A source was counted when it was deemed to have contributed to the construction of, or was included in, a news story. Numbers were used on the coding sheet to indicate the order that each source appeared in, and these numbers corresponded to other variables on the coding sheet such as, gender, age, religion, political affiliation and so on. There were also certain categories of sources that could be defined further and their specific names entered into a space on the coding sheet. This was done for Think Tanks, NGOs, Pressure Groups and Trade Unions. The rationale behind this was that if one of these four types of sources
appeared often enough when it came to the data inputting and analysis they would appear as a standalone source. This was similarly used for the “other” category where if something appeared often enough to be significant when it was input and analysed the source became a standalone variable. For instance, sources such as “family/friends”, “student” and “prisoner”
were created in this way.
The list of sources that could be coded for was as exhaustive as possible to ensure that there were not too many “others” found in the sample, and that each source category would be mutually exclusive. This meant that the sources used in news reports were separated into an extensive list of categories. The following list shows a selection of the UK political source categories:
PM (Prime Minister)
Government Minister
Leader of the Opposition
MP (General)
Government Department
Civil Servant
There were anonymous political sources which rather than coding as anonymous came under broader categories such as “Labour”, “Conservatives”, and “Lib Dems” etc. This
differentiation of different source types was carried out for all expected major source categories that were going to appear in the news.
Separating sources in this way meant that the coding would be as systematic and straight forward as possible, reducing the potential for error. The amount of categories reduces the possibility that a source could potentially be coded in two different categories. When there were instances of sources where their category was uncertain this was discussed within the coding team and a decision about where the source should be placed made. The decisions made over where to categorise a source would then be entered into the coding manual for
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future reference. An example of a source of this type was political Special Advisors, because whilst being part of the Civil Service they are political appointments, and there was a
category for political party members. The team discussed Special Advisors and decided that they should be coded as Civil Service but their political affiliation should also be coded.
Sources, however, were not just coded for when they appeared. They were broken down into how they appeared, or more accurately how they were used in the construction of, or included in, the stories as follows:
Direct Speech – This means that the source has been used directly as in the source speaks directly on screen or voice in radio.
This was different for the online stories where direct speech was coded when the source appeared in quotation marks.
Reported Speech – This is where the source is quoted or paraphrased by the
presenter/programme and does not appear directly. When reported speech is used by a presenter/programme it tends to be preceded by key words such as “said”, “admitted”,
“stated”, “revealed”, “announced” and so on.
An example of each of these types of speech can be found in a Newsnight story about immigration figures on 29 October 2007. In the segment David Cameron, as Leader of the Opposition, appears directly on screen to talk about the figures. Whereas the Labour
“government” is said to have “admitted” that immigration figures were wrong but did not appear directly on screen.
First an example of direct speech from David Cameron appearing directly on screen:
Something we got wrong was trying to combine Asylum and Immigration together and what actually we have done here, which I think is right, is to say, let’s look at the part of immigration we can actually control and that is immigration by people from outside the European Union that are coming here to work, that is something we can and should control, as part of a sensible policy on population, so we don’t put too much pressure on schools and hospitals and housing so we can really deliver the things people in this country want.
Second an example of reported speech from the presenter reporting on what the government had said:
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The government admitted there are hundreds of thousands more foreign nationals working in the UK since 1997 than the figures they had released.
The statistics contained in this report are reported and direct speech added together.
Source Demographics
It was not just the appearance of the sources that was coded for. Other attributes of the sources were also recorded to further breakdown and attempt to gain the best picture of the breadth of opinion. These are the other categories that sources could be coded for:
Political Affiliation – This was recorded when the political affiliation of a source was explicitly stated e.g. Labour Leader Ed Miliband. The list of political affiliations covered all of the main political parties in the UK as a whole, and in the devolved parliament and assemblies of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It also included smaller, but prominent political parties like UKIP.
Length of Time (or words if online) Allocated to Each Source – This is the time allocated for each source which was the total amount of time that a source appeared/spoke in direct speech per story.
Type of Evidence Used by a Source When Expressing Their View/Opinion – This was recorded when a source provided evidence for their opinion, and this type of evidence ranged from public opinion to government reports.
Gender – The gender of the source was recorded but the gender had to be obvious such as being visible on screen or audible.
Visible disability or Impairment – This was only recorded if the disability or impairment of the source was visible on screen or explicitly stated.
Age – The ages of the source were only recorded when they were visible on screen, and these were placed into age ranges.
Nationality – This was recorded in a similar way to political affiliation in as much as it was only recorded when the nationality of the source was explicitly mentioned. For example,
“Dutch Prime Minister”.
Ethnicity – The ethnicity of the sources were recorded when they appeared on screen or when the source’s ethnicity was explicitly mentioned.
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Religion – This was recorded in a similar fashion to Political Affiliation and Nationality and was recorded when the religion of the source was explicitly mentioned. However, religion was also recorded when a member of a particular religion, a Rabbi for example, appeared but if no religion was explicitly stated they would have been recorded as Jewish.
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i These periods were selected to avoid major events which would distort comparison, to fit with the BBC Trust’s cycle of reviews, and to ensure full archive material for comparable periods was available.
iiAppendix 1 describes the process whereby relevant stories on the three topics were identified in both broadcast and online samples.
iii A decision was made to include up to 16 sources for each story to account for a broad range of sources.
There were just 10 stories in Study 1 which had more than 16 sources. These were mostly from Your Call programmes. We decided that changing the coding framework to include a larger number of sources would over represent “members of the public” (i.e. audience members calling in to the radio programme) as a source category compared to others, and would also overcomplicate our statistical analysis by introducing a large number of additional source variables. Nonetheless, the stories that featured more than 16 sources were, by their very nature, also likely to include a broad range of opinion, and therefore were included as a prominent part of the qualitative analysis reported here.
iv This statistic excludes the Today programme’s Thought for the Day, which skewed the sample given that they almost always used religious leaders as the main source.
v This is also true when taking out “Thought for the Day” – where religious leaders are always the main source.
vi We did not count comments (including Editor’s Picks) on online stories as sources, but included them in our qualitative analysis.
vii It should be noted that international political sources, such as the China Communist Party and the US Republican Party are clearly only relevant to international stories.