Journalistic authority: Legitimating news in the digital era

摘要

The aim of Matt Carlson's latest book, titled Journalistic Authority: Legitimating News in the Digital Era, is to suggest a theoretical model through which the state of journalistic authority -the right of journalists to tell the news and be listened to - can be assessed in practice. This assessment, Carlson iterates, is particularly useful for those who care to observe, study and explain changes occurring in such status, especially so the ones inflicted on journalism through the dynamics of its close connection with the digital reality of the last few decades. The main question that the book purports to answer is where journalists, the mediators of the public's understanding of social reality, base their assumed credibility. The answer to this question is Carlson's theoretical contribution, his relational model of journalistic authority.