REPORTERS AND THEIR SOURCES
Firstly, to understand about Reporters and Their Sources, we must first understand what is meant by sources with reference to context…
Sources can be best describes as a document or person which provides us with information for a period of time to be a news source. There are many sources for Journalist to work upon like police stations, courts, leak documents, officials in government or even in business or it could be witnesses of crime, people affected by various thing or even by news event or issues.
The main duty of journalist is to generate ideas at a constant phase on the field they is working on.
In journalism, a beat is described as an area of specialization where you have developed sources and have proven your expertise with your published stories. Journalist working in their beats like crime reporting, education, financial news, politics etc and in order to find what best they can do in their specialized field, they need true sources in order to work on that information, they need to find every angle of the story as well as every small details along with that.
Good journalism is only ever as good as the sources of information. Many of the sources are personal, many are official, and some will remain anonymous whistle-blowers.
Since Journalism has matured up to great extent and took many big leaps, it has been playing a very crucial role in almost every fields. So it is important for Journalist to make sure that the information they are provide the people with should be true at all costs to avoid unnecessary actions . So, journalist needs to be as transparent as possible in their relations with sources.
Journalist have to estimate the vulnerability of sources as well as their value as providers of information. They should not, except in the most extraordinary circumstances, use deception in their dealing with sources.
Protection of sources is well recognized in international law aa a key principle underpinning press freedom. It has also specifically recognized by the United Nations and the council of Europe.
Journalist Have to make their own decisions, based upon conscience and their own responsibility, but revealing a source of information is never to be taken lightly.
As it will never be known that who will benefit if the source is revealed or who will suffer and who will lose.
Sometimes journalist also make the mistake of getting too close to their sources. They sometimes create relations that are ambiguous and can easily be undermined. Powerful sources have their own agenda and accepting what they say without question crosses an ethical line and compromises newsroom independence.