Journalistic Authority: Legitimating News in the Digital Era

by Matt Carlson

When we encounter a news story, why do we accept its version of events? Why do we even recognize it as news? A complicated set of cultural, structural, and technological relationships inform this interaction, and Journalistic Authority provides a relational theory for explaining how journalists attain authority. The book argues that authority is not a thing to be possessed or lost, but a relationship arising in the connections between those laying claim to being an authority and those who assent to it.

Matt Carlson examines the practices journalists use to legitimate their professional orientation, development of specific news forms, and the personal narratives they circulate to support a privileged social place. He then considers journalists' relationships with the audiences, sources, technologies, and critics that shape journalistic authority in the contemporary media environment. Carlson argues that journalistic authority is always the product of complex and variable relationships. Journalistic Authority weaves together journalists’ relationships with their audiences, sources, technologies, and critics to present a new model for understanding journalism while advocating for practices we need in an age of fake news and shifting norms.

264 pages, Hardcover

Published May 23, 2017

Reviews

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good work, Matty! Interesting critique of the surveys that measure trust in journalism, bringing up some points I hadn't really thought much about before. Would be interesting to consider, more than a year into the Trump admin, journalist's authority has been altered, if it has. I loved the quote about being listened to as the essence of authority.

[Anjali · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ooooo I loved thinking with Carlson about the authorised knower, deviance, discourse, and relational development of journalistic authority. Super useful!