar relation of original, second-hand and no mention of the
documents, with the exception of The Guardian on the one end (56.8% original
documents, 31.2% “no mention of documents”) and the German media on the other
end of the scale (Tagesschau: 0% original documents, 84% no mention; WAZ 0%
original documents, 86.7% no mention; FAZ 4.4% (2) original documents, 68.9% no
mention).
Interviews as a dominant genre on television: A distinct element used mainly by t.v.
news and the news magazine Der Spiegel were interviews. Most t.v. stations and the
news magazine used interviews as main sources for around half of their news items
(Tagesschau 53.1%, La1 (Spain) 45.5%, SVT1 (Sweden) 47.8%, BBC 58.2%). The
average for all media was only 15.9%; in most newspapers, interviews were used in
less than 10% of articles as main source. Again, the differences between the media
types seem to be greater than between countries. The visual media need to show
human faces, so because filming documents is boring, t.v.-journalists interview experts
and witnesses about their views. The BBC dragged everyone from former
ambassadors, ex-consultants of political leaders to celebrity-Wikileaks-supporters in
front of a camera, culminating in nonsensical surveys like one in the small village
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