How Journalists Describe Their Stories: Hypotheses and Assumptions in Newsmaking

Abstract

Interviews with newpaper reporters showed that journalists, like scientists, usually had hypotheses in mind in working a story. Unlike those of scientists, however, journalists' hypotheses were both explicit and implicit. About half the time, journalists articulated definite competing hypotheses, haf the time not. Alll journalists going into their reporting harbored assumptions about their story subjects. Future research would do well to determine if, and how, such hypotheses and assumptions bias subsequent information gathering.