Expert Interviews, Good Questioning, and the Epistemic Duties of Journalism

Abstract This paper examines mediators’ epistemic obligations during expert interviews. Drawing on science communication, journalism ethics, and social epistemology, I argue that mediators have an epistemic duty to ask good questions of experts. After outlining how expert testimony can harm audiences epistemically and providing a normative framework for mediators’ duty to inform, I examine three strategies to discharge this duty. The credentials monitoring approach, which limits mediators’ role in verifying experts’ qualifications and competence, fails to prevent harmful testimony from genuine experts. The interference approach, which requires mediators to challenge expert claims directly, imposes unrealistically high epistemic standards on mediators and risks counterproductive non-peer disagreements. I propose an alternative: the good questioning approach. By asking expanding and contesting questions that prompt experts to justify claims and make evidence accessible, mediators can fulfill their epistemic duty without needing domain-specific expertise. This framework enhances our understanding of distributed epistemic responsibility in public scientific discourse and offers practical guidance for improving journalistic practice in expert interviews.