Trust in distant sources: An analytical model capturing antecedents of risk and trustworthiness as perceived by journalists

The trustworthiness of journalistic sources has always been a crucial element of journalistic working patterns and gained recently prominence in the public discourse about spectacular verification fails. To ensure the correctness of news, journalists have to trust their sources to deliver reliable information. This article explores trust building processes in the relationship between journalists and distant sources they access online. Sociological and psychological trust literature and research on credibility are used to develop an analytical model of reflexive trust in journalistic sources. Based on qualitative data from 12 in-depth interviews with German journalists, the model is applied to relationships between home-based journalists and sources based in crisis regions.