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Sourcing practices are among the central research topics within the sociology of the media. Empirical studies have analysed what and who are the major journalistic sources, demonstrating that the selections journalists make not only depend on their subjective choices, but are connected to the norms and routines established in the profession. While invaluable, these studies are primarily media-centric and focused on small-scale investigations, meaning they regularly ignore the social totality in which sourcing is inevitably embedded. Such studies hence also pay too little attention to the external actors that provide 'information subsidies' to journalists. By employing the framework of the public sphere, we show that news sources should be viewed as a topic of central social relevance that touches on wider power relations within society. Sociological approaches should thus be complemented with other critical traditions, for instance the political economy of communication. The latter approach's value is revealed in brief sketches that point to the possibilities of achieving deeper understanding of the topic.

Historically, the role of journalism in society is bound to the prevailing conceptualization of the freedom of the press, specific societal, institutional, and material conditions of news production. This study explores self-perceptions of journalists working in the period of socialist Yugoslavia and synthetizes their recollections of journalistic orientations and performances with respect to journalism's place in society. The study is based on the oral history interviews with former journalists, who worked also as editors and foreign correspondents from late 1950s to 1990s at the news agency Tanjug, which was considered the information backbone of the federal media system in Yugoslavia and had considerable international relevance. By combining 'journalistic roles' studies as well as 'occupational life history' research this historical study makes twofold contribution. First, it identifies adaptive strategies of remembering used by the interviewed journalists to legitimize themselves as professionals and relevant interpreters of SFRY journalism. Second, it reveals more nuances within common, often simplified understandings of journalists as collaborators with power during socialism, and highlights roles of privileged disseminator, monitoring analyst, and educator as specific manifestations of collaborative function of journalism.

Abstract
The authors research the strategies used by Slovenian journalists in reporting on the parliament members hate speech expressed during a discussion about the Family Law. A critical discourse analysis of news reports and in-depth interviews with their authors showed that journalists mostly referred to news sources when condemning hate speech, avoiding their own value judgment because they found commenting in a news genre inappropriate. When citing hate speech, they chose moderate examples out of fear of promoting hate speech. They mostly focused on one parliament member, who had been known for hate speech from the past.