News Literacy: the role of the expert in news messages
The boarders of expert knowledge are studied in this article. The author tries to define who can act as an expert in relation to news issues and to label problems in line with the existent definitions associated to experts. To a great extent, it concerns different media sources that serve as a collective expert; it also concerns top leaders and representatives of power because the issue of their responsibility as a distinction can be argued from different perspectives. The analysis of the limits of power among experts is based on a sample of texts published by the Novosti-Moldova news agency in December 2014 and on interviews with the editors-in-chief of various media platforms in the Republic of Moldova. Data on the number of experts in texts, opinion consistency, and the degree of the local binding of news drivers are given in the article. The centres that can affect the agenda are also discovered. The leading role among the factors that are likely to limit the power of experts is assumed by the communicative situation that denotes the person who comments as an expert. At the same time, it assigns the news driver for the comment so that the expert is beyond the area of his/her professional competence. Another factor presumed to lower expert influence is the choice of a certain media platform that usually relies on a particular group of people who are invited to submit a comment that coincides with the policy endorsed by this selected platform. The procedure of text checking prior to publication is also significant within this context. This type of checking is used in the case of long interviews and is rarely used with short comments. The power of the expert is limited by a journalist in this case, because he/she introduces the comment in the form of either direct or indirect speech. Indirect speech is usually used in relation to the comments that do not coincide with the edition policy in the current sample.