The concept of professional autonomy derives from the core function of journalism in a democratic society, rooted in journalism’s occupational ideology: to provide people with truthful and unbiased information and a plurality of opinions. Occupational autonomy is a criterion of professionalism: to constitute a profession, the members of an occupation have to be able to control their own work, to have autonomy in their everyday practice. A central claim of any profession, including journalism, is autonomy over the articulation and enactment of its own norms (Singer, 2007).
Autonomy is legitimised, for example, by voluntary adherence to ethical principles: a code of professional conduct reflecting the standards of good journalistic practice.
Journalists do make their own decisions, but those decisions are guided by the larger forces surrounding them in their organisations as they ‘live their lives, for the most part, within organizations; even the freelancer /…/ must contend with the conventions, pressures and objectives of organizations that purchase the product of his or her pen’ (Lambeth, 1992: 57). In addition, the relations with other agents and agencies of the wider media institution and society play a significant role in the realisation of the individual autonomy of a media professional.
The analytical framework can be adjusted from McQuail’s (2010: 278-281) analysis of the media organisation in the field of social forces (figure 1).
Figure 1. Three levels of professional autonomy
The three levels of journalistic autonomy are well captured by Scholl and Weischenberg (1999): Journalists (individuals) ought to be free in selecting information and in covering stories; newsrooms (organizations) ought to be independent from external influences, such as commercial or political constraints;
media systems (society) ought to have guaranteed press freedom and ought to be free from all kinds of censorship.
The level of individual/personal autonomy is commonly understood as journalists’ freedom to decide about the aspects of their stories: to choose the topics, and to select information and the angle or perspective of coverage, which are in line with their personal responsibility and professional values. Individual autonomy also includes journalists’ ability and possibility to be involved in the value clarification concerning the news content, and the organisational and work culture.
The collective autonomy refers to the news organisations’ editorial independence from external political and economic (e.g. advertisers’) pressures and constraints. It also refers to the news media’s accountability to society for their performance, especially concerning fulfilment of their public service commitments.
Institutional autonomy refers to the media institution’s legally secured freedom for critical surveillance and access to information, as well as freedom from any kind of government control or censorship. Here, the substantial difference between the freedom of expression and freedom of the press becomes very obvious.
Freedom of expression is a human right and individual freedom that does not give an individual (journalist) the same degree of influence and power in society as the news media have. This raises the question of responsible use of this power for the sake of public interest and democracy.
In the context of policy analysis it is important to note that while the journalistic institution itself seeks to exercise autonomy from external or governmental control, individual journalists actually give up personal autonomy to a significant degree (Merrill, 1992; Christians, Rotzoll, Fackler, 1991: 33-57;
Shoemaker and Reese, 1991: 115-144; Sanders, 2003: 27; Singer, 2007). John Merrill, a leading advocate of the existentialist approach (in relation to journalism), cynically declares: ‘… journalists in the lower echelons are going about their duties not as professionals who deal with their clients directly and independently, but as functionaries who fashion their work in accordance to supervision and direction by their editors, publishers and news directors’ (Merrill, 1989: 36).
2.2 Factors influencing journalistic autonomy
Various external and internal factors influence the three levels of journalistic autonomy.
The external pressures mainly come from the spheres of politics and economics. Also cultural and historical circumstances play their role in defining the limits of autonomy. Within the societal context, we can distinguish between social and political influences (legal/political control and regulation, various pressure groups, other institutions) and economic influences (owners, advertisers, competitors, (job) market conditions). In addition, some pressures and demands derive from audiences and sources (McQuail, 2010: 281). These influences are not necessarily always constraining journalistic autonomy. ‘Some of the forces cancel or balance each other (such as audience support against advertiser pressure, or media institutional prestige against external institutional or source pressure)’ (Ibid: 280). On the other hand, even if the freedom of expression protects the media and journalists from outside pressures that affect journalistic operations, it does not prevent possible self-censorship in the editorial offices. Journalists may abandon their subjects and their points of view and slant stories not only voluntarily, but also because of the pressures emanating from their own superiors.
Although academic scholarship claims the decisive role of the political and economic pressures in limiting journalistic autonomy, journalists regard the factors stemming from their immediate environment (newsroom, news organisation, peers, everyday working routines, etc.) or from within the profession (e.g. ethical conventions) as more important. Hanitzsch et al. (2010:15) define these factors as
‘procedural’, ‘professional’ and ‘organisational’ influences. ‘The impact of political and economic factors may be less noticeable under the circumstances of routine news work, mostly because their significance is masked by organizational and procedural influences that have a stronger grip on the journalists’ everyday practice’ (Ibid:17).
Procedural influences include ‘the various operational constraints faced by the journalists in their everyday work’ (Hanitzsch et al., 2010:15), appearing as limited resources in terms of time and space (like pressing news deadlines and shortage of resources). Professional influences ‘refer to the policies, conventions and customs of the profession in general and specifically, the newsrooms for which the journalists work. The cultural conventions mostly pertain to what is commonly believed to be good and acceptable practice of journalism’ (Ibid). The organisational influences stem from multiple levels:from within the newsroom (supervisors and senior editors) and from within the media organisation (management and ownership). This dimension also reflects the ‘eroding walls between newsrooms and boardrooms around the world’ (Ibid).
In the context of the present comparative exercise, it is noteworthy that all these factors may have different effects even within the same country’s media system.
For example, several case study reports (e.g. Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Germany) point out that the degree of journalists’ autonomy in their countries may differ depending on their employment status (permanently employed or freelancer), the status of employer (public service or private) or the range of distribution (national, regional, local).
When comparing media policy in different countries it is important to take into consideration that similar effects and phenomena may be the results of various specific and complex configurations that are unique in each country. For example, in Belgium the external political (or commercial) pressure on the content of the news seems to be more widespread within local media outlets with small editorial boards. A possible reason is that local journalists in general are often closer to their sources (Van Besien, 2011: 36). In the case of Bulgaria, it seems that the relationship between financial stability and independence of the media is reversed: the local and regional print media as a rule enjoy less adequate financial resources than the mainstream media, but they demonstrate more independence in their performance (Smilova, Smilov and Ganev, 2011: 29). The Mediadem case reports also demonstrate that various policy instruments, actors and media policy implementation problems have different significance in different countries. Therefore, it is not possible to make overarching generalisations or conclusions that equally apply to all countries. Hence, the aim of the present comparative report is to outline how general and theory-based media policy instruments, actors and pressure mechanisms influence the journalistic autonomy in the fourteen countries of the Mediadem project.