Local newspaper journalists are too keen to take information given to them by press and PR offices and reproduce it without question, according to a new survey.

The damning report states: “While many of the news stories sourced in this study probably do have a place in a local paper, stories which have little weight are being elevated to significant positions, or are filling up news pages at the expense of more important stories that, put simply, are being missed.

“The result is often bland, banal copy at best, and free advertising and propaganda at worst.

“All these trends are a serious threat to local democracy, the public interest, public trust, the local public sphere, and standards of journalism.”

Academics at Leeds Trinity and All Saints University carried out a study on four local newspapers – the Halifax Courier and the Yorkshire Evening Post, both owned by Johnston Press, the Huddersfield Daily Examiner, owned by Trinity Mirror, the Newsquest-owned Bradford Telegraph and Argus.

Deirdre O’Neill and Catherine O’Connor presented their findings to an international conference on the Future of Newspapers at Cardiff University.

‘The Passive Journalist: How sources dominate local news’, found that most news reports used no discernable secondary sources, excluding alternative perspectives from news stories, so that primary sources were shaping the resulting articles.

The research has implications about the quality of information provided by local papers, including the issue of balance, transparency and trust.

It was carried out to find how sources influenced the selection and production of news and how much this left the role of the local journalist as passive.

The authors said that despite a trend towards graduate employment, turnover of staff on local newspapers is high, and career prospects are poor.

They suggest it is such an environment in which it became “all too easy” for journalists to become dependent on pre-packaged ‘news’ from resource-rich public relations organisations or the routine source or re-writes of news agency copy.

Deirdre told holdthefrontpage: “I recognise they are doing an extremely difficult job in extremely challenging circumstances.

“The study tells us something that is going on at local newspapers at the moment, and I accept it’s not providing all the answers.

“We would have liked to have gone into these papers to gain a different insight.

“And we sent copies of the paper off to all the relevant editors to open a constructive dialogue but none got back to us.”

The report cited a shortage of time and resources as a possible factor in relying on single sources for stories.

It said that the stories using single sources, 76 per cent of those examined, were rarely contentious or critical of the source providing the story.

Of the 24 per cent of articles with a secondary source, most were still framed by a primary source, with a brief alternative quote added at the end.

“What this means in practice is a formulaic style, superficially giving the appearance of ‘objective news’, but which fails to get to the heart of the issue, or misses the real story,” the report concluded.

“Our findings suggest that a reliance on single sources for stories, probably due to a – sources now adept in the skills of presenting a positive public image – is probably a significant contributory factor to uncritical reporting.

“By wringing out every last drop of profit, the owners of regional papers are producing newspapers that reveal contempt for their readers.

“While editors preach the virtues of interactivity with communities, parent companies pursue policies and profits that serve to undermine contact with the public and journalistic endeavour and enterprise.

“At the heart of the debate about declining sales is the realisation by readers there is precious little in their local paper that is engaging, trustworthy, or that reflects the genuine concerns of local communities and gives local people a voice. Unless the local press improves standards of journalism, the health of local papers will continue to decline.”

Courier editor John Furbisher hit back, saying: “Rest assured we are in touch with our readers on a daily and hourly basis – we talk to them, they talk to us and we listen.

“Sadly, the study is lacking in academic rigour.

“It doesn’t say how they decided where stories were sourced – and the truth is they guessed or assumed. A lot of people who tell us things, including readers, do not want to be indentified in print and so would not be readily detectable as a source.

“The researchers claim to have uncovered a recent phenomenon – yet they don’t marshall any evidence that anything at all has changed. Then they lazily blame editorial budgets for an ‘alarming trend’ – a trend they didn’t even prove in the first place.”