Access journalism
Type of journalism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Access journalism, or access reporting, refers to journalism (often in interview form) which prioritizes access—meaning media time with important, rich, famous, powerful, or otherwise influential people in politics, culture, sports, and other areas—over journalistic objectivity and/or integrity.[1][page needed]
Features
Typical features of access journalism include:[2]
- absence of demanding accountability towards the questioned respondent
- avoiding controversial topics so as to maintain access to the respondent
- can be vague and non-specific
- pre-approved questions, no gotcha questions, softball questions
- sometimes even respondent's control over how the interview will be edited and which parts will be aired
- can be published quickly and distributed widely
Access journalism, in some cases, is similar to infomercials, or advertising disguised as news. The venture of doing the interview can be symbiotic—beneficial for both the journalist and the celebrity, since it can synergically bring more attention to both of them, and further notability, influence, media exposure, current relevance, etc., for both of them.[3]
Access journalism has been contrasted with accountability journalism.[4] A similar contrast is between lapdog journalism and watchdog journalism.[5]