Credibility and the Media as a Political Institution

Abstract

Credibility is frequently represented as both an ideal goal for journalism as a profession and as an integral part of the news industry’s survival strategy. Yet there is no widely accepted operationalization of the concept of credibility. In the current article, we present the results of a study of credibility in Danish news media. Credibility is defined at an institutional level by two dimensions: A) the accuracy and reliability of the news stories featured in leading Danish news media, and B) journalists’ knowledge and understanding of the Danish code of press ethics. The results show that sources only find objective errors in 14.1% of the news stories, which is a lower figure than most other studies report. The results also show that Danish journalists find bad press ethics to be an increasing problem and attribute this problem to increased pressure in the newsroom.

Keywords

• credibility
• new institutionalism
• denmark
• press ethics
• accuracy
• news media