The Information Hierarchy and Concentric Circles of Sources - American Press Institute (2023)

You can categorize the information you have into a series of concentric circles.

The innermost circle is the information you know firsthand. You stand on the corner and see a dump truck go through a traffic light and hit a bus.

The next circle is the information you have second-hand. They're drinking coffee at a sidewalk cafe and someone runs for help, saying they just saw a truck hit a bus.

The outermost circle is third-hand information. You're in the newsroom and you get a call from someone in the coffee shop saying they heard a truck hit a bus.

Most of the information edited by journalists is in the second or third circle. But most facts fall into the first inner circle, usually from a participant, an eyewitness, or physical evidence.

This does not mean that the narrowest perspective is the truest or even the most accurate. Eyewitness descriptions of suspects, for example, are often unreliable. Also, integrating a journalist into a train doesn't necessarily convey the true picture of a major war.

But failing to find and verify basic facts is equally problematic. Bad facts create inaccurate assumptions. In the information hierarchy, a story based on inaccurate assumptions will eventually collapse.

With each concentric circle of information advancing, your guard must be higher and higher for verification.

Basically, it boils down to a hierarchy of information. What comes closest to an eyewitness account is factually better than what is secondhand.

Case study: The making of Gabby Giffords

The concentric circles and the best sources for the most accurate facts will likely change throughout history. Sometimes it can happen very quickly, in minutes or hours, while other stories can happen over a period of days or even weeks.

For example, in the first hours after a gunman shot dead Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others, six of whom died, at a constituent meeting in January 2011 in a suburb of Tucson, there were at least three separate sets of concentric circles.

The first set of circles was on site, a parking lot across from a supermarket. The people closest to the event, the participants and eyewitnesses, provided the most accurate accounts of what really happened (there are surveillance camera footage, but they have never been released).

They saw the gunman shoot Giffords and then the crowd seemingly at random. Witnesses said the gunman stopped to reload but dropped the loaded magazine onto the sidewalk, where a passer-by grabbed it. Meanwhile, another passer-by hit the attacker on the back of the head with a folding chair. Then a 74-year-old retired army colonel, also wounded, knocked the gunman to the ground and others swarmed over the man until police arrived. An intern on Gifford's staff put pressure on the gunshot wound to her forehead, making sure she wasn't choking on blood while a married doctor and nurse went shopping at a nearby store to triage and treat the most seriously injured.

These descriptions were lively, emotional and very personal. Accounts of participants at the center of a concentric circle are often intense and narrowly focused, limited to what they saw, felt, and did.

A clerk at a nearby store saw nothing, but said he heard "15 to 20 gunshots."

The first reporter to arrive was Peter Michaels, news director for the local NPR affiliate, who had been alerted by his wife, who was shopping at a nearby store.

Michaels got close enough to see "at least five bodies, adult bodies, strewn on the sidewalk in front of the store under the Gabrielle Giffords Congress on your Corner sign. I saw the congresswoman slumped in a corner with an apparent gunshot wound to the head. She was bleeding from her face. She wore a red dress. Seconds later they placed her on the stretcher. According to Michael's report, NPR was the first national news organization to publish breaking news.

During the first hour of filming, information came from sources near the concentric circle of the crime scene. The details revolved around "what," "when," and "where": specific facts that were usually accurately reported.

But then the story shifted to another place, the hospital where doctors were desperately working to save Gifford's life. This second concentric circle was in an operating room and the best sources - its doctors and the next of kin and staff the doctors can talk to - could not be reached.

Thus, news organizations are beginning to trust sources at the farthest reaches of the circle, in one notable case a few thousand miles away. They also recycled sources from the scene of the shooting and began speculating based on eyewitness accounts that Giffords was seriously injured, perhaps fatally.

An hour after the shooting, NPR incorrectly reported that Giffords was dead.

Other news organizations picked up the bulletin and repeated it on air and online, most citing NPR. Fox News and CNN went a step further, saying they "agree" with NPR's story from their own sources.

So what happened? Afteran account by Alice Shepard, according to NPR's Ombudsman, editors are beginning to rely on second- and third-hand sources. In other words, information coming from people too far from the center of the concentric circle, or the wrong circle altogether.

One report came from a local NPR reporter (not Peter Michaels) citing "Pima County Sheriff's sources." The other was an unnamed person at a congressional bureau who was contacted by an NPR congressional correspondent and "confirmed" Giffords was dead.

So Shepard said, "NPR had two sources, although neither was identified in any way and should have been identified." Additionally, "a key question for each source was, 'How do you know that?' It turns out that none of the sources had accurate first-hand information. A congressional source heard this at a meeting on Capitol Hill where rumors and half-truths were undoubtedly circulating."

Shepard quotes local NPR reporter Mark Moran as saying his information came from "law enforcement sources, another reporter from his news organization, and very old reports on NPR.org." "I was very confident in the two sources that I had, but unfortunately those sources depended on other sources, almost like a cell phone tag game," Moran said.

An hour and a half after the shooting, the hospital confirmed that Giffords was operating but alive, so doctors and her husband informed reporters.

As the story progressed, the shooter and the police became involved in a third concentric circle. Who was the suspect and were others involved? What were your motives? What physical evidence was there? Why could this happen? And could anything have been done to prevent or mitigate the slaughter?

The most credible sources for this third phase of the story were police investigators and prosecutors, who were more readily available to journalists. As long as they withheld some information, they could at least confirm or deny what reporters heard from others or found out for themselves.

Over time, this third set of concentric circles became institutionalized, even codified, in the trial at which the suspect was found fit to stand trial, eventually pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of a trial. Parole.

No doubt other concentric circles can be found in this example. However, the point is the same for all of them. The people closest to the center of the concentric circle probably have the best "dates" for that phase of history. However, as the story progresses, the circles change and so do the best sources of facts.

This guide, like many others in API's Journalism Fundamentals section, draws heavily on the research and teaching of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, a consortium of reporters, editors, producers, editors, owners, and academics that has facilitated discussion for the past 10 years . among thousands of journalists about what they did, how they did it and why it mattered. The author, Walter Dean, was CCJ training leader and former API CEO Tom Rosenstiel, who previously served as committee co-chair.