Cultural Patterns of the Source Based Journalism. The Management of Communication about Emergencies in the Spanish Public Administration. The Ebola Crisis and the Earthquake in Lorca

The activity of informing is not only based on getting the information; there is a branch or culture called “Source journalism” that provides data to journalists, who report directly to citizens. It is known as “source journalism” because it is done from the information source. The professionals affliated to this branch or journalistic culture are usually the so-called Communication Directors (Dircom). For the administration, the function of informing is an obligation based on the 20th article of the Constitution. From that article derives the right of the citizens to get information about the activities of the administration, those activities can be general or particular according to the interests or fundamental rights of a person. As a consequence, the administration is an information source for journalists. This work is about the peculiarities of performing the public function of informing as part of the administration and about the vicissitudes to which Communication Directors are subjected. The practical cases analyzed are the management of the Public Information during the Lorca earthquake in 2011 and the media crisis in Spain derived from the Ebola virus in 2014.