jill/txt
Hmm, Jill, what exactly did your friend claim that Sigurd Allern, Sigurd Høst and the institute of journalism say about journalists and citing sources? I'd very much like to hear that, because citing sources (particularly when cutting from other newspapers or using press-releases from information centers or PR-offices) is one of the things our students find that journalists are chronically bad at. If Sigurd and Sigurd have made any reports contradicting this I would very much like to know.

As for the research of Sigurd Allern, he's mostly concerned with the manipulative powers of the sources, not the lack of precision in journalism, Nils Øy is concerned with the publicity principle in Norwegian legislation and how it's influencing the working conditions of journalists, while Sigurd Høst, the one who might have worked at a level of detail required to be able to check something like this, is more concerned with how people use the media, and statistics of the development of norwegian newspapers.

The one woman who keeps appearing on the list of publications from the Institute of Journalism, Henny Wale, I don't know. Now that's something to consider. The three men are the ones who get invited to lecture in Volda, where only men teach journalism (I teach Media Theory and Public Relations). But that's a topic for Hilde, I think.

The researcher who might do work on this is Svein Brurås, who's working on a Ph.D. on journalism and ethics, a colleague of mine. But he hasn't, as far as I know, published anything showing whether journalists are notoriusly bad at citing sources or not. His work is more normative, discussing what ethical journalism should be.