Ideal and Factual Professional Roles in German Journalism

• In Event: Journalistic Role Performance Around the Globe: Methodological Design and Preliminary Findings From 11 Countries

Abstract

As a result of an increasing globalization and a growing number of non-journalistic content in the online environment, journalists around the globe are compelled to reconsider their professional identity and legitimization in the Internet era. In the German case this trend has led to a shift from the predominant journalistic role model of a politically active interventionist to a neutral disseminator with increasing public service orientation. Nowadays, journalists in Germany seem to see themselves significantly less than twenty years ago as actors who convey subjective viewpoints; instead, they claim more than in the past to be dedicated to the ultimate objective to fulfill an information function for their audiences. This professional self-image, however, does not always seem to be accordingly reflected in the concrete news content journalists provide. Experiments among German journalists, for example, indicate that news selection criteria actually employed by journalists do often not meet normative professional standards such as neutrality or balance. Yet, only a few studies have drawn a direct comparison between journalists’ role conceptions and their news products on an individual level. This paper present the preliminary findings of the German case by the help of a quantitative content analysis of the news coverage by two nationwide quality newspapers with different political stances and a survey of the respective journalists who have contributed news content as authors of those newspapers. For two constructed news weeks during the year 2013 each news story presented on the front page and in the national desk section is analyzed with regard to five professional roles, each being measured by specific news attributes. The survey’s focus is to examine the individual professional ideals of journalists and their perceptions of the importance of those ideals to their media organizations, both of which are again operationalized by the five role models as being measured in the content analysis. The paper will provide results on the relevance of specific role conceptions for German journalists as it is expressed in their self-statements and through their actually produced news contents. Possible explanations for gaps between ideal and factual professional functions of journalism in postmodern societies will be discussed.

Authors

• Wolfgang Donsbach, Technical U - Dresden

• Anna-Maria Schielicke, Technical U of Dresden

• Cornelia Mothes, Ohio State University