Do non-institutional actors have any hope of influencing public discourse over contentious political issues? Despite the growing importance of social media, mass media outlets remain the primary means of public deliberation in industrialized democracies. But there is great skepticism about the quality of the deliberation offered through these mainstream channels—as many believe all but the most powerful institutional actors are effectively shut out of the conversation. The main theories of the relationship between journalists and their sources—Bennett’s (1990) indexing theory, Entman’s (2004) cascade model, and hegemonic theory (cf. Hall et al, 1978)—all embrace this view. Yet, as Wolfsfeld (1997) notes, there are many cases in which “challengers can and do compete with the authorities in the news media” (p. 5). That is, there are important exceptions to the rule that current theories fail to take into account. As such, this paper forwards and tests a new theoretical account of the relationship between journalists and their sources. Emphasizing the importance of social—not just material and political—resources, the “stakeholder resources model” seeks to explain the rule and the exception. Using the 2005-2006 Muhammad cartoon controversy as my case, I employ content analysis techniques to analyze data from major newspapers in Britain, Germany, and the United States and test the model.
