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The study examines the role of experts in UK television news at the start of the coronavirus pandemic by analysing both how they were used in coverage and perceived by news audiences. Our systematic content analysis of sources ( N = 2300) used in the UK’s flagship evening news bulletins found a reliance on political sources, principally from the government’s perspective. We also discovered health and scientific experts received limited coverage and were only occasionally used to scrutinise public health policy. Yet, our six-week online diary study with 175 participants identified a strong preference for expert views about how the pandemic was being handled. It showed audiences favoured a range of expert sources in routine reporting – balancing government appointed and independent experts – to provide evidence-based scrutiny of the executive’s decision-making. Overall, our findings contribute to a greater understanding of audience expectations, opinions, and experiences with broadcast news during a major public health crisis.

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Academic attention towards the effectiveness of fact-checking often centres on how receptive people are to the correction of news. But many studies do not take into account audience expectations of fact-checking or their engagement with news generally in the context of a national media system or its political culture. Our study makes an intervention into debates about factchecking by focussing on the effectiveness this type of journalism has with audiences who were attentive to the news in the UK's media system during a key point in a major health crisis. Drawing on a six-week news diary study (N ¼ 200) during the coronavirus pandemic, our study concluded that the UK's impartial media ecology and public service ethos creates an environment where audiences are largely receptive to journalists' fact-checking and countering misinformation. Yet our content analysis of television news (N ¼ 1259) during the pandemic found most broadcasters did not regularly challenge or question the government's decision-making. We argue that since audiences favoured robust forms of journalistic scrutiny, broadcasters could more prominently fact-check claims and question dubious statements without undermining trust in journalism. We recommend scholars should pay more attention to understanding the audience reception of fact-checking across different media and political systems.