The use of reliable sources is crucial for journalism because the public tends to believe only in the verified information. This happens due to the fact that the journalists are largely dependent on their sources, which has a certain (mostly positive for the public) influence on their opinions (Rouner, Slater, & Buddenbam, 1999). The following analysis of four business items is going to show the importance of relevant sources for the credibility and reliability of the information presented in the article.
The first article is “Vulture fund swoops on Congo over $100m debt”. This business news article outlined the most recent “vulture fund” case against the Democratic Republic of Congo. Vultures cause numerous legal claims, as well as can sometimes lead to disharmony in bankruptcy (Regan, 2005). For instance, TransAfrica also campaigned for the need to legislate protection against vulture funds and their corporations into encroaching in poor countries (Stewart & Seager, 2009). In a case with Congo, the debt reached around $100m with the country’s legal council objecting to the penalty. Eventually, the World Bank declared Congo’s inability to afford its debts. The sources of this news item are numerous. The author refers to Stephen Cundra, a lawyer from Congo, Nick Dearden, Jubilee Debt Campaign Director, and Tamara Gaw, a counsel of TransAfrica Forum. Such a variety of sources and Dearden’s referring to The World Bank while making the comments makes the article highly reliable and objective.
The second business item is titled “Wanted: Work (Pay Not Required)”. It presents the discussion of the job market development over the past several decades. Matt Egan, the author of the article, interviews people to find out their ideas about the current rate of unemployment. Due to the fact that competition in the job market is extremely high now (Horrigan, 2004), there appeared a tendency to hire volunteers to work for startup companies. The article discusses the pitfalls of such practices. The sources which the author uses are not numerous, but they are quite valuable. To support his arguments, he refers to the comments of Julie Greenberg, a co-founder of Jobnob.com Web site, Charlie Hoehn, an unemployed graduate who looks for a job, and Cheryl Cavanagh, a director of an executive search firm. These people personally deal with the issue discussed in the article, which makes them relevant sources of information. The public is likely to believe this article because the sources make it verisimilar.
The third article is “Insurance complaints soar as times get tough”. The news article reports about the increase of complaints against insurance companies which have increased to 20% as compared to the previous year. The increase has been associated with the recession as people find ways to buffer job loss through income and mortgage protection insurance. However, insurance company Tower Health and Life declared that these measures are imperfect solutions as they only cover the percentage lost in income during an accident or illness (Milner, 2009). In this article, Milner refers to such sources as Grant Hill, head of products for Tower Health and Life, and Karen Stevens, an Insurance Ombudsman. Though these sources are quite valuable, they are not enough to make the article reliable and objective. This news item lacks an example of a company that has experienced complaints on the part of its consumers. Therefore, it may be regarded as informative and relevant, but not as objective and reliable for the number of sources referred to is insufficient.
The final article is “Jobless Data Unsettles European Markets”. This article concerns the world economic crisis and its influence on the entire world with unemployment rates and stocks being discussed in particular. The article addresses a number of economic issues for the world crises usually reveal fundamental economic weaknesses of the countries (Kivimaki, 2000). This article informs about the current position of the Asian stocks, the state of shares on Wall Street, the worsening of the economic situation in Europe with the markets dropping and unemployment increasing, and the like issues. The only source used in this article is Jennifer McKeown, an economist at Capital Economics. She makes prognoses regarding the rates of unemployment and possible recoveries in consumer spending (Jobless Data Unsettles European Markets, 2009). Though her comments are quite valuable and suitable, the article still does not ensure any trust. The author uses a number of data and does not state where these data come from. This makes the article unreliable and the only source used means that it may be biased.
Therefore, only two of the articles under consideration may be regarded as credible and reliable. The sources indeed have a great influence on the readers’ opinions about the news items and those articles which seemed biased or unreliable mostly contained an insufficient amount of sources, especially in a case with the latter article where only one source unknown to the public was used.
Reference List
- “Jobless Data Unsettles European Market”. (2009).
- Egan, M. (2009). “Wanted: Work (Pay Not Required).”
- Horrigan, M. W. (2004). “Employment Projections to 2012: Concepts and Context BLS Projections Are Carried out against a Background of Explicit Assumptions and Model-Based Findings That Connect the Past to the Future.” Monthly Labor Review, 127(2): 3.
- Kivimaki, T. (2000). “U.S.-Indonesian Relations during the Economic Crisis: Where Has Indonesia’s Bargaining Power Gone?” Contemporary Southeast Asia, 22(3): 527.
- Milner, A. (2009). “Insurance complaints soar as times get tough,” Web.
- Regan, M.C. (2005). Eat what you kill: the fall of a Wall Street lawyer. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
- Rouner, D., Slater, M.D., & Buddennaum, J.M. (1999). “How Perceptions of News Bias in News Sources Relate to Beliefs about Media Bias.” Newspaper Research Journal, 20(2), 41.
- Stewart, H. & A. Seager. (2009). “Vulture fund swoops on Congo over $100m debt: Anger as war-torn DRC racks up massive fines”