<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>In this article, we examine how journalists try to uphold ideals of objectivity, clarity, and epistemic authority when using four overlapping terms: fake news, junk news, misinformation, and disinformation. Drawing on 16 qualitative interviews with journalists in Denmark, our study finds that journalists struggle to convert the ideals of clarity and objectivity into a coherent conceptual practice. Across interviews, journalists disagree on which concepts to use and how to define them, accusing academics of producing too technical definitions, politicians of diluting meaning, and journalistic peers of being insufficiently objective. Drawing on insights from journalism scholarship and rhetorical argumentation theory, we highlight how such disagreements reveal a fundamental tension in journalistic claims to epistemic authority, causing a continuous search for unambiguous terms, which in turn produces the very ambiguity that journalists seek to avoid.</p>
</abstract>

In this article, we examine how journalists try to uphold ideals of objectivity, clarity, and epistemic authority when using four overlapping terms: fake news, junk news, misinformation, and disinformation. Drawing on 16 qualitative interviews with journalists in Denmark, our study finds that journalists struggle to convert the ideals of clarity and objectivity into a coherent conceptual practice. Across interviews, journalists disagree on which concepts to use and how to define them, accusing academics of producing too technical definitions, politicians of diluting meaning, and journalistic peers of being insufficiently objective. Drawing on insights from journalism scholarship and rhetorical argumentation theory, we highlight how such disagreements reveal a fundamental tension in journalistic claims to epistemic authority, causing a continuous search for unambiguous terms, which in turn produces the very ambiguity that journalists seek to avoid.

Facts, values, and the epistemic authority of journalism: How journalists use and define the terms fake news, junk news, misinformation, and disinformation

Nordicom Review

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

In this article, we examine how journalists try to uphold ideals of objectivity, clarity, and epistemic authority when using four overlapping terms: fake news,...

	Broadsheet newspaper	Public service broadcaster	News magazine	Digitally native news outlet	Total
Interviewees’ affiliation	7	3	3	3	16
Journalistic institutions	3	3	2	2	10

Facts, values, and the epistemic authority of journalism: How journalists use and define the terms fake news, junk news, misinformation, and disinformation

Published Online: Apr 20, 2024

Page range: 137 - 157

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2024-0016

Keywords
fake news, junk news, misinformation, disinformation, journalistic objectivity, journalistic ideals

© 2024 Johan Farkas et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

Overview of interviewees’ professional affiliation and news institutions

Facts, values, and the epistemic authority of journalism: How journalists use and define the terms fake news, junk news, misinformation, and disinformation

Published Online: Apr 20, 2024

Page range: 137 - 157

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2024-0016

Keywordsfake news, junk news, misinformation, disinformation, journalistic objectivity, journalistic ideals

© 2024 Johan Farkas et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

Overview of interviewees’ professional affiliation and news institutions

Keywords
fake news, junk news, misinformation, disinformation, journalistic objectivity, journalistic ideals