Silly Season puts credibility at stake : Sports journalisms challenge

This study aimed to examine Swedish sports journalists' experiences, opinions and ideas about how source-criticism works in sports journalism. We wanted to understand how they work with source management to maintain high-quality sports journalism, but also to investigate what challenges linked to source-criticism they are fighting within their daily work. Also, study whether this work differs between journalists at local versus national level. To approach this we carried out a qualitative study based on ten interviews with Swedish active sports journalists, five working for local newspapers and another five working for national newspapers. The theoretical framework for this study is source theory and news-value theory. The results show that there are overall positive opinions about how the sports journalists themselves work with source-criticism. However, there is potential for improvement, mainly the respondents mention the problems with rewrites and football journalism's "Silly season" as problem areas. We discuss whether a development where demands for a high pace and reduced resources affect the sports journalists' source-critical view. And if it is negatively affected, what risks to happen with the credibility of sports journalism