Abstract
The relationship between journalists and their sources is significant for the way it may, or may not, serve the information needs of the news audience. Changes in the media environment, such as citizen journalism and video documentation of police abuse have created challenges for accountability journalists who cover law enforcement. This project uses long-form interviews with such journalists to examine their relationships with law enforcement sources, their experiences covering police, and how they perceive their professional identities. We find that relationships once often marked by positive mutual interest have become more competitive and contentious. The consequent degradation of cooperation between two major public institutions may have deleterious effects for U.S. democracy.
Introduction
The police murder of George Floyd, recorded clearly on video, caught the world’s attention and inspired hundreds of protests and vows for reform (Edmonds, 2023; Richardson, 2024). Floyd’s death, along with other recordings of police abuse, changed civic conversations about public safety (Araiza et al., 2016; Browning et al., 2021; McClure et al., 2026). Mounting evidence of police wrongdoing and coverups also changed the relationships journalists have with their police sources (Farhi and Izadi, 2020; Johnson, 2024). This study examines how journalists perceive their professional identity and their relationship with sources, specifically reporters who cover police and who see themselves at least partly in a “watchdog” or “critical monitorial” role (Bennett and Serrin, 2005; Hanitzsch and Vos, 2018; Karadimitriou et al., 2022). We find that changes to the public perception of police as well as police behavior have created new tensions between these journalists and their law enforcement sources, signifying a shift from a tradition of mutual benefit to a far more contentious relationship.
This project uses interviews to examine the way this relationship has changed in the wake of renewed attention from the public on police accountability. For decades, police and journalists had a relationship that was hardly perfect but nevertheless usually mutually beneficial. Journalists relied on police agencies as elite sources for daily crime reporting, and in return police enjoyed positive public relations (Chermak and Weiss, 2005; Wilson, 2000). This balanced relationship has been disrupted by, among other things, smartphone video evidence depicting police violence (Bock, 2016). Interviews with reporters can illuminate how this disruption is changing the way some think about their reporting practices, professional identity, and ethics.
Literature review
In spite of its democratic imperative, the daily practices of journalism often favor those in power (Reese, 1991). Journalists rely on elites for access to information and develop source relationships that shape coverage (Usher, 2021; Varma, 2025). In the case of crime news, police sources have traditionally dominated the agenda (Harris, 2022; Walters, 2024). Recent challenges to police authority have disrupted the way journalists conceive of their sources, their practices and their professional identity (Brown and Rottman, 2024).
Journalistic identity
In the U.S., journalism has always been somewhat porous because guarantees of speech freedom prevent the formal licensing of practitioners. In the 1900s, ties to a formal news organization, commercial or not, usually marked whether someone was in or out of the profession. Even this line was imperfect, though, as free-lancers and journalistic authors could also claim membership (Carlson, 2017). Today, while a degree may help a graduate enter the field, it is not what makes a person a journalist. Zelizer (1993) approached this issue by extending the literary and anthropological notion of an interpretive community to journalism. That is, the profession is bounded by discourse, or the stories journalists routinely share with each other about “certain constructions of reality, certain kinds of narratives and certain definitions of appropriate practice” (p. 223). The “stories” Zelizer cites have been theorized as metajournalistic discourse, defined by Carlson (2016) as public expressions evaluating news texts, the practices that produce them, or the conditions of their reception (p. 350). In combination, these two concepts, the interpretive community and metajournalistic discourse, have proven helpful to scholars interested in understanding how journalists identify themselves and conceive of the boundaries of their field.
Discourse may be the mechanism for the constitution of an interpretive community, but it does not describe the characteristics of that community. Deuze (Deuze, 2005) identified five tenets of journalistic ideology: public service, objectivity/neutrality, independence, a sense of immediacy and ethics. These tenets work in concert, as Deuze argued, “Although journalists worldwide disagree on whether a code of ethical conduct should be in place or not, they do share a sense of being ethical—which in turn legitimizes journalists’ claims to the position as (free and fair) watchdogs of society” (p. 449). Each tenet is woven into everyday practices for journalists, who have a sense of a larger purpose but still must meet deadlines and serve their organization, which in the U.S. is usually commercially supported. This line of tension between ideals and grounded practice runs through many studies of the way journalists work and the way they perceive their role in society (Carlson, 2016; Tuchman, 1978; Weaver and Willnat, 2012). Because journalism blends a way of thinking with a way of doing, the work becomes, for many, a way of being. As a journalist operating in Gaza put it to the Columbia Journalism Review, it is “a sentence for life” (Bose, 2024). The ideology of journalism makes it more than a job but form of identity.
Importantly for this project, journalists in the U.S. are debating conventional conceptions of objectivity and its ethical significance. The notion that journalists should be objective is relatively new, historically speaking, and has been a perennial concern in the field since the late 1800s in the U.S., as news organizations attempted to become non-partisan and factual (Durham, 1998; Esser and Umbricht, 2014; Schudson, 2001). Some media scholars have argued that objectivity was borne of commercial influences (Carey, 1983), but Schudson (2001) has argued that the primary driver was the desire by journalists to enhance their professional authority. Schudson (2001) also pointed out that as soon as journalists embraced this norm, it was criticized as impossible, inauthentic and ineffective (Durham, 1998; Ryfe, 2014; Stoker, 1995). Recent critiques are significant because of the degraded boundaries of journalism and its loss of trust with the audience (Eddy and Shearer, 2025). The Black Lives Matter movement, which peaked during the 2020 protests of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police, renewed the debate as critics called attention to the way “objectivity” has been historically defined in newsrooms: by white, heteronormative (or closeted) men (Konieczna and Santa Maria, 2023; Mellinger, 2013). In 2025, the Columbia Journalism Review even asked whether objectivity was worth pursuing (Gerstein and Sullivan, 2025).
This indictment of objectivity is rooted in what critics call a “view from nowhere,” an impossible neutral subject position (Cunningham, 2003; Gerstein and Sullivan, 2025; Mellinger, 2013; Usher, 2021). The “view from nowhere” has been shown to actually be a view from those with gatekeeping power (Gans, 1979; Stoker, 1995; Tuchman, 1978). Tuchman’s classic article, “objectivity as strategic ritual” (1972) showed how reporters relied on sources to describe reality rather than their own observation. Stoker (1995) based his argument against traditional objectivity on a police reporter who became an inauthentic “spectator” when he realized that the facts of a case did not match police accounts. Yet the demands of daily journalism continue to compel reporters to rely on “rituals” of objectivity and on elite sources of information. Those sources happen to be in powerful positions who then shape the way events are framed. This “official dominance model” favors those in power, or as Lawrence (2000) points out, “objectivity” thus becomes reporting “what happened” in a way that is least likely to be criticized by those in power. This overreliance on elites can lead to journalism that neglects the powerless and marginalized (Usher, 2021; Varma, 2025).
As remedy for the inherent bias of one demographic group controlling most journalistic decisions, Durham (1998: 127) called for “strong objectivity” that “involves a reformulation of the term ‘objectivity,’ taking it away from any notion of eradicating bias toward a method of acknowledging and incorporating bias into the structure of the scientific method.” Recent debates among journalists about objectivity have also reflected on care ethics, which rely less on Enlightenment-inspired rules for individual behavior and more on considerations of the complexities of human connection (Pixley, 2025; Varma, 2025). As journalists, their critics and their sources contend with evidence of racial injustice and patterns of police abuse, traditional conventions for reporting practice are up for renegotiation.
Sourcing, power and practice
A reporter’s contact list defines them; to be “well-sourced” is to achieve career status (Carlson, 2009; Edy et al., 2024; Strentz, 1977). As Chibnall put it in his influential case study of reporters on the police beat, “Access to high quality information depends on the reporter’s ability to cultivate relationships with strategically well-placed sources” (Chibnall, 1975: 54). While it’s true that journalists are trained to remain skeptical with sources, they must also stay connected. Reporters cultivate relationships with people who have access but maintain professional distance even when they might be in conversation on a daily basis in ways that feel like friendship.
Carlson (2009) identified three ways to describe journalist-source relationships. The first, dubbed the “dance,” is a matter of symbiosis, in which sources and journalists work to mutual benefit—what Gans (1979) observed. Carlson’s second category, “domination,” suggests that the relationship is less a matter of quid-pro-quo, arguing that sources have more power over the news (Hall, 1978; Schudson, 2003; Tuchman, 1978). Power is always woven into the source-reporter relationship, as Reese (1991) argued, though it is not static. Carlson offered a third lens, “dueling” which describes sources in competition with journalists. Because digital media allow elites direct access to audiences, this notion of the journalist-source relationship as a competition is increasingly salient, whether for the way national leaders use social media or legislatures produce their own video feeds (Jacobs, 2019; Nielsen, 2024).
Chibnall’s case study was titled “The Crime Reporter,” yet he argued—presciently— that his subjects really ought to be called “police reporters,” which is a common name for the beat today. The reporters he studied tended not to interview criminals, but law enforcement. As Lawrence (2000) argued, this means that the police perspective has generally shaped coverage. American journalism has traditionally relied heavily on law enforcement as a source of news, which for many decades was advantageous to police public relations (Kaniss, 1991; Motschall and Cao, 2002). This heavy reliance on one institution’s perspective at the expense of those being policed has drawn criticism from scholars, activists and abuse victims for decades and even has a nickname, “copaganda” (Balko, 2021; Karakatsanis, 2025).
Law enforcement’s relationship with journalism is consequential for all concerned. If the state is a geographically bounded institution that “claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of force for itself,” then police are its embodied enforcers (Dreijmanis et al., 2007: 127). In a democratic society, the public must consider police power to be legitimate. Simply put, police cannot function without the public’s trust (Meares, 2022; President’s Commission, 2020; Tyler, 2005; Tyler and Fagan, 2008). In the past, this meant working closely with news organizations to maintain their legitimacy (Chermak and Weiss, 2005; Wilson, 2000). Crime news is a staple for local journalism, especially TV news, not only for its dramatic narratives and ties to public policy, but because it is inexpensive to produce when compared with less tangible or localized topics (Chiricos et al., 2000; Lipschultz and Hilt, 2002). The close working relationships between police and local journalists could be described according to the traditional “dance”: officers would provide information about investigations, tip off photographers to major arrests, and in exchange be able to count on news organizations to positively cover news conferences about drug busts or even feature stories about light-hearted weight-loss competitions between police and firefighters.
When reporters cover problems in police departments, however, law enforcement asserts its power (Reynolds, 2021). One way to control news organizations is to “shut them out,” or refuse to provide any information or interviews. For example, an investigative reporter who covered several discipline problems in Roswell, Georgia, was subsequently barred from covering an award ceremony in the municipal building, a public space (11Alive WXIA, Atlanta, 2018). In Chicago, the Fraternal Order of Police declared it would refuse all cooperation with certain reporters from the Chicago Tribune in response to coverage of the misconduct trial connected to the 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald (Bock, 2021; Chicago Sun Times, 2019). (One of this article’s authors was a reporter at a TV station in the 1980s that was “shut out” by the local police department as punishment for unflattering coverage.) Police public information officers (PIOs) are likely to disagree that they hold the power in this relationship. Police officers often feel misunderstood by the public, journalists and academics (Perlmutter, 2000). Yet because they often control access to information and physical space, police often have the upper hand in the source-journalist relationship —until or unless they are faced with evidence they cannot explain away.
Police accountability and the news
Smartphones and social media have changed the nature of the relationship between police and reporters (Allan, 2013; Richardson, 2020). With a video camera in their pocket that can reach the world instantaneously, many individuals can and have participated in what Lasica (2003) called “random acts of journalism.” Some have done so spontaneously as they witness breaking news (Reading, 2009), police violence (Schmidt and Apuzzo, 2015), or racist behavior (Farzan, 2018). The combination of believable photographic evidence and easy distribution has inspired more organized police accountability activism, or cop watching, a phenomenon that started with the introduction of small, lightweight video cameras in the 1990s but took off as smartphones extended into everyday life (Bock, 2021; Schaefer and Steinmetz, 2014; Simonson, 2016).
Evidence from smartphone video has inspired new conversations about police accountability in the U.S. (Chang, 2020; Clark, 2022). Journalists, in turn, have been faced with evidence of their own neglect of marginalized people and overreliance on police accounts of events (Harris, 2022; Walters, 2024). Anger over critical coverage and the affordances of social media have also changed the way officers interact with citizens and news organizations, and, in turn, the relationship journalists have with their police sources (Brown and Rottman, 2024; Crump, 2011). Once considered reliable authorities about crime and public safety, many police agencies are now in doubt, as video evidence and related investigations uncover wrongdoing, cover-ups, and patterns of prejudicial behavior (Associated Press, 2019; Bauer and Gash, 2020; Berman, 2021). Digitization cuts both ways, however, for while citizen videos of police misconduct inspired protests and calls for reform, social media have also allowed law enforcement to bypass news organizations and communicate directly with the public (Crump, 2011; Grygiel and Lysak, 2020). The tensions of the current political, social, and media environment present a compelling motive to examine the way journalists perceive their sourcing relationships with law enforcement.
Summary
Confronted with police abuse documented on camera and unprecedented hostility from police agencies, contemporary journalists are forced to adjust the way they work and think about their role. What happens when a significant source of information turns out to be untrustworthy? How do journalists who have relied on police information for their daily work adjust to the loss of those sources? More formally, we propose the following research questions to address the current moment: How do journalists describe the effect of the changes in the police-source relationship on their journalistic identity and on their practices? Qualitative questions of this kind are well-suited for interview research (Tracy, 2013). To that end, we conducted interviews with journalists about police accountability and their work.
Method
Using purposive sampling (Campbell et al., 2020; Seidman, 2006), we identified U.S. professional and citizen journalists who report on the police. The initial sample was supplemented using snowballing (Charmaz, 2002; Tracy, 2013). Although participants worked across broadcast and print media and in diverse geographical regions, we did not seek a nationally representative sample of public safety reporters. As part of a larger study on “community oversight” (defined as “means by which a community ensures accountability and transparency of law enforcement”), we interviewed 88 individuals (including journalists) whose actions seemed to contribute to this end. Thus, our journalist subsample reflects an interest in exploring this concept (community oversight) rather than an attempt at understanding how police beat journalists in general experience their work. We conducted 13 semistructured interviews with journalists in person, by phone, or by webcam between December 2020 and February 2025. Each lasted between 30 minutes and 1 hour. We interviewed eight women and five men ranging in age from their mid 20s to early 60s. Many worked in multiple media, but seven worked primarily in print, three primarily in broadcast media (two television and one radio), and three primarily online. The interview group included two Asian Americans, two Hispanics, one African American, and eight European Americans. Most were contacted because of their published work and were contacted “cold” via email, their professional website, or social media private message. Two were recommended by other interviewees and only one was already acquainted with a coauthor (via professional circuits). We found that many journalists were reluctant to be interviewed—four (identified here by pseudonyms) chose to remain anonymous, while nine went on the record. More than a dozen declined to be interviewed or did not respond to repeated requests. Our final sample includes several reporters with decades of experience each as well as two young reporters with only a few years’ experience, while most have between 10 and 20 years on their beat.
It’s important also to remark on our own reflexivity. One author is a former journalist who had a police and crime beat for decades and has studied the role of video evidence gathering in the police accountability movement. Another has personal experience with citizen oversight, serving for several years on local police oversight boards. The third has no significant connections to law enforcement. All of the authors openly support peaceful citizen witnessing and oversight.
Findings
Three interrelated themes emerged from the data: (1) journalists’ challenges covering police and protests, (2) journalistic qualifications and responsibilities, and (3) the transparency and trustworthiness of police sources. Although they came from varied backgrounds, all described increased difficulty covering policing in the years following the rise of national calls for greater police accountability. They also recounted heightened uncertainty about the value of journalistic qualifications and the added responsibilities journalists face in an increasingly technological era. Finally, the traditional relationship, as fraught as it was, between journalists and law enforcement sources has become even more strained.
Covering police, covering protests
Nearly all participants expressed concerns arising from covering police protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and other events. Miles Moffeit, a reporter formerly from the Dallas Morning News, described the impact: It was a tremendous wake up call. The demonstrations in Dallas got abusive. We had one officer who basically rounded up a lot of Blacks on a slope just outside of downtown…And a Latina woman protested him doing this, and he takes this pepper gun rifle, and she’s standing four feet from him, and he blasts her in the breasts with pepper balls…So yeah…then we learned that [the officer] had not been disciplined for what he did to her. And we researched his background going back 20 some years and found that he had done this kind of thing over and over without punishment.
Despite being a seasoned investigative reporter, Moffeit still found himself shocked by the treatment of protesters by the police.
Cerise Castle was an associate producer with KRCW in Santa Monica when the protests following Floyd’s murder erupted: Castle: And when people started going out onto the street and protesting, I said to my bosses “Look, I want to cover this. I want to be at those protests.” And I did that and it kind of went badly for me personally. Interviewer: How so? Castle: I was shot by a police officer [with a rubber bullet].
Castle live-tweeted, “I was holding my press badge above my head” immediately after the incident (Drury et al., 2020). Rather than distinguishing between Castle and the protesters, police caught her in the front line of fire. Stories like this led to speculation at the time that some police deliberately targeted journalists (Tracy and Abrams, 2020). Leo and Moffeit deliberated in their interviews about the proper role of a journalist covering protests. For Castle—who, unlike Leo and Moffeit, is Black—her identity as a journalist did not differentiate her from the protesters in the eyes of the police officer who took aim and fired at her. Journalists have historically relied on police for access to information, encouraging close relationships between reporters and law enforcement. However, police misconduct—including attacks on the press—can fracture those relationships.
Journalistic qualifications & responsibilities
Interview participants on occasion expressed criticism or dissatisfaction with covering police because of the journalistic profession’s norms. The challenges they encountered covering police and police accountability movements even led them to question the practices that ground their journalistic identities. “Leo,” a young reporter near the start of his career, expressed a commitment to “fair and factual” reporting, but questioned the larger profession’s concept of “objectivity”: I guess I personally thought that—think that the police…need to be held accountable. So, I kind of pursued stories that were more critical of the police. And I really listened to the people that were critical of the police but when writing those stories, I’d also always reach out to [the police] and get their view on things. And I’d try to write things in…a fair and factual [manner]…But not necessarily objective because that’s kind of impossible.
His struggle to be fair strikes squarely at the question of how the collection of facts, quotes, and observations can be packaged in a way that is considered “objective.” The quandary presented by objectivity in practice has inspired many journalists to rely on the practice of transparency.
Annie Gilbertson, a radio journalist, expressed concerns about not asking the right questions or not being investigative enough, while also emphasizing the role that journalists play in transparency: “I think that the news media definitely plays a role in accountability for law enforcement. Or lack thereof, because a lot of times the right questions aren’t being asked.” Gilbertson first expresses conviction that the media helps enforce accountability in law enforcement. However, uncertainty about journalists consistently asking effective questions leads her to suggest that this failure contributes to a larger absence of credible news coverage. Yet Gilbertson stops short of saying what the right questions might be or why reporters might not ask them.
Tony Plohetski, an Emmy-award winning print and television reporter, questions using cops as sources. Reflecting on the media’s coverage of the police response to the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, he observed: We were told, you know, that the police performed heroically, [that] but for their fast work…more children or teachers would have perished …And then to see the images and the striking video of them not doing what they were trained to do and not doing their jobs and not intervening—certainly I think that put an exclamation point on the role of journalists and journalism in terms of making sure that what we are being told is accurate and true and authentic.
The videos in question were only released months after the incident and only in response to a lawsuit filed by media organizations (Ibarra et al., 2024). Plohetski puts an emphasis on the difference between what the spokesperson said about the role the police played versus the truth of their tragic inaction. Journalists are thus put in the middle, aware that police might not be sharing the whole truth but often lacking access to other sources.
Moffeit described the hazards of pursuing accountability in the face of power in an episode that ultimately led to his resignation: I left under duress because, after publishing a project, the beginning of a series called “Black and Blue” about the history of police brutality in Dallas, the chief city manager, [the] mayor, [and] a lot of district attorneys started criticizing the piece and holding meetings with my manager. A lot of these meetings I wasn’t privy to, which is a really bizarre turn in my career. I mean, I always anticipate a lot of criticism, and it can last months following a project, but in this case, it was very much both a nightmare and a cosmic joke.
In a battle between exposure and law enforcement, journalists often come out on the losing end. Some other interviewees suggested that an all-out commitment to reporting the truth means being willing to engage in the fight, or “duel,” to use Carlson’s terminology. Brendan Smith is best known for suing the Chicago Police Department to obtain the release of footage related to the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald in 2014 (Southall, 2015). He put his sentiments bluntly in describing his departure from professional journalism: “So I had…ostracized myself enough…I was doing enough of my reporting…through [open records requests] by that point that I didn’t care what bridges I burned. That seems important. You really just…have to be willing to burn your bridges.” At the time of our interview, Smith had left the profession.
Sources, transparency & trust
Participants consistently criticized police lack of transparency. As noted above, scholars have written at length about the subject of police departments “managing” public relations by controlling information. Nadya Markowska, a citizen journalist, expressed particular frustration at the difficulty of accessing public records: The biggest challenge is that if you're not some sort of really mainstream news outlet or mainstream reporter or somebody who has a sort of rapport with the police, there’s really no way to get information out of them without going through the proper bureaucracy. And if you’re trying to go through the proper bureaucracy, you’re not going to get anything, because they’ll just sit on [the information] until you can’t get it.
Although access poses difficulties for all journalists, it has particularly profound consequences for those working outside of established outlets. Markowska combines her frustrations with a deep suspicion that delays and barriers contribute to a police monopoly of the ability to define the “dominant narrative” (or dominating narrative): As you probably know, with records laws, they're like, “Okay, yeah. We have these records. It'll cost you $500, though.” “Can I have a fee waiver?” “No.” So, that's the biggest challenge, is that [the police] simply just don’t talk, and they don’t want to talk. That way, they always have the dominant narrative, and no matter how hard you try to challenge that narrative, they always have the authority to push back. And they’ll always…win just from the amount of resources and time and capabilities they have.
Markowska published primarily on low-barrier platforms like Medium and through her own website but has since left journalism.
Just because working for an established news outlet makes access easier, doesn’t mean that it’s always possible to get records. Even established journalists need cooperation, and that cooperation can come with strings that transform Carlson’s dance into a scenario of domination. Gilbertson comments on how important it is for journalists to hold law enforcement accountable even so: I think that we need journalistic people … [as] kind of a mechanism of oversight for the public to get those stories and information out to people. And there should be more of it. I think that we’re seeing the decline of people being able to do that because of budgets. So yeah, I think you vitally need journalists as part of the watchdog.
Gilbertson identifies a constant struggle with people in law enforcement, while emphasizing the importance of the resourceful role that “journalistic people” play in exposing the powerful even as local news is being gutted.
Creating and maintaining trust between police and the communities they serve is necessary for the police to be effective. This kind of trust, however, is impossible without the kind of transparency that journalists advocate for. When members of the public discover that police fail to be transparent, trust disappears. This happens when police departments mislead, withhold information, or attempt to kill critical stories. As Plohetski indicated, competition between journalists and police in explaining events for the public is not only a concern in large cities, as law enforcement holds significant power in mid-sized and small communities.
Discussion
The interviews analyzed for this study suggest that changes in the media environment have impacted how journalists perceive their jobs and relationships with police sources. The shift in this source-reporter relationship strikes deeply at journalists’ sense of professional identity, as objective arbiters of events. Reporter-source relationships have always been marked by differences in larger institutional goals. Journalists have an identity tied up in public service, independence, and ideals of objectivity, transparency, and facticity. Their work is often at odds with public officials, who need to work efficiently, contend with social complexity, and make difficult decisions. Each has a gatekeeping function with the civic audience. When the reporter-source relationship is healthy, it is possible to balance competing impulses in the best interest of the public. These relationships may last years and involve daily social interaction, especially for beat reporters, who interact closely with their sources on a regular basis in ways that might sometimes seem like friendship. True friendships, however, require mutual esteem and a balance of power. Digitization has enabled the circulation of video evidence of police abuse, direct communication with the public through social media that bypasses news organizations, and citizen participation in the media sphere.
Carlson’s (2009) three-part “dance, domination, or duel” typology of reporter-source relationships provides a helpful lens for understanding the shift. This work answers his call for an examination of these relationships “from a wider, external standpoint, taking into account the competition over meaning” (539). The journalists we interviewed were keenly aware of this competition and its professional risks. They reflected variously on what it might mean to rethink their symbiotic relationship to police. Leo believes there is a proper balance that journalists can achieve, balancing perspectives from both the public and law enforcement. Gilbertson seemingly agrees, finding that in that process of balancing, journalists fail the public by not asking the right questions.
Journalistic identity enlists objectivity as a central value. However, the notion of objectivity is not stable. There is a thin line between neutral reporting and highly skeptical reporting. During interviews, journalists expressed concern with continuing to appear objective to their law enforcement sources in keeping with the official dominance model (Lawrence, 2000). “Brynne,” a former reporter for one of the largest newspapers in the country, noted a “fear that law enforcement’s going to get a hold of this interview and say, ‘See you’re biased because you had some negative experience and then you went and covered the police.’” Brynne did not want to give the impression that she was out to get the cops. When asked directly, nine of our interviewees recalled an influential personal experience with law enforcement: six in youth and three as adults. One initially said they had none but then recalled several later in the interview. While these journalists seemed aware that they might be accused of bias, none felt that their experiences biased their coverage. Four did not recount any negative personal experiences with law enforcement, and two only recalled positive ones. In their professional careers they all exhibited a commitment to journalistic ideals like objectivity but approached the risks to their jobs and reputations differently.
Around the world, journalists debate issues such as whether they should be politically neutral or serve as government watchdogs (Weaver and Willnat, 2012). Yet while they may debate the details of their social role, journalists tend to share a sense of public service, a desire to get information out quickly, and commitments to facticity and transparency. Speed and transparency pose a challenge to the relationships our subjects have with law enforcement. For example, Plohetski suggests that reporters need to demand transparency from law enforcement to deliver information to the public. Police, however, may not be in a hurry to provide information during an investigation or when it reflects poorly on their actions. Fighting with police for information has consequences. While some are cautious of this, Smith believes it may be necessary to burn source bridges in the public interest. Together, our findings suggest that while journalists may still hope for relationships of mutual interest in public service, the current environment poses significant challenges.
Conclusion
This study uses interviews to extend theoretical constructs regarding journalistic identity and source relationships. Our findings suggest that shifts in the digital media environment have disrupted long-standing relationships between journalists and their sources in law enforcement. The version of this relationship labeled as a mutually beneficial “dance” by Carlson (2009) seems to be fading. The journalists in our study seem to recognize the ways police have historically held a dominant position in their relationship with the public, which means the “duel” seems increasingly relevant. This duel is problematic for the public, because the degradation of cooperation between two major public institutions interferes with the delivery of information necessary for democratic deliberation. More simply put, when police and reporters are in conflict, the public loses.
Some journalists have reconsidered the way they covered crime and police in the wake of the George Floyd protests, shifting their emphasis from daily crime events to public safety(Moreno-Medina et al., 2025). Others have adopted approaches known as solutions journalism, which aims to help the audience understand what might be done in response to social problems (McIntyre, 2019). Similarly, some reporters are embracing “solidarity journalism,” which endeavors to include those who are affected by an issue as sources and avoid writing stories based solely on official accounts (Varma, 2025).
Limitations to our study include geography, as we only interviewed U.S. journalists. We also didn’t compare what they said they did with what they actually did by cross-referencing their interviews with their reporting. Further, while we used open coding to analyze the interviews, we did so with journalistic boundaries, practice, and identities in mind, so our interests guided the process. Some interviews conducted earlier were part of a larger project on community oversight, so questions of oversight were particularly salient and earlier interviews were not conducted with questions of journalistic identity at the fore.
Public safety is literally a matter of life and death, and the relationship between police and journalists has an impact on what the news audience knows and understands about law enforcement in their community. Future work that compares what journalists say they do and the work they actually produce would augment this project. Interviews with law enforcement are essential to understanding how their relationship with the press can be improved. This study found that the new media environment has affected the way police and journalists interact, and how this in turn is reflected in journalistic identity. More work is necessary if we are to learn how the reporter-law enforcement relationship can best serve not its participants, but the public each is expected to serve.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all of the journalists who shared their experiences with us.
Ethical considerations
This research was approved by the University of Texas at Austin Institutional Review Board (STUDY00002352).
Consent to participate
Respondents gave written consent for review and signature before starting interviews.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data Availability Statement
The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.