Perceived News Credibility In Reporting Controversial Issues

News credibility has been a vital research subject in journalism.Many scholars have studied source credibility,message credibility and medium credibility,assuming audience will judge news in the same professional way as scholars and journalism practitioners do.To test the validity of such assumptions on news credibility,this author conducted interviews with journalism students(N= 9)and non-journalism majors(N= 13),trying to find the"credibility gap" between the two groups.Research results showed that there is an obvious"credibility gap" between the two groups.Meanwhile,journalism students showed less situational factors than non-journalism majors,which proves that media literacy is an essential mediator to cognition need.In the present paper,Chapter 1 introduces the theoretical background of the current study and the case to be analyzed-2016 Hangzhou G20 summit.Chapter 2 reviews the main theoretical framework adopted to guide the present study.Chapter 3 delineates the research design,including the research participants,methods and the conduction of individual interviews.Chapter 4 reports the major findings of the interview.Results showed that media literacy is a crucial mediator for cognition need,which was shown by the fact that journalism students have less situational factors when judging news credibility.The findings also prove the importance of media literacy education from a young age.Chapter 5 discusses some suggestions to improve China's international reporting.