Stories of a public: Journalism and the validity of citizens’ testimonies

<jats:p> One of the recurrent findings of journalism research has been that access to the news and public discussion is severely structurally limited. Elite speakers tend to appear as ‘primary definers’ while ordinary people play the subordinate role of ‘symbol people’. Less attention has been paid to how ‘ordinary people’ could be represented differently. This article offers a close reading of two journalistic experiments in which journalists tried to break this deadlock by allowing ordinary people to tell stories about their own experiences. In this way the ordinary people were able to participate seriously in a public debate. Habermas’ theory of communicative action is used in the article in order to show why this was possible. </jats:p>