Professional Practice (Journalism)

Nebulosidades nas fronteiras: o status do jornalismo como atividade, campo e profissão

by Fernanda Lima Lopes

No mundo da produção teórica, há divergentes entendimentos sobre o status da
atividade jornalística. O alemão... more No mundo da produção teórica, há divergentes entendimentos sobre o status da
atividade jornalística. O alemão Michael Kunczik defende que jornalismo não pode ser
reconhecido como profissão, enquanto o francês Pierre Bourdieu argumenta que ele
constitui um campo com autonomia e autoridade bem definidas. Já a antropóloga
brasileira Isabel Travancas refere-se ao jornalismo como profissão e pesquisa aspectos
ligados ao desenvolvimento do trabalho nas organizações jornalísticas. Esses diferentes
entendimentos são tomados como referencial teórico para observar a questão do
diploma e o problema da criação de um conselho federal de jornalismo, dois aspectos
ligados a definição de fronteiras para a identidade do jornalista, mas que não estão
muito bem definidos, ou seja, estão cobertos por “nebulosidades”.

The Fourth Estate in the USA and UK: Discourses of truth and power

by Jesse Hearns-Branaman

unpublished PhD thesis

This thesis examines the ways in which political journalists in the USA and UK talk about issues of truth and power as... more This thesis examines the ways in which political journalists in the USA and UK talk about issues of truth and power as it relates to journalism’s role as the Fourth Estate. The theoretical basis comes from a critique of the two major structures underpinning the Fourth Estate, that of epistemology (the study of truth) and ideology (broadly, the study of power and ideas). This involves unpacking and critically examining the ability of news media to convey ‘true’ information and the ideological formations in which the news media production practice is situated. The epistemological theories of Realism, Pragmatism, Antirealism and Hyperrealism will first be elucidated in an in-depth theoretical discussion, focusing on the contributions of Baudrillard. Four major theories of ideology, that of personal ideological bias, chaos, control, and ideology as fetishistic disavowal will be examined, this time focusing on the work of Žižek.
This theoretical discussion is complimented by an analysis of interview questions relating to epistemological concerns and to ideology. The empirical data consists of twenty interviews conducted with political correspondents in the USA and UK. A version of critical discourse analysis is used to examine the ways in which journalists talk about the issues raised by the questions, what is termed their ‘discursive strategies.’ The categories for analysis are grounded in the discursive strategies used by the journalists themselves, examined to elaborate not simply the explicit content, but the deeper implicit meanings inherent in the way they answer.
This provided both an original theoretical discussion and an original set of empirically-derived data. It also allows us to further understand the role of journalism as the Fourth Estate, the types of ‘truth’ it brings to us, the types of ideologies that underpin the news production process via news media professionals, and how the system is maintained despite its inherent contradictions.

Working for Professional Media without Professional Standard of Journalism (Study of TV News Contributors in Indonesia)

by Awang Ruswandi

Paper presented to The 1st Asian Conference on Media and Mass Communication 2010, Osaka-Japan, 28-30 October 2010. Proceedings: ISSN 2185-6184

The rapid growth of television news in Indonesia has supported to freedom of the press and democracy. Television is... more The rapid growth of television news in Indonesia has supported to freedom of the press and democracy. Television is one of a phenomenal medium to reach audiences who lived either in big cities or villages. To cover many areas in national wide, the news department hired journalists who are called news contributors or stringers from all over the country. Yet the growth of the amount of news contributors was not followed by the increase of journalistic qualities. Recently, many viewers, academia, and others argue their complaints about bad TV news. The presentation of news ranges from sensational content, unethical report, to trivial things. The study is a qualitative research using in-depth interview method with the news contributors. It examines how they work a journalistic job for professional media and how far they know and apply the procedure of journalistic work. The findings indicated that TV news contributors with the right skills remain very difficult. Skilled journalists remain quite rare. Many ordinary people who have video camera could be a news contributor easily. Most of them came from various backgrounds and had no professional TV training. Generally, the TV news contributors had three main problems when they conducted their news production i.e. lack of knowledge, lack of skill, and lack of ethics. One of the most fundamental problems is they did a journalistic work without a professional standard of journalism, whereas the TV news contributors did their jobs for the professional media.

Key words: Indonesia, news contributor, professional journalist, professionalism, TV journalism