[MUSIC] Welcome back to Be a Journalist. I'm Dave Poulson, and in this lesson, we're going to be talking about sources. Now, remember that sources are the building blocks of good journalism. They build stories, but more important, they build credibility. But they only build that credibility if they're good and reliable sources. Sources are where we get our information. And for this discussion, I'll break them into three groups. Sources generally are people, documents, and images. Let's talk about people first. Now the most reliable person who is a source is likely yourself. You can trust yourself, right? Say you're at the Superbowl and you watch Peyton Manning throw a touchdown pass. You know it's him because you know his number, and you recognize him when he takes off his helmet. You don't have to ask any of the tens of thousands of fans at the Superbowl if that was Manning. You saw him yourself, and you can report that. It would be silly to say that the coach said that Peyton Manning threw a touchdown when you and millions of others saw him do it. Here's another example. Say your outside a bank that gets robbed, you watch the crook speed away in a brown car. You saw it, so you can report that the crooks sped away in a brown car. But the problem with being your own source is that you can't be everywhere, and you can't know everything. There's a whole lot of news going on at places you are nowhere near and about things with which you are unfamiliar. Ultimately, we have to rely on other people. Many of those people are witnesses. Often journalists who interview people, saw or experience newsworthy things and they report what those people said that they saw or experienced. And a sort of subset of witnesses would be victims. Victims must be sensitively interviewed, but they can be enormously helpful. They obviously had a front row seat to the crime or the accident or the war or the other newsworthy event that victimized them. But what's more, they directly show us or tell us the consequences of that crime or accident or other event. They describe in a very powerful and meaningful way the impact of events. Now, politicians and government officials are another group of people often used as sources. And yes, politicians may sometimes bend the truth. And often, government officials are bureaucratic and well, pretty boring. But these people are important sources because they are supposed to be making decisions with our best interest in mind. We need to know what they're saying, we need to know what they're deciding, we need to know how they're spending our dollars. That way we can hold them accountable for whatever it is that they really end up doing. A special category of people sources are experts. Journalists use them all the time to boost their accuracy and to enhance their credibility. These are people who have specialized credentials and expertise. Say if a bridge collapsed, you could call me up, and ask me what I thought caused that catastrophe. I might even tell you. But what do I know about bridges? I teach journalism. And your readers would be scratching their heads wondering why I was spouting off about structural engineering. And that doesn't do much for your credibility. Instead, I recommend you call one of my colleagues in the engineering department, they know about structures, they're experts. An important, but often overlooked people source, are just ordinary folks. Often, it is enlightening to get the perspective of people who are neither powerful nor expert. They may represent an important demographic, or are simply affected by the news of the day, and that's an important voice and it's one that we shouldn't overlook. Now documents are another kind of source. Either electronic or paper, and we'll talk more about those in another lesson. Just know that there are millions of them, and some that are very helpful records of decisions, of actions, of processes, of data and analysis. But there are two big challenges with documents. First, it's finding the ones you need and want. And the second is translating them so that the public doesn't have to read them all. It's kind of your job to wade through it and figure out what's important. Last, lets look at images as a specialized set of documents. They can contain important information. But perhaps, more important, they can convey important information in a engaging manner. Here's an example. I could write you a sentence that says it hasn't rained in half a year. That is concerning, but that same message could also be conveyed with a dramatic image of parched crops poking up through cracked and dusty soil. And I'd call that a powerful bit of journalism, much more powerful than that lame sentence I just wrote for you. The cool thing about images as a source is how powerfully they deliver information. And journalists weave all these kind of sources, people, documents, images, into a narrative that tells important stories. It is these sources that are the foundation of all journalism. So build a solid foundation. Use good, trustworthy, credible sources. [MUSIC]
