Tijdschrift voor Communicatiewetenschap - Volume 41, Issue 3, 2013

De journalistiek wordt sinds de eeuwwisseling in toenemende mate blootgesteld aan kritiek. De oorzaken daarvan lijken zowel maatschappelijk (meer mondigheid van de burger, opmars van het populisme, mediatisering) als technologisch (meer interactie- en reactiemogelijkheden) en economisch (concurrentie en commercialisering).In dit themanummer wordt onderzocht hoe journalistiek en media omgaan met deze kritiek en antwoorden bieden in de vorm van journalistieke gedragscodes, toenemende transparantie over het eigen functioneren, meer interactie met en verantwoording aan het publiek en andere vormen van (zelf)regulering. Daarnaast wordt bekeken hoe de journalistiek in concrete gevallen of incidenten omgaat met de nieuwe uitdagingen, zoals de komst van sociale media, de invloed van pr en voorlichting op de nieuwsagenda en de weerslag van nieuwe, aangescherpte journalistieke codes op de berichtgeving.

Ten years after Pim Fortuyn: criticism and accountability at Dutch newsrooms

Pressures from politicians and the public have led to greater demands for media accountability. Moreover, structural shifts such as media concentration, increasing competition and the advent of new technologies have obliged media to strengthen the relationship with their reader, viewer and listener and to be more responsive to them. This article shows the results of a multiple case-study at three leading newsrooms in the Netherlands on how they cope with criticism on their performance and increasing pressures for accountability and responsiveness. It shows that new accountability policies and instruments were introduced, mainly at the initiative of editors-in-chief, while journalists in the newsroom showed more reluctance.

The effectiveness of journalistic codes of conduct: a review of the literature

Journalistic codes of conduct are regularly mentioned as instrument to secure journalistic quality. But do they really work? To answer this question, we reviewed all academic studies on journalistic codes that are mentioned in the Social Science Citation Index or in EBSCO’s Communication & Mass Media Complete database. Our findings show that codes of conduct chiefly perform an – important – symbolic function. Primarily, they address individual journalists. But because the margin for individual moral decision-making is small, the actual impact of codes depends strongly on the ethical culture of the news desk. That is why we propose, in the final discussion, to focus on ethical guidelines for editorial organizations and the profession.

Reporting on victims. Journalism praxis according to Flemish journalists

Newspaper reporting of a tragic bus crash in Switzerland (Sierre, 2012) in which 22 Belgian and Dutch primary school children and 6 adults were killed, severely shook society. The printing of the children’s pictures on the front pages of popular newspapers (i.e. photos plucked from Facebook and the internet without the parents’ permission) resulted in the adaptation and extension of the deontological code for Flemish journalists (April 2012). We conducted 30 in-depth interviews with journalists (print and audiovisual reporters) during the winter of 2012 and asked them in what way the adapted code has had an impact on the reporting on victims in the journalistic praxis. A semi-structured interview guide was used, the interviews were recorded, fully transcribed and analyzed. Our results show that permanent attention towards the very practical and daily use of the code is essential as most journalists use it rarely and mostly only after reporting has gone wrong.

Social media and old routines. The role of social media in the TV news coverage of the Arab Spring

This study investigates the use of social media as a source of information for Belgian broadcast journalists covering the Arab Spring in 2011. We conducted a content analysis of the 7 o’clock news on the Flemish public broadcasting channel Eén and its commercial competitor VTM, from January 1st till March 31st. We found that user-generated content from YouTube contributed to 30% of all news items about the Arab Spring, while 8% of the news items referred to social media other than YouTube. Interviews with four foreign news editors confirm the growing importance of social media for newsgathering despite the professional prudence with respect to the veracity of user-generated content. At the same time, however, the increased use and visibility of social media in the foreign news does not seem to affect the dominance of institutional sources, such as major news agencies Reuters and APTN and international media like BBC and CNN. The study concludes that conventional routines and standards of professional gatekeeping shape the use of social media in contemporary journalism.

Copy paste or in-depth journalism? A study of the relationship between news factors in university press releases and news selection and editorial processing of press releases

The leading question of this study is as follows: In what way do news factors in university press releases influence the way that news sites, press agencies, and national daily newspapers use these press releases in their news production? Firstly, the results show that about 90 percent of all press releases is ignored by the news media. Secondly, selection is influenced by the intensity of the presence of news factors in the press releases. Lastly, our results indicate that news factor intensity correlates negatively with the intensity of journalistic processing of the press releases. This last finding means that press releases with a high level of news factor intensity have a higher chance to end up relatively unchanged in news productions. This means that within the topics covered in the university press releases, journalists invest their scarce time and professionalism into unique topics rather than in issues with a high news value, which may also be covered by several other news media.

Journalism and self-regulation: results from a cross-country survey among journalists

In light of the discussion on journalistic quality, the effectivity of self-regulation and proposals of other types of regulation in journalism, a consortium of twelve European and two Arabic countries (MediaAcT, as part of the Seventh EU Framework Programme) conducted a quantitative survey among professional journalists (N = 1,764) in 2011. This article discusses perceptions of journalists on media regulation from four perspectives (State, market, profession and audience) against the background of different media systems (cf. Hallin & Mancini, 2004). While showing a set of deviations, the results partially confirm the theoretical model. We recommend that European policy be more directed towards safeguarding freedoms as well as stimulating self-regulation among media companies.