The data available for Italy offer some insights on the distinction between elite and institutional sources (e.g., politicians, officials, governments), civil society sources (labour unions, environmental groups), and non-elite sources, and prospective ones that do not possess the authority to attract media attention (Kleemans et al., 2017; Manning, 2001). A comparative content analysis involving eleven countries showed that in Italy, approximately seven of ten news stories made use of just one source. With regard to official sources in the news, “Italy has the single most dramatic result”, and government sources enjoy considerable attention and are regularly over-represented (Tiffen et al., 2014: 383).
Agcom periodically retrieves data from journalists, revealing that personal contacts are still the most common source of information. As Cornia (2014: 54) puts it, journalism in Italy is highly opinionated because it usually reports the opinions of political sources. The use of personal contacts as sources is the practice that most embeds political parallelism (Mancini, 1999). As Esser and Umbricht (2013) affirm, the importance of personal contacts in Italian journalism is also due to the polarised multi-party system that provides access to a broader range of voices in the political debate.
Additionally, Agcom shows that the use of news agencies is a prerogative of the richest newsrooms, generally digital media linked to traditional media outlets. Italy presents an important and well-rooted national news agency, Ansa, which is enlarging its audience in the digital environment.
Press releases are a different matter. There are just a few studies on Italian journalists’ uses of press releases, but according to Agcom’s data, nearly two-thirds of journalists use press releases as one of their main sources for producing news. This is the case for magazines in particular, whose news is more specialised (e.g., fashion, sports, electronics, software) and where there is a more direct link between journalists and public relations professionals.
However, recent studies of the local online journalism environment (see Splendore, 2017c) show that the chances of minor (in terms of power and influence), non-elite, and non-professionalised sources becoming accessible and reliable are greater in digital than in traditional media environments. Interviews with newsroom members of leading media confirm the importance of news agencies. “For television news, agencies are crucial, we are around two-thirds of all the material. In foreign news, not having correspondents, almost everything comes from the agencies”, explains newsroom member of TgLa7. “Agencies are fundamental, they represent a large part of the work we do”, confirms newsroom editor from SkyT24. With regard to the specific domain of politics, however, it is the personal contacts that are predominant, compared with the agencies or other types of sources. “Talking about politics [agencies] count a little less, that is mainly made up of personal sources”, the newsroom member of TgLa7 explains again. This position is confirmed by his colleague at Tg1: “We produce the Italian parliamentary video material in autonomous way”. Another interesting hint on the diversity of sources that can be used comes from Tg1. Being a public service provider, it is a member of the European network of Broadcasters (EBU), hence it can rely on “forms of partnership and collaboration between public services and TV that adhere to the network. The exchange of images and films is absolutely horizontal and symmetrical”.
