This paper investigates the transparency of journalists’ methods of newsgathering in New Zealand. By examining media coverage of genetic engineering, the study reveals that reports lack explicit markers of place, time and means by which the information has been obtained; the paper explains how this ambiguity leads to disappearance of context and it demonstrates that there is a link between the use of sources and the precision of news. It also discusses how the disappearance of newsgathering transparency alters knowledge about a subject, and indicates that the process might be related to a specific, Anglo-American understanding of objectivity that resists the practice of “interpretative” reporting.

In this paper, we delve into the rapidly evolving challenge of misinformation detection, specifically focusing on the nuanced manipulation of narrative frames, an under-explored area within the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community. The potential for Generative AI models to generate misleading narratives highlights the urgency of addressing this issue. Drawing from communication and framing theories, we posit that the presentation or ‘framing’ of accurate information can dramatically alter its interpretation, potentially leading to misinformation. In particular, the intricate user interaction in social networks plays an important role in this process, as these platforms provide an unsupervised environment for disseminating misinformation among individuals. We highlight this issue through real-world examples, demonstrating how shifts in narrative frames can transmute fact-based information into misinformation. To tackle this challenge, we propose an innovative approach that leverages the power of pre-trained large language models and deep neural networks to detect misinformation originating from accurate facts, which are portrayed under different frames. These advanced AI techniques offer unprecedented capabilities in identifying complex patterns within unstructured data, critical for examining the subtleties of narrative frames. The objective of this paper is to bridge a significant research gap in the AI domain, providing valuable insights and methodologies for tackling framing-induced misinformation, thus contributing to the advancement of responsible and trustworthy AI technologies. Several experiments are conducted, and the experimental results explicitly demonstrate the various impacts of elements of framing theory, thereby proving the rationale for applying framing theory to increase performance in misinformation detection.

Covering terrorist attacks has posed numerous challenges to mainstream media across the world. Bringing information to the public quickly remains a primary goal for news media, but the journalistic duty to tell the truth comes with an increased responsibility for the accuracy of reports. When news is broken by civilian eyewitnesses and is posted by social media before it has even gone through the barest of verification checks, news media editors struggle to fulfil the task of informing the public while reporting on stories that hold the potential to alarm the audience. This paper offers some insights into the ways the New Zealand news media organised reporting on the March 15th terrorist attack in Christchurch. Based on face‐to‐face interviews with selected editors of major news organisations in New Zealand, it investigates the ways they operated in this situation. It explores key moments in editorial decision making on 15 March 2019, the first day of coverage of the terrorist attack. It focuses on the ‘first responder’ elements of news media work – speed and accuracy in providing information about the mosque attacks – to identify how journalistic norms are adapted and changed to report this breaking news.

This article examines editorial discourse and newspapers' production of `common sense' in relation to issues of public concern. Using a case study of editorials published on genetic engineering in New Zealand, the article discusses how discursive characteristics of one journalistic practice (reporting facts in the `news') influence another journalistic practice (expressing opinion in the `editorial'). Focusing on the newspaper genre that communicates `views', the article investigates the manner in which editorials achieve their persuasive goals, and examines how particular components of journalistic discourse, such as headlines, topics and the editorial structure, contribute to public discussion about important issues in society.