News Media

Regardless of beat, journalists often write about public opinion polls, which are designed to measure the public’s attitudes about an issue or idea. Some of the most high-profile polls center on elections and politics. Newsrooms tend to follow these polls closely to see which candidates are ahead, who’s most likely to win and what issues voters feel most strongly about.

Molly Ball is a national political correspondent for TIME. Before that, she covered politics for The Atlantic and Politico.

Journalists rely on three types of research papers most often in their work: White papers, working papers and peer-reviewed journal articles.

How are they different? And which is best?

Below, we explain each, pointing out its strengths and weaknesses. As always, we urge journalists to use care in selecting any research to ground their coverage and fact-check claims.

Peer-reviewed article

New research contradicts claims media organizations and political commentators have made about unusually high levels of political involvement among the public during the 2016 presidential election.

The study finds that public interest and voter engagement in 2016 closely matched that of previous elections.

Televised local news broadcasts focus more on national politics and slant more to the right at present than in recent years, new research finds. These changes, the paper concludes, are not in response to changing viewer tastes, rather, they stem from the ownership of the media outlets themselves.

A new online course from First Draft helps journalists use free tools to track down, source and verify information they find online.

 A video appears to show regime planes bombing civilians in Syria; someone who looks much like a beloved professor appears holding a torch at a neo-Nazi rally. If credible, these are leads. But how do we know if they are credible?