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A number of studies consistently point at the disproportionate focus on elite news sources such as men in government and business while women, minorities, and working-class people are shown to be underrepresented as sources in the news. At the same time research reveals that soundbites from sources are shrinking while reporters are taking up increasingly more news airtime. In a society that rests on democratic ideals about the mass media's facilitation of a pluralistic public debate, these findings provoke concern. Virtually all studies on sourcing focus on newspapers and nightly television newscasts. This content analysis of 291 news stories focuses on tabloid and traditional news magazine programs. The findings of this study provide some support for the concerns about whose voices are heard in the news. Moreover, striking differences between tabloid and traditional news magazine sourcing patterns are revealed.
Grabe et al. (Tue,) studied this question.