Sourcing international news: a comparison of five Western countries' newspapers.

Wang, Guofeng

1. Introduction

The press in the West is usually believed to do better in conforming to the professional demands of objectivity and balance norm, especially in terms of selective articulation of certain voices, however, the structural distribution of sources is believed to reflect journalists' attitudes and news stance (Scott et al., 2010; Schneider, 2011; Stromback et al., 2013). In general, the news coverage of international affairs involves nationalistic and ethnocentric aspects (Bennett, 1990; Cohen et al., 1996; Hachten and Scotton, 2007, Kim and Lee, 2008). To examine how the press covers a certain international event and how news sources play a part in framing the news, this study chooses the coverage of Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute in the mainstream Western newspapers as an example.

Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute between China and Japan has been one of the most difficult and enduring territorial disputes in the world, for it involves security and economic interests, historical elements, and symbolic significance (Wiegand, 2011; Nagy, 2013). Known as Diaoyu in mainland China, Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyutai in Taiwan, it concerns five islets and three rocky outcroppings close to rich fishing grounds and with possibly rich oil reserves in the area, whose vicinity to the key shipping lane signifies 'the demarcation of the Sino-Japanese maritime boundary' (Pan, 2007: 87). Mainland China and Taiwan argue that documentary evidence indicates Chinese possession prior to the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) and the Japanese seizure in this War should be returned as the rest of Imperial Japan's conquests in 1945 at the end of the World War II (Shaw, 1999). However, the United States took over the island chain as part of the Ryukyu Islands. In July 1971, its administration was returned to Japan despite official protests from the mainland China and Taiwan (Kato, 2013). Although the U.S. declared not to take sides in the dispute, the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands is included within the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between it and Japan. Followed by on-and-off collisions between Chinese activists and fishing boats, and the Japanese Coast Guard, the competing sovereignty claims have been suspended until the Japanese government purchased three of the disputed islands from their 'private owner' in 2012 despite the U.S.' dissuasion, which prompted large-scale protests in China, resulting in the most serious situation for Sino-Japanese relations in the post-war period. On Nov. 23, 2013, the Chinese defense ministry took further action by claiming to set up 'East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone' around Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, receiving a wave of objections from the countries in the Asia-Pacific region (the United States and Australia included) and leading to a more complex situation.

As for an issue like this complicated Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute, it seems predictable that the newspapers in the West should balance the sources, however, the balance of news sources does not necessarily mean that they construct the similar news frame.

Theoretical Framework

News frame involves coherent packages of information containing 'a central organizing idea or story line that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events' (Gamson and Modigliani, 1987: 143) despite a fragmented paradigm of frame theory due to the absence of a common theoretical framework (Entman, 1993; Scheufele, 1999). The coherent construction of an issue centrally involves selection and salience with the aim at promoting a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation (Gamson, 1992) by selecting some aspects of a perceived reality and making them highlighted in a communicating text (Entman, 1993).

As a necessary part of news stories, sources influence the construction of meaning (Gamson et. al, 1992; Gamson and Wolfsfeld, 1993) and serve news frame. On the one hand, journalists usually use different sources to avoid claims of bias and partisan reportage (McQuail, 1994; Shoemaker, 1996) even when they report a conflict. They display evidence of attempts to consult with a range of sources about each event as it occurs, recounts the story of each event by mixing even-handed prose and elements of drama to catch readers' eyes and offers degrees of context for each event for the convenience of comprehension. On the other hand, under this particular scrutiny in balancing sources, journalists construct the discourse to be consistent with their home countries' foreign policies and national interest (Paletz and Entman, 1981; Edelman, 1988; Entman, 1991, 2004; Kim, 2001; Lee and Yang 1995; Reese and Buckalew, 1995; Kim and Lee, 2008). For instance, the address of Colin Powell (former U.S. Secretary of State) to the U.N. General Assembly in February 2003 and its pre-contextualization and re-contextualization in the various U.S. news outlets colluded to manipulate public opinion in the run-up to the U.S.-Iraq war (Oddo, 2014), which is also partly echoed by Horvit (2006)' findings in his analysis of the news articles from six news agencies (American Press, Agence France Presse, Reuters, Xinhua, ITAR-TASS and Inter Press Service) about the debate on the U.S.-Iraq conflict from January 2003 to February 2003. He concluded the non-western news agencies presented significantly more non-western viewpoints in their coverage of the pre-war debate, with the implications of not hoping to see the war.

Though news sources from different parties and various levels are preferred in the coverage of international affairs, official government sources are often most heavily relied on due to their access to the inner workings of society's bureaucratic organizations, their top of hierarchy of credibility among the audience (Becker, 1967; Gaziano and McGrath, 1986; Soloski, 1989; Miller and Kurpius, 2010; Van Leuven, Heinrich and Deprez, 2015), their pivotal influence on policy (Gans, 1979) and their ability to change policy outcomes (Hickerson et al., 2011). By analyzing the programs of a 6-month period spanning 2005 and 2006, Rendall and Hollar (2006) found that current and former U.S. government and military officials constituted 57% of all sources on the subject of Iraq on the NewsHour, an American daily evening television news program on the PBS (Public Broadcasting Service). Sharp and Kiyan (2007) also indicated that with respect to the WMD (weapons of mass destruction), American, Canadian, India, and British newspapers all employed a huge amount of officials and authoritative intelligence' statements supporting WMD claims during the period between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.

Another elite source pattern, scholars and experts, are also commonly seen in international news. There may be two reasons. One is that they top the hierarchy of credibility among the audience as well, and the other is that the scientific or technical information they provide helps to readability of news articles in a situation beyond comprehension of the audience (Soley, 1992; Swain, 2012). However, for the sake of productiveness, a small group of such dependable sources are sometimes relied on for each story instead of seeking new sources (Tuchman, 1978), which results in the fact that the repeated appearance of certain scholars and experts amplifies their voices and reinforce their authoritativeness (Lasorsa and Reese, 1990; Bishop, 2001). The more frequently they are quoted, the more credible and authoritative they appear.

What's more, scholars and experts sources are sometimes used to presuppose news stance in some cases. Although their clarification of a situation and prediction of its recent developments often seems to be objective and impartial, there are occasions that their opinions are explicitly or implicitly partisan. Then, in a news article with balanced sources from two conflicting parties, the dominant attitudes held by the "third party", scholars and experts (of course, those scholars and experts from the conflicting parties should be excluded for they usually slant to their own or at least remain neutral) count much. When there are more voices from the scholars and experts not from the conflicting parties who slant their commentaries to support one certain party, it can be safely inferred that news bias has been embedded in a covert way.

Compared with elite sources, the use of non-elite sources is less commonly seen in international news for it usually involves 'big events' and 'big potatoes' in the international stage. Ordinary people become newsworthy only when they have a close connection to the issue (Cook, 2005: 92), or when they engage in a certain conflict or carry out unusual activities (for instance, a political protest/demonstration) by providing drama (Bennett, 2005), or when journalists consider that their putative ordinariness contributes to diversity of sources (Bosch, 2014).

3. Research Questions

It is predicted that in the coverage of Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute, there exist the diversity of news patterns and salience of certain news patterns. However, how do the mainstream newspapers in the West, which share democratic values and the norm of journalism but have different social, economic and political interests of their home countries, construct this Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute by employing the strategy of sourcing?

To be specific, as was mentioned in the previous text, this issue mainly concerns China and Japan with the U.S. acting as a third-party mediator and Australia's protest about the 'East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone', the research questions are as follows:

(1) Are there similarities and differences in the distribution of sources from the countries relevant to the issue to some extent? What elements can be attributed to these similarities and differences? And, do they balance the sources from China and Japan, the disputing countries?

(2) As far as the Chinese and Japanese sources are concerned, what source patterns do they use in the construction of the news stories? Which plays a bigger role in the coverage of this issue, elite sources or non-elite sources?

(3) What role do international scholars and experts sources play? To what extent do they affect news frame?

4. Material and Method

As sources of data for this study, and using the criteria of representativeness, influence and availability, this study chooses five newspapers of record in the West: The New York Times (United States), The Guardian (United Kingdom), The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), Le Monde (France) and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany). Among the five countries, the U.S. and Australia, located in the Asia-Pacific region, have security interest in this issue of Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute while the U.K., France and Germany, economically and politically influential but geographically far-away from this region, seem not to have direct national interest in this dispute.

Data was collected by searching the online archives of the five newspapers for news articles by using the Chinese name 'Diaoyu' and the corresponding Japanese name 'Senkaku' as keywords, including news reports, opinions and editorials. The period between 2011 and 2013 was chosen for analysis, for it has witnessed a relatively complete period from a quiet year, to the beginning, development, climax and follow-up of an event. As was mentioned previously, the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute flared up in 2010 and then calmed down temporarily in 2011. In April 2012, the conflict was again exacerbated by Japan's purchase of three of the eight disputed islands which in November 2013 culminated in China's establishment of its 'East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone', bringing objection from the neighboring countries. The resulting five data sets were then combined and treated as an interrelated whole, for all news discourses are after final selection and editing the products of the respective newspaper editors and all are both explicitly and implicitly positioned (Tuchman, 1978; Entman, 1993; Dickerson, 2001; McCombs, 2005; Li, 2009; Van Dijk, 2009).

To have an insight into how sources are employed by the five newspapers of record, quantitative analysis is used to make a contrast and comparison of the sources from the most frequently mentioned countries, and various news patterns from China and Japan and international scholars and experts sources. Content analysis is combined with qualitative analysis when analyzing the international scholar and expert sources to see what attitudes they held towards the disputing countries.

This study also adopts 'media package' approach (Gamson and Lasch, 1983; Gamson and Modigliani, 1989) as a tool to reconstruct news frames in the coverage of this dispute in order to connect framing devices (sources and quotes in this study) and reasoning devices that indicate interpretive understanding of an issue (implying problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation) (Gamson, 1992). To make the analysis of news frame able to be processed, the latest editorial of each newspaper was selected as the sample to understand how they look at this longstanding issue by the aid of content analysis, for the reason that editorials are supposed to reflect the opinion of a newspaper and that national interest concerning this dispute remains unchanged for these five countries.

5. Results and Analysis

An archival search of the five online newspapers from 2011 to 2013 returned a total of 434 news articles, The New York Times (100 articles, 84,900 words), The Guardian (60 articles, 43,140 words), Sydney Morning Herald (66 articles, 41,250 words), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (49 articles, 30,723 words) and Le Monde (156 articles, 85,332 words). In this section, the number of each source pattern is to be counted. For the convenience of comprehension, the results are to be presented in the form of the number of each source pattern every 1,000 words.

5.1 Distribution of Sources

How sources are distributed involves what sources are used and how many of each source is used. Based on their frequencies in the news articles, the sources in this issue are roughly divided into the Chinese sources, the Japanese sources, the U.S. sources and the Australian sources, international scholars and experts sources, and others, as shown in the following table: Table 1 Overall distribution of sources International Scholars and Newspapers China Japan U.S. Australia Experts New York Times 2.36 2.99 0.70 0 1.03 The Guardian 2.67 2.67 1.32 0.30 0.77 Sydney Morning Herald 2.23 1.69 1.33 1.07 1.45 Le Monde 2.06 2.51 0.58 0.01 0.26 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 3.09 3.04 0.68 0 0.42 Newspapers Others Total New York Times 0.91 7.99 The Guardian 1.03 8.76 Sydney Morning Herald 1.38 9.15 Le Monde 0.45 5.87 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 0.36 7.59

It is seen from Table 1 that the number of the Chinese and Japanese sources not only ranked first and second, but also occupied the approximately equal percentages per 1,000 words in all of the five newspapers of record. That is to say, the sources from the conflicting countries are balanced in all of them. Furthermore, it is interesting to see that the US sources all ranked third, which, corresponds to the status of the United States as the third-party mediator in the dispute, and which, also agrees with the findings of Van Dijk (1988) that the elite position of the United States as the world's preeminent superpower tends to be reflected in international news.

Apart from these, particularly worthy of note is the Australian sources. Sydney Morning Herald used 1.07 Australian sources per 1,000 words, nearly an equivalence of U.S. sources (1.33). What's more, The Guardian used 0.30 Australian sources per 1,000 words, a much more greater number than the ones in New York Times (0), Le Monde (0.01) and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (0). As is known to all, Sydney Morning Herald is an Australian newspaper and Australia is a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations, therefore, it may be inferred from these statistics that journalists tend to use more sources from one's home country and one's ally. Journalists' reliance on these sources may be attributed to the fact that these sources are easier to get access within the limited time of editing and that the national interest of one's home country and one's ally need to be conveyed via these voices.

5.2 Sources from China and Japan

As is discovered above, the five newspapers of record used balanced sources from the disputing countries, then, how about their source patterns?

Both Table 2 and Table 3 reveal that the five newspapers of record generally employed the similar source patterns either in Chinese sources and Japanese sources. Although there are no sources of Chinese activists and Chinese enterprises in The Guardian and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and no Japanese activists in Sydney Morning Herald and Le Monde, it can seen from the two tables that these sources do not count much in the other newspapers of record as well. However, this may indicate that the New York Times did best as far as variety of source patterns are concerned in the coverage of this issue.

It can also been seen from these two tables that the elite sources (government sources, media sources, scholars and expert sources, and enterprises sources) comprise the overwhelming majority. Although all of five newspapers of record have ability to reach local, non-mainstream sources with their own correspondents and many contacts in China and Japan, activists sources and ordinary people sources generally have not attracted as much attention as elite sources in the coverage of this territorial dispute.

Among the elite sources, government sources topped the other source patterns, seen from both the two tables. What the government sources released often contains important official information and conveys the official stance, and this undoubtedly occupies the most vital position in reporting the territorial issue like Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute since territory mainly concerns the identity of a nation-state (Murphy, 2005). Apart from government sources, both Chinese and Japanese media sources play a significant part. As was noticed by Herman and Chomsky (1988), journalists frequently quote other journalists. Media sources act as an important channel of access to the information about what has happened in their home countries. The second-handed information provides various aspects and versions of a certain news story, which enriches news content much. However, in the coverage of this issue, it is worthy of note that the modifiers like 'state-run', 'the Chinese state' and 'the official' are used to define the Chinese media, such as CCTV, Xinhua Agency and People's Daily, highlighting the ruling power of Chinese Communist Party and implying the possibility of information-filtering under the censorship. As for scholars and experts sources, they ranked second in New York Times and Sydney Morning Herald and third in The Guardian, Le Monde and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. That is to say, the former two newspapers of record valued Chinese scholars and experts sources more than Chinese media sources while the latter three vice versa. However, in the regard of the Japanese ones, things become a bit complicated because of the salience of Japanese enterprises sources. They ranked second (after government sources) in The Guardian and Sydney Morning Herald, third (after government sources and media sources) in Le Monde, and fourth (after government sources, scholars and experts sources, and media sources) in the New York Times and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Generally speaking, the voices from Chinese and Japanese scholars and experts either remain neutral or slant to be in favor of their own home countries when predicting the developments of the dispute or discussing sovereignty of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands from the perspectives of history, international law and international relations.

The main differences between Chinese and Japanese source patterns lie in the presence of Taiwan sources in Table 2 and the salience of Japanese enterprises sources in Table 3 compared with their Chinese equivalences in Table 2. The statistics in Table 2 indicate that Taiwan, though as a claimant of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands as well, did not receive much attention in all the five newspapers of record, which may be accounted for by its far less political and economical influence than mainland China. When it comes to Japanese enterprises sources, which ranked third (after government sources, and scholars and experts sources) in New York Times, Sydney Morning Herald and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and fourth (after government sources, media sources, and scholars and experts sources) in The Guardian and Le Monde, which is reflective of the fact that the Japanese companies in China were greatly affected and the economic relationship between the two major East Asia countries was harmed by the territorial dispute.

5.3 International Scholars and Experts Sources

As was shown in Table 1, international scholars and experts sources (those from the disputing countries not included) ranked fourth in the four newspapers in the U.S., U.K., France and Germany, and fifth in the Australian newspaper Sydney Morning Herald (the Australian sources ranked fourth). Differing from those from the disputing countries, most of whose opinions and commentaries were for their home countries, the majority of the international scholars and experts offered neutral opinionated commentary in general although minority of them held biased attitudes towards China or Japan. The percentages are as follows: Table 4 International scholars and experts sources and their attitudes Newspapers Pro-Japan Pro-China Neutrality New York Times 29.17% 4.17% 66.67% The Guardian 10.00% 3.33% 86.67% Sydney Morning Herald 17.24% 5.71% 77.14% Le Monde 18.18% 0% 81.82% Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 10% 30% 60%

Table 4 shows that neutrality ranked first in all these five newspapers of record in terms of the international scholars and experts' attitudes. In The Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald and Le Monde, the percentage of neutrality added up to 86.67%, 77.14% and 81.82% respectively. What's more, there are much more voices against China in the New York Times, The Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald and Le Monde, but vice versa in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Besides these, what is also remarkable is the absence of these international scholars and experts' objection to Japan in Le Monde despite 18% of their voices against China.

As was discussed in the previous part, the significance of the opinions of international scholars and experts cannot be neglected in a news article with balanced news sources from the conflicting countries. The dominant opinions of the international scholars and experts are usually valued by the audience, thus it is very likely to lead to the slanting news stance. From the above analysis, it can be concluded that the New York Times, The Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald and Le Monde might slant to Japan while Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung might slant to China.

However, the construction of meaning is far more complicated than imagined. What attitudes on earth do these newspapers of record in the West hold towards this issue of Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute? Are there any relations between news stance and the dominant opinions of the international scholars and experts? Then, it is necessary to probe into how these newspapers framed this issue in the editorials, for editorials reflect the opinion of a newspaper.

5.4 News Frames in Editorials

This study examined the latest editorial in each newspaper as follows: 'China's Coercive Play' (New York Times, November 26, 2013), 'Japan and China: Collision Course' (The Guardian, November 27, 2013), 'Nationalist Tensions Approach Uncharted Territory' (Sydney Morning Herald, February 7, 2013) and 'Inselstreit Dunkle Wolken Uber Fernost' ('Dark Clouds Hovering the Far East', Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 20, 2013). What is special is that the only editorial in 2014, entitled 'Espoir d'apaisement entre Chine et Japon' (' Hope of Appeasement between China and Japan', Le Monde, November 11, 2014) was used for analysis in this study since there is no trace of editorials between January 2011 and December 2013 in Le Monde. The following table specifies the news frame of each editorial respectively based on the framework of Gamson (1992):

(Note: Due to the limited space and for the convenience of reading, the French and German expressions in Le Monde and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung were directly translated by the authors into English in this table.)

The above table indicates that all of the five newspapers of record define this issue as a territorial dispute and assume that this dispute was caused by both of the disputing countries, either for historical, economic, political or military reasons. The diagnoses of Sydney Morning Herald and Le Monde are that the two governments manipulated nationalism and patriotism in order to bolster their domestic status; the New York Times and The Guardian believed that Japan's provocation and China's military actions and ambition in the East China Sea has contributed to the recent developments of the dispute; and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung attributed them to the change of economic and political power of China and Japan.

As for moral judgments, there are comparatively great differences. The New York Times explicitly blamed China for its establishment of Air Defense Identification Zone would influence the Sino-US relationship and increase the risk of war; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung also considered China's establishment of Air Defense Identification Zone as a military signal, but did not make further judgment; The Guardian criticized the two governments for not making any efforts to sit down and talk; Le Monde simply regarded this issue as more political than territorial; and Sydney Morning Herald did not make any moral judgment in this issue.

When it comes to suggested remedies to this issue, the New York Times and Sydney Morning Herald focused on their home countries' national interest. The former recommended that the U.S. take sides with Japan and other Asian countries who have disputed territory with China, and the latter suggested that Australia wait for the right time to ally with Japan militarily to deal with 'China threat'. In this regard, The Guardian, Le Monde and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung seem more detached. The Guardian urged both China and Japan to give up nationalism and have a dialogue, Le Monde called on both of them to abandon the strategy of manipulating the domestic and foreign policies by employing the issue of these disputed islands, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung shifted its focus to the relationship between the U.S. and China and asked them never to lose temper.

In summary, the New York Times and Sydney Morning Herald are for Japan with considerations of national interest in the Asia-Pacific region, while The Guardian, Le Monde and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung seem not to take sides.

6. Discussion and Future Research

The relationship between sources and news frames has been a concern of media studies for decades, but meaning construction has so far been beyond precise calculation, which concerns the very complex network of human being's brains and very complicated process of language production and language comprehension. The overall purpose of this study was to investigate and compare cross-national similarities and differences in the use of news sources and the extent to which the use of news sources is associated with news frame of international news. In this study, the five western newspapers of record show more similarities than differences in terms of news patterns, the salience of the U.S. sources and the dominance of elite sources (government officials, experts and scholars, media, and enterprises). In addition, they are all expert in balancing sources and their balance of the sources from disputing countries gives their report an objective tone.

However, as shown in the news frames in their editorials, they held different opinions about this issue of Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute. National interest frame is visible in the New York Times and Sydney Morning Herald. The New York Times blamed China for its coercive play resulting in the deteriorating Sino-US relationship and the possible result of war and called on the U.S. government to be in alliance with Japan and the other Asian countries with territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea and the East China Sea, which is consistent with the U.S.' strategic interests in the Asia-Pacific region and its foreign policies of 'pivot to Asia'. Sydney Morning Herald suggested in one of its editorials in February 2013 that Australia not irritate either of their two biggest economic Asian partners, but conceive a defense pact with Japan in the future to guard against the 'China Threat'. Nine months later, when China declared its 'East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone', as expected by Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian government attacked China for the unilateral action and President Tony Abbott remarked that Japan was Australia's 'best friend in Asia' in a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ('Beijing Tactic Makes Waves in Disputed Sea', The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 November 2013). But this explicit pro-Japan stance and national interest frame is not seen in The Guardian, Le Monde and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. This may be because their home countries are geographically far away from the Asia-Pacific region and because the maximum interest for them is to balance between the rising China and the still economically powerful Japan.

What is interesting is their use of international scholars and experts sources and their possible relationship with the news frames. Besides most of them remaining neutral, there are more pro-Japan sources than pro-China ones in the New York Times, Sydney Morning Post, The Guardian and Le Monde while vice versa in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Considered as independent intellectuals, the opinions of these international scholars and experts are usually highly valued by the audience, especially in a conflict happening in the other countries, thus the use of these selective scholars and experts sources may well reflect the stance of these newspapers. In this sense, New York Times, Sydney Morning Post, The Guardian and Le Monde may slant to Japan whereas Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung may slant to China. Nonetheless, it seems it is not necessarily the case.

That is to say, news sources cannot determine news frame and its final form while they do have influence on the news. Sources possess power in shaping meaning through various tactics, but the relationship between sources and journalists is one of conflict and negotiation (Ericson, Baranek and Chan, 1989: 2).

Theoretically, the selective use of news sources and the salience of certain sources is at the service of news frame, often reflecting a certain ideological bias and tending to slant to the opinions or foreign policies of the government in the coverage of international events (Chang, 1988, 1989; Dickson, 1992; Hanson, 1995; Kim, 2000; McCoy, 1992; Yu and Riffe, 1989). In the meantime, there is no news without sources. News sources provide journalists with necessary materials to weave news stories.

Besides these, the strategic use of news is one of the requirements of the norm of journalism and a need for commercialization of news agencies and journalism group. For example, the balanced sources from the disputing countries in the five newspapers of record demonstrate that their news stories are an objective reflection of reality; and these quotes from Chinese and Japanese sources, which usually adhere to the official narratives and discourses of their respective governments from the perspective of 'us' and 'them' (Chan, 2012, 2014; Holliban, 2014; Huang and Wang, 2014), have created a drama-like spectacle, thus possibly attracting more audience to buy and read their news stories and bringing more possible profits for these institutions.

Therefore, it may be concluded that the use of news sources is a compromise between various elements: the norm of journalism, the necessary material for news stories, the construction of meaning, and the need to make profits. However, among the four elements, the norm of journalism in these Western newspapers has played a decisive part in the coverage of this issue. Even if the five newspapers of record held different attitudes in the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute, they employed the variety of sources and the balancing sources from the two conflicting countries, and in their use of international scholars and experts sources, the majority of them remained neutral, generally reflective of the objectivity and credibility of these scholars and experts. The shared democratic values are also a significant element in covering this issue. Remarkably, the modifier of the Chinese media sources in these newspapers, 'state-run', 'the Chinese state' and 'official', 'the Communist Party's' (there are their French and German counterparts in Le Monde and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) are used to define the Chinese mainstream media like Xinhua Agency, People's Daily and Guangming Daily, putting emphasis on the ruling power of the Chinese Communist Party, with the possible implications that the provided information may be likely filtered under the news censorship.

In general, this study provides us with an insight into the similarities and differences of the use of sources in the coverage of international news and the possible causes for these similarities and differences. However, this study limits itself mostly to the textual perspective, merely scratching on the surface of the institutional working and foreign policy's influence on the press, leaving audience response and communication effect untouched. The future research may also be conducted from these angles, which may particularly focus on the relationship between news sources and 'profit orientation' of institutions in reporting international news. Herman and Chomsky (1988: 2) argue that government sources make news gathering easier and cheaper for they create press releases, photo ops, congressional hearings, and other ready-for-news content. Colistra (2012) also points out that elite institutions of journalism are obliged to rely on this information simply as a matter of economics. It is interesting to see in what situations and in what ways journalists contact and select government sources and other sources within the institutional working and to what extent the selection of these sources related to profit-making of institutions.

Another fascinating topic for research is the responses from the audience from one's home country and foreign countries. It is expected that the audience from one's home country and other countries may have somewhat different opinions about the same news article when a certain issue is related to the national interest of one's home country, thus it is worthwhile to explore how the audience from different countries comprehend the same news articles and what elements affect the stance of the audience from different countries.

As to getting inside a news frame and seeing with greater clarity how journalists advance particular viewpoints by using news sources, discourse analytic techniques designed to systematically examine the grammatical, syntactical and lexical details of news reports may be borrowed to examine how the quotes from news sources works in framing news. Besides that, ethnographic studies in newsrooms (particularly a comparison between the Western newspapers and the Eastern newspapers) may also be a good stating point to examine how journalists contact and use elite sources and non-mainstream sources in their everyday newsgathering practices, and how far these sources can be consulted to add depth to the coverage of international affairs.

Acknowledgements

My heartfelt thanks go to Prof. Zengjun Peng for his insightful comments on the first draft, my colleague Jing Yu for her help in German data processing and Stephen Johnson for his assistance in language editing.

Funding

This research was supported by grants from Chinese Scholarship Council (grant number 201408330555) and National Social Science Foundation of China (grant number 14BXW070).

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Guofeng Wang

School of Foreign Language Studies, Shanghai Normal University, P.R.C.

Caption: Table 5 News frames in editorials Table 2 Source patterns in Chinese sources Scholars Newspapers Government & experts Media New York Times 1.17 0.53 0.38 The Guardian 1.51 0.25 0.67 Sydney Morning Herald 1.53 0.41 0.15 Le Monde 1.24 0.18 0.48 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 1.40 0.42 0.78 Ordinary Newspapers Activists Enterprises people New York Times 0.05 0.01 0.21 The Guardian 0 0 0.12 Sydney Morning Herald 0.02 0.02 0.05 Le Monde 0.01 0.02 0.08 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 0 0 0.29 Newspapers Taiwan New York Times 0.01 The Guardian 0.12 Sydney Morning Herald 0.05 Le Monde 0.05 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 0.20 Table 3 Source patterns in Japanese sources Scholars & Newspapers Government experts Media Activists New York Times 1.59 0.12 1.12 0.01 The Guardian 1.51 0.56 0.35 0.02 Sydney Morning Herald 1.43 0.12 0.05 0 Le Monde 1.92 0.19 0.30 0 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 2.41 0.13 0.62 0.13 Ordinary Newspapers people Enterprises New York Times 0.01 0.14 The Guardian 0.02 0.21 Sydney Morning Herald 0.02 0.07 Le Monde 0.05 0.05 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 0.30 0.35