News Literacy: the role of the expert in news messages

Abstract

The boarders of expert knowledge are studied in this article. The author tries to define who can act as an expert in relation to news issues and to label problems in line with  the  existent  definitions  associated  to  experts.  To  a  great  extent,  it  concerns  different  media  sources  that  serve  as  a  collective  expert;  it  also  concerns  top  leaders  and  repre-sentatives of power because the issue of their responsibility as a distinction can be argued from different perspectives. The analysis of the limits of power among experts is based on a sample of texts published by the Novosti-Moldova news agency in December 2014 and on interviews with the editors-in-chief of various media platforms in the Republic of Moldova. Data  on  the  number  of  experts  in  texts,  opinion  consistency,  and  the  degree  of  the  local  binding of news drivers are given in the article. The centres that can affect the agenda are also discovered. The leading role among the factors that are likely to limit the power of ex-perts is assumed by the communicative situation that denotes the person who comments as an expert. At the same time, it assigns the news driver for the comment so that the expert is beyond the area of his/her professional competence. Another factor presumed to lower expert influence is the choice of a certain media platform that usually relies on a particular group  of  people  who  are  invited  to  submit  a  comment  that  coincides  with  the  policy  en-dorsed by this selected platform. The procedure of text checking prior to publication is also significant within this context. This type of checking is used in the case of long interviews and is rarely used with short comments. The power of the expert is limited by a journalist in this case, because he/she introduces the comment in the form of either direct or indirect speech. Indirect speech is usually used in relation to the comments that do not coincide with the edition policy in the current sample.