Easy Doesn’t Mean Better With Story Sources

As TV reporters grapple with increased demands on their time and energy, the art of finding high-caliber sources is starting to slide, raising concerns that the credibility of the medium may follow.

A range of factors contribute to the problem, from the speed at which reporters are expected to produce and the demise of beat reporting to a reduction in the number of seasoned staffers (and the institutional knowledge they possess) and insufficient rewards for reliability, the experts say.

“As newsrooms continue to expand their news holes, we have just a huge amount of news time to fill, and in most cases just not nearly enough people to do it well,” says Poynter’s Al Tompkins.

One culprit is the growing use of time-savers like online sourcing services (to say nothing of all those “experts” who offer themselves in your email inbox) in lieu of cultivating relationships.

The services, which promise to save reporters time by doing some of the initial legwork for them, aren’t inherently bad things. But that they encourage time-strapped reporters to cut corners — properly vetting sources and determining whether they’re a fit for stories — most certainly is, many observers say.

“I don’t have anything against the whole idea, but you have to know who you are talking to and what makes them an expert,” says Tompkins. Without doing so, journalists run the risk of using only sources “with a certain voice, and those voices are represented by publicity agents.

“What you end up with there is using people who are either relatively well known, don’t say anything surprising and may or may not know what they are talking about,” he says. “It’s just that they are available.”

Peter Shankman, founder of the popular sourcing service Help A Reporter Out, or HARO, agrees that such services can be misused.

“The key is nothing has changed in 100 years,” he says. “The onus is still very much on the reporter to determine whether the expert is real or full of s—.”

“Technology is not designed to allow reporters to forgo anything,” Shankman says. The Internet makes it as easy for a “shyster” to peddle himself or herself to a reporter as a “Ph.D,” he says.

Before using any source, reporters need to know how that individual got his or her information, and what they expect to get in return for sharing it, Tompkins says. “Everybody who supplies you with information or aggressively pursues doing an interview has a motive, and you have to ask that question.”

Reporters need to put a higher value on sources’ credibility than availability no matter how attractive the latter is, he says, noting that some sources have their offices outfitted with equipment for broadcasts.

“We can’t settle for someone who is not the best source but will give us a great sound bite and, by the way, can they be available on Skype?” Tompkins says.

Steve Cohen, news director at KUSI San Diego, has taken steps to prevent the pitfalls of insufficient sourcing, which include requiring on-air experts “be trained in the exact field or discipline to offer comment.”

“Our goal is to present experts with direct knowledge in their discipline and not allow a transfer of authority that is inappropriate,” he says. While a psychiatrist who specializes in depression would be a fitting source for a story on Robin Williams’ suicide, a family psychologist would not be, he says.

“When we explore Ebola serums we want clinicians and scientists, not public health experts. If we do a story on ALS, we want the researchers finding a cure, not the local ALS [organization] executive director,” he says.

Boyd Huppert, the veteran KARE Minneapolis reporter, says he is committed to going  “old school” when it comes to sourcing stories.

“I’ve never used an Internet sourcing service and delete most emails from ‘experts’ seeking reporters out,” he says. Instead, Huppert relies on the sources he’s built up over time — many come from reliable outlets like local universities, government agencies and businesses — that provide “solid information time and again on which to build a story.”

All of which points to reporters having to return to independent sourcing in order to avoid the “tremendous problems” that can result from information gleaned from unknown sources, says RTDNA Executive Director Mike Cavender.

“The due diligence that has to be done by everybody is not less but even greater than it once was,” Cavender says. “You don’t get a pass on that simply because there are more ‘sources’ who are making themselves available.”

Read other Air Check columns here. You can send suggestions for future Air Checks to Diana Marszalek at [email protected].