The Shaping of News : A Framework for Analysis [1 ed.] 9783031219634, 9783031219658

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THE SHAPING OF NE WS A F R A ME W ORK F OR A N A LYSIS JULIE FIRMSTONE

The Shaping of News

Julie Firmstone

The Shaping of News A Framework for Analysis

Julie Firmstone University of Leeds Leeds, UK

ISBN 978-3-031-21963-4  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21963-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Simon, Holly, Jess, my parents, and my P.S.M.I.L.

Acknowledgments

Like news, the writing of this book has been shaped by a multitude of factors. I am immensely grateful to John Corner, without whose unwavering encouragement and advice, comments on the chapters, and incredible stamina in helping me see the project through to the end, the book would not have been completed. Sadly, Jay Blumler is not here to see how the book turned out, but I hope he would be pleased by how it is shaped by his feedback on the proposal, and by his lifelong passion for thinking about the role of journalism in democracy (and I know he would certainly be the first to ask me some difficult questions about the contents!). Thanks for your enthusiasm and support Jay, you are missed by many. Special thanks go to David Morrison from whom I learnt so much, and without whom I would not be a researcher; to Stephen Coleman, who is a constant source of inspiration; to John Steel who is a fantastic collaborator, listener, and constant source of good advice; to Chris Anderson and Michael Karlsson, for their feedback on chapters; and to Anders Hansen for his helpful (anonymous) suggestions on the proposal, and for reading the whole book so long afterwards. Thanks also to the many other colleagues who have encouraged and supported me along the way, including Lee Edwards, Kristyn Gorton, Beth Johnson, Bethany Klein, Giles Moss, Kate Nash, Katy Parry, Katrin Voltmer, and Rebecca Whittington. I am grateful for the generous support of the School of Media and Communication and the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Culture at the University of Leeds for periods of research leave which enabled me to progress the book. A special thank you goes to Henrik Örnebring and the generosity of Karlstad University for giving me the opportunity to benefit from time away from ‘normal duties’ as an invited visiting fellow, during which I made a head start on the project and was welcomed into a wonderfully collaborative work environment fuelled by Fika. From Palgrave Macmillan I want to thank Lloyd Langman for commissioning the book and Lauriane Piette and Samriddhi Pandey for supporting it in the final stages. Thanks to Prisca Scharmsow at Eyedea studio for the great diagrams and to James Mason for proofreading. vii

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My friends and family deserve thanks for remaining interested (or making the effort to appear interested) in how the book was progressing, particularly Kate Holroyd who withstood many an update during our laps of the village field and Sharrone Walker for her encouragement. Thanks to my mum and dad, Pat and Mike Firmstone, for their constant support and teaching me how to do things properly. Last but by no means least, I want to thank my daughters, Holly and Jess, and my husband, Simon, for putting up with me during what seemed like a never-ending project. I wouldn’t be writing this without your patience, love, and Simon’s cooking.

Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 Why Study News? The Democratic Role of News 11 3 Understanding  and Analysing Influences on the Production of News 37 4 Routines and Practices: Studying the Making of News 63 5 Journalism Norms, Values, and Role Perceptions 85 6 Journalism Ethics113 7 The News Organisation137 8 News Audiences161 9 News Sources187 10 Conclusion213 Index229

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About the Author

Julie  Firmstone is Professor of Journalism and Political Communication at the School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds, UK. Her teaching and research explore a range of issues in the intersection between journalism, the news media, politics, and democratic engagement. She has published widely on the role of news and journalism in local democracy; journalism standards, press ethics and regulation; editorial journalism at newspapers; and communication about the European Union.

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List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 8.1 Fig. 9.1 Fig. 10.1

Framework for analysing influences on the production of news The editorial production process Spectrum of audience participation Spectrum of audience participation Framework for analysing influences on the production of news

39 150 169 201 214

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List of Tables

Table 7.1 Table 8.1

Results of content analysis of editorials in British national newspapers149 Longitudinal changes in news use 171

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

News and its production is the site of an ever evolving interplay between multiple actors and constraints. As we explore in this book, the production of news is influenced by a combination of factors including established and emerging routines and practices of news production, the norms, values, and ethics associated with journalism as a profession, the role of news sources, the changing character and significance of news audiences, the aims, objectives, and values of the organisations that produce news, and the political, economic, and social contexts within which news is produced. My aim in this book is to offer some critical reflections on these influences and their implications within a conceptual ‘Framework for Analysing Influences on the Production of News’ (see Fig. 3.1, Chap. 3). Intended to be used as a conceptual toolkit, the framework provides readers with a visual supporting structure for organising an analytically rigorous and empirical approach to scrutinising the contexts that shape the production of news. Additionally, it serves as a potential map for exploring various (but not exhaustive) shaping factors as explanatory variables for news content and encourages the systematic investigation of influencing factors in future empirical research. Ultimately, and importantly for the kind of news and journalism explored in this book, I am interested in studying the factors that shape the production of news and the relationship between them in terms of their implications for the democratic role of news in the public sphere. Through a critical synthesis of scholarly literature, I equip readers with the knowledge with which to critique and critically reflect on the state of news and journalism as a whole or through a particular project. Intended as an introductory text for students and a resource for researchers looking to connect with the current field of research, I encourage readers to ground their reflections about what is changing in news and journalism in the context of what has gone before by engaging with landmark studies, theories and concepts. By first establishing the key concepts that have led our understanding of the routines © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Firmstone, The Shaping of News, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21963-4_1

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and practices that shape news production, the book builds on these concepts to explore a range of questions relating to the way power is exercised in the sourcing, selection, writing and distribution of news. Who has power over what becomes news? How does the way journalists identify with certain norms, values and role orientations serve as a guide for their actions? In addition to journalists, what role is played by other key actors, such as news audiences, news sources and news organisations? What shapes the flow of information available to the public? What are the implications of these roles and relationships for the democratic qualities of news and for who has a voice in the public sphere? Throughout the book, I address recent changes and transformations in the news environment and in the very nature of journalism, particularly those shaped by technology, to establish how the roles and relationships between journalists and the various actors who influence the production of news are changing, and to consider the implications of these changes. Though I want to address an international readership and to have the broadest possible relevance—because news is produced in a wide range of national contexts varying by, among other things, political system, economies, cultures, and organisation of the media—the applicability of the connections I offer will vary. At the core of my discussion are issues and concerns that have been the subject of research in liberal democracies, and for the main part, relate to news produced by legacy mainstream news organisations.

Challenges in Critically Reflecting on the Role of News and Journalism in Democracy The inspiration for the book comes from three challenges I have encountered in teaching undergraduate students of journalism to reflect critically on the role of news and journalism in democracy. The first challenge is that the richness of existing knowledge about the production of news is spread across books and journal articles which are differentiated not only by their theoretical approach and disciplinary background, but also by the news form they relate to (print, broadcast, digital), the geographical scope of news they consider (local, national, international, transnational, global), the countries and cultures that findings from empirical studies represent (predominantly the USA), and the types of shaping influences they investigate. Difficulties in understanding the factors that shape the democratic role of news are compounded by the fact that the field of study is constantly evolving, changing and reacting to changes in journalism practice brought about in large part by developments in mobile, digital and social media. The implications of these changes for the way news is produced, distributed and consumed have driven an extensive research effort. However, two dominant yet contradictory narratives—either that technology is responsible for a crisis in journalism on the one hand or a positive revolution of a previously undemocratic practice on the other—have tended to obscure broader questions about the impact and implications of these changes to

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practices of news production, which presents a challenge for those wanting to make sense of the changes. While the study of news and journalism has produced a vast and rich literature for understanding factors that shape the production of news, there is no single text that brings existing knowledge and research together under the umbrella of a central organising framework, which would help students to engage with the multiplicity of theoretical approaches, concepts, and research findings. The ‘Framework for Analysing Influences on the Production of News’ provides students and researchers with a way of visualising the relationship between five spheres of influence (journalism norms, values and role perceptions; journalism ethics; news organisations; news audiences; and news sources), news production practices and news content. A second significant challenge is to inspire aspiring journalists to scrutinise and reflect on the role of news and journalism in democracy. This can be difficult for two reasons. First, the importance of academic scrutiny of the work of the news media has not always been as glaringly obvious as it is today. When I first started teaching journalism studies in 2011, an era of consensus politics and consensus in society prevailed, meaning that students could more easily view the influencing role of the news media on our everyday lives, on public opinion and the consequences for democracy as relatively distant and theoretical ideas. These were students following on from several generations of young people characterised by a swathe of political studies as apathetic and disinterested in politics. Indeed, much of the population, at least in the UK and the USA, showed low levels of interest in politics in opinion polls, voter turnout was low, and the steady decline of public trust in the mainstream news media that we have seen since then was just beginning to take hold. Unlike the now ubiquitous references to fake news and news bias, contemporary and public narratives were not very concerned with the workings of the media and the performance of journalism. Though academic critiques of news and journalism have long highlighted the performance of the news media as less than ideal, additional narratives of crisis, damage, and risk to democracy have come to the fore over the last decade and gained far more traction. Fast-forward to 2023 and making the case for the importance of understanding the factors that influence the production of news and the implications these influences have for the qualities of news available to the public is far easier. Similarly to claims that the disruptive force of President Trump was good for the bottom line of the newspaper industry in the USA, the rise of populism across Europe, Brexit, the migration crisis, climate change, the ‘culture wars’, the global pandemic, and the war in Ukraine, coupled with the rise in mis- and disinformation, fake news, and the fragmentation and polarisation of news audiences, have brought further reinforcement of the idea that sources of information that the public can trust are crucial for democracy. A second difficultly is that, perhaps understandably, students of journalism tend to be more focused on learning how to ‘do journalism’ than on critically reflecting on the factors that shape what kind of news is produced, on what influences news to be the way it is, and on the implications of these influences

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for the purposes served by news and journalism in society. Though such scrutiny can be misinterpreted as unnecessarily critical, it is important to stand back and reflect on the way the production of news and journalism is organised in a collective and institutional sense if we care about how to ensure that the type of news needed to make democracy function is available. It is vital that prospective journalists understand the broader context of news making and what shapes it because they have the power to effect change. As the lessons of history make clear, and, despite journalism scholar Michael Schudson’s pleading, journalism will not hold still (Schudson 2013). News production and journalism will keep changing and evolving, so future journalists need to be equipped with the reflective as well as practical skills to respond to these changes. Moreover, these changes and their impact can be shaped by journalists and, although some are beyond the control of individuals, in the case of those where there is a choice, this book aims to inform and encourage future generations of journalists and others working in the media and communication industry to make choices that will benefit society. The book gives readers the necessary tools for taking a critical approach to analysing news. It encourages readers to go beyond factual descriptions of news content and to apply normative theories about the roles news and journalism can play in democracy as a yardstick for evaluating the implications and consequences of the factors that shape the production of news. Various tensions and constraints in news making are routinely pitched as a problem in critiques that point to the gap between the ideal functions of journalism in theory and gaps in practice, but what they mean in practice often remains vague. Throughout the book, the critical exploration of empirical research works to overcome this by illustrating how the interplay between various influencing factors and competing priorities plays out in a variety of contexts. A third challenge for anyone interested in analysing influences on the production of news is that news and journalism are moving targets. In fact, it is more complicated than that because a moving target suggests that there is something stable to aim at. Advances in technology and our uses of it have led to a situation of ever-evolving changes emerging at a pace that is difficult to keep up with. With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps we should not be so surprised by the arrival of this period of instability and change. A brief foray into the history of journalism (at least the history that is most accessible, e.g. of journalism in the USA) shows us that instead of viewing the last 10 to 20 years as a period of unprecedented change, we should consider the period of relative stability before this, from the mid-twentieth century, as the odd one out. Prior to the 1950s, and the beginnings of journalism research in the 1970s, journalism, news and the forms it takes have taken many shapes, changed in many ways and evolved in response to a great many new technologies (the printing press, the telegraph, and TV to name a few). Journalism and the news media have long had a symbiotic relationship with politics, which a period of post-war stability led us to believe was less often in flux than it really is. This perception of understanding and stability was also influenced by the fact that journalism

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scholarship and what it thought it knew (its epistemology) was founded on not so solid foundations, which only told part of the story. As is clear from the research synthesised in this book, what we thought we knew about how journalism works and why it produces the kind of news it does is based on a partial view and is informed by journalism scholarship that can be critiqued from many angles: its USA/Western focus, the concentration of research on the work of elite newspapers to the exclusion of other formats and platforms, and the fledgling status of the field which until recently has lacked the application of rigorous research methods and solid theoretical direction. The narrative structure of the book is designed to integrate consideration of a range of these changes—not just that of technology—throughout. After introducing the case for understanding and analysing the production of news and developing the framework that structures the rest of the book in Chaps. 2 and 3, Chap. 4 introduces the established and emerging routines and practices that shape news content. Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 each explore one of the five spheres of influence and follow a temporal approach, recognising that news production and journalism are constantly evolving. Each chapter considers how we can understand the shaping role of that sphere of influence through three lenses—the past, change and the contemporary situation. Consideration of change is embedded into the chapters as follows: each one begins by presenting landmark studies to establish the theories and concepts that have defined thinking about the sphere of influence in the past; next, each chapter considers the significance of key changes and developments in current concepts and theories about the factors that shape news; and in the final part of each chapter we complete the discussion by reflecting on the concerns and questions that arise from the contemporary and evolving context.

Outline of the Book The book is comprised of ten chapters. Following this introductory chapter, Chap. 2—Why Study News? The Democratic Role of News—encourages students and journalism researchers to critically reflect on the factors that influence the democratic value of news. It asks, why study influences on the production of news? Exploring the democratic role attributed to the news media, the chapter establishes the focus of the book on news and its role in democracy. Readers are introduced to democratic theories which place journalists as key actors in the triangular relationship between the state, the public and the media. Normative expectations of the news media are introduced, including conceptualisations of news as an information provider, the Fourth Estate, watchdog, and representative of the public. Having established how ideas about the contribution of news to democracy structure broader ideas about the role of news and journalism in society, the second part of the chapter considers some of the factors that might affect its success and its limitations in performing these ideals. Given the consensus that the provision of quality information is central to democracy, we consider how news quality is defined and conceptualised. The chapter

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summarises the significant state of flux, crisis, and recalibration that news and journalism finds itself in due to contemporary changes in the landscape of news, illustrating the increasing importance of scrutinising the factors that influence the performance of the news media. Chapter 3—Understanding and Analysing Influences on the Production of News—begins by suggesting that that one way to explain these changes is to pursue an empirically informed understanding of the factors that influence news and the consequences they have for the democratic qualities of news. The necessity of an organising framework to structure such an analysis is the focus of the chapter which proposes a visual framework to inform and structure critical reflections about the factors that influence the production of news. The framework is developed and informed by a macro-level mapping of the most prevalent ways in which scholars have researched and theorised the production of news and journalism to date. Introducing the main theoretical approaches taken by journalism studies and political communication scholars, I suggest that explaining news content requires an understanding of a core set of factors that are a common feature in studies to date. I propose that it is essential to consider the complex interplay between a range of forces that operate both inside and outside journalism in conjunction with news production practices in order to explain news content. The chapter identifies five spheres of influence (journalism norms, values, and role perceptions; journalism ethics; the news organisation; news audiences; and news sources) and represents them visually in a diagram of the ‘Framework for Analysing Influences on the Production of News’. The framework structures the remainder of the book’s critical exploration of influences on the production of news. Chapter 4—Routines and Practices: Studying the Making of News—takes us to the most obvious place to begin understanding the determinants of news production, the place where news is made: the newsroom. Historically, journalism scholars began studying the factors that influence news by observing journalists at work and the processes of news production. In focusing on news production practices, this chapter asks how the routines and practices of journalists shape news content and what these practices mean for who has power over what becomes news. I begin by introducing a selection of formative studies and concepts that have been central in defining our understanding of the organisation of the collective production of news such as gatekeeping and news values. The focus of many of these studies not only on the press, but also on a bygone era and a set of routines that were (incorrectly) assumed to be stable, requires that many of the conceptualisations of news production practices be re-thought in light of current conditions, particularly digital technologies that are shaping the work of journalists. In the second part of the chapter, I therefore introduce several newly evolving routines and practices of digital journalism, including aggregation, curation and the use of audience analytics and algorithms. Findings from recent empirical research are synthesised to evaluate the changes represented by these new practices. To what extent do they replace or supplement existing practices? What distinguishes the routines and practices

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of today from the past? And what implications do these distinctions have for news quality now and in the future? Journalists’ routines and practices for producing news are shaped by their beliefs about the values, norms and ethics associated with the professional culture of journalism and the way in which these combine, and sometimes conflict, with the priorities, allegiances and working conventions of the organisations they work within. We explore the journalism norms, values and role perceptions that journalists identify with in Chap. 5 and consider journalism ethics in Chap. 6. Chapter 5 explores two key questions: how does the way that journalists identify with the shared values of the profession serve as a guide for their actions; and how does ‘being a journalist’ shape news? Divided into three parts, the chapter begins by considering debates about the importance of journalism’s claim to the status of a profession and introduces the norms and values of journalism. In the second part we look at the roles that journalists identify with, finding that although there are a set of core values that are largely shared amongst journalists, in practice, interpretations of many of these values vary according to national cultures, news organisations, and the type of journalism pursued. In the third part, we take an in-depth look at the shaping role of two professional values: objectivity as an established value; and transparency as an emerging value and potential new norm. Taking transparency as a specific example we explore how contemporary challenges to the credibility of journalism as a profession—citizen journalism, social media, opportunities for audiences to participate in the production of news, falling levels of trust in journalism, and the problem of ‘fake news’, mis- and dis-information—are compelling those journalists who are committed to the aims and principles of objectivity (and free to implement them), to rethink how best to achieve them in the digital age. In a continuation of Chap. 5’s discussion of journalistic identities, Chap. 6 focuses on the ethical dilemmas of news making that are central to the practice of journalism (micro ethics) as opposed to normative, ‘macro’ level, discussions of ethics that focus on assigning journalism a purpose in society (as introduced in Chap. 2). Numerous events in recent times have shifted ethics to the top of the agenda, particularly in relation to the ethical duty of journalism to uphold free speech and the expectation for journalism to provide freedom of information in the form of ‘truth telling’. The chapter begins by explaining the role of ethics in protecting the boundaries of journalism by creating integrity and credibility, building trust between journalists, their sources, and their audiences in the day-to-day production of news. We consider the areas of news making where ethical decisions come into play, referring to examples from three key stages of news production—selection, sourcing, and writing—to highlight the ethical tensions and dilemmas faced by journalists. I then set out the importance of ethics as a sphere of influence through a synthesis of research findings about the ways in which ethics operate as an influence on news production practices and how ethics shape the quality of news content. Four key findings about how ethics are observed, enacted, and adhered to in practice are

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discussed, showing that the influence of codes of ethics varies in relation to differences in the objectives and source of the codes; that journalists’ perceptions of the impact of codes on their work varies according to national cultures; that there is an important relationship between the ethics of individuals and their professional values; and that socialisation into the newsroom and organisational ethical policies are of major significance. In Chap. 7—The News Organisation—I introduce a range of perspectives to demonstrate the various ways in which the particular context of a news organisation and its objectives can be understood and evaluated as an explanatory variable for variations in practices and content. We begin from the premise that understanding the aims and objectives of the organisations that produce news is key to understanding how news is determined and constructed by their journalists. From a macro perspective, we look at the importance of the media system and market structure in establishing the context within which a news organisation exists. Exploring the consequences of ownership models based on either commercialised priorities or public service ideals explains how ownership dynamics shape news. Analysing ownership models alone, however, without consideration of the micro level organisational contexts that they create, cannot explain how a news organisation operates as a day-to-day influence on production practices and does not reveal much about the way that different ownership structures create and sustain distinct organisational cultures. For this the chapter looks to micro level internal characteristics and organisational cultures as the place where an organisation’s aims and objectives are visible, and where we can see the authority and power of owners being exercised. I introduce the key concepts of socialisation and autonomy as ways in which organisational structures and power are experienced and understood by journalists. Next, I use a case study of editorial journalism at British national newspapers to demonstrate the shaping role of informal and formal organisational structures on practices and content. The case study illustrates how the aims and objectives of a news organisation are achieved and how authority is exercised. The chapter finishes by exploring an example of change, considering the introduction of audience analytics into news production as an example of the way in which autonomy is mediated by specific organisational contexts. The arrival of digital journalism and the associated participatory turn in journalism has shifted the audience away from being an imagined and abstract concept with little power or agency in shaping news, to a potentially powerful agent in news production practices. Chapter 8—News Audiences—explores the proposition that audiences play a larger role in the construction of news than they did in the past, making it necessary to attribute greater influence to audiences in analyses of influences on the production of news. The chapter asks, how does the relationship between journalists and audiences shape what becomes news? We begin by considering the different lenses through which audiences and their relationship with news have been conceptualised: as citizens, the public; as consumers; as passive receivers and recipients; and, more recently, as active participants and producers. Next, we explore how these

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relationships have evolved over time and consider the diverse participatory opportunities audiences have to shape news production in the digital age. A diagram visualises practices of audience participation as a ‘Spectrum of Audience Participation’ with passive and unintentional forms of participation at one end (when audiences are consumers and recipients of news), a hybrid of consumption and production in the middle (when audiences share, comment and give feedback on news), and active and intentional practices at the other end (when audiences produce news/information as a news source see Fig. 8.1). In the final part of the chapter, I explore the implications of emerging practices of audience participation in news, including sharing, commenting and giving feedback, as well as the potential for the personalisation of news to result in selective exposure, filter bubbles, and echo chambers. Chapter 9—News Sources—is premised on news being a collaborative product made between journalists and their sources, meaning that sourcing practices are a fundamental element of news production. The chapter begins by exploring theories about the relationship between journalists and their sources to highlight two key issues at stake in the study of source media relations: the power of sources to influence the news agenda; and the tensions at play in the contradictory nature of the journalist/source relationship. In the second part of the chapter, we explore the powerful and potentially contentious relationship between public relations (PR) and journalism, seeing how the increasingly professionalised activities of PR as a source shapes the selection, content and framing of news. We establish how, over the last few decades, the proliferation of public relations professionals (PRPs) and the associated practice of ‘churnalism’ (when news is not original because it is produced by recycling existing material) have increased the power of sources to provide valuable information subsidies to journalists. In the last part of the chapter, we contemplate how the public, journalists and news organisations have responded to new opportunities for participation that have been heralded for their democratising potential in enabling audiences to become news sources through social media, user-generated content (UGC), and citizen journalism. Chapter 10, the conclusion, reviews the explorations and arguments of the book to summarise the critical synthesis of research in relation to seven themes: explaining news as the product of multiple spheres of influence; explaining news as a complex interplay between these multiple influences; explaining news as context dependent; explaining the role of technology; analysing influences on news in relation to democratic quality; tensions in news production; and changes in news production. Referring to gaps and developments highlighted in previous chapters, the second part of the chapter points to the most pressing directions needed for future research to improve our understanding of news and the factors that shape it. This includes a more diverse and de-westernised understanding of national cultural contexts; a fuller understanding of the internal informal and formal organisational structures that distinguish news organisations, including organisational cultures; a better understanding of audience expectations of the role and function of news and journalism; and a better

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understanding of how the different experiences and perspectives that journalists with differing attributes (gender, class, ethnicity, to name a few) shape the production of news, especially the diversity of news representations. The chapter finishes by suggesting ways to structure and approach future analyses of the factors that shape news.

Reference Schudson, M. 2013. Would Journalism Please Hold Still! In: Peters, C. & Broersma, M. (eds.) Rethinking Journalism: Trust and Participation in a Transformed News Landscape. London: Routledge.

CHAPTER 2

Why Study News? The Democratic Role of News

Introduction It’s interesting, this discussion has ebbed and flowed quite considerably over the last four or five years, where at moments you’re going to be out of business because everyone gets their news from Twitter. Suddenly it seems that having some verified, proper journalistically reported information is more essential than ever. Because there is so much misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda weaponised by social media… that in actual fact we have never needed boots on the ground, traditional value journalism modernised of course with all the technology we can use, to fight the situation that we find ourselves in now… this should be a renaissance for all of us, because people are lost in a world of misinformation and disinformation. (Phil Chetwin—Global Editor in Chief of Agence France-Presse (AFP), The Media Show, BBC Radio 4, 14 November 2018)

The potential power of news to structure public debates and shape public opinion demands that we not only question the quality of information available in the news media, but that we also understand the factors at work in shaping the democratic functions that news can fulfil. The ability of the news media to fulfil a democratic role has undergone significant change and challenges over the last two decades, fuelled predominantly by two factors: the increasing commercialisation of news; and advances in technology, specifically the rise of the Internet and digitalisation. Concurrently, big shifts in societal and political circumstances, including the rise of populism, polarisation in politics, concerns about mis- and disinformation as well as shifts in the political information environment have led to increased scrutiny of the news media landscape. The recent context of the global pandemic and the war in Ukraine have reignited the reliance of the public on legacy news media, particularly public service broadcasters, for reliable, trustworthy information (Van Aelst et  al., 2021; Coleman et al., 2020), and amplified the need for an independent news media to hold

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Firmstone, The Shaping of News, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21963-4_2

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those in power to account. As indicated by the opening quote, even before these events, the perceived value of ‘proper journalistically reported information’ was increasing. The main aim of this chapter is to make the case for the importance of understanding and analysing the factors that influence the production of news. To begin, I explain why news is a special product that is accorded a unique role in society to inform the public, facilitate the formation and representation of public opinion in the public sphere, and act as a channel of information between power and the public. After establishing the democratic functions attributed to the news media by theories, we consider how the news media and journalists’ performance of these ideals is evaluated by considering what we mean by quality news. In the last part of the chapter, I explain why questioning and analysing the context of news production is increasingly urgent due to the significant state of flux—some say crisis—that the news media and journalism find themselves in. I argue that considering how change and crisis constitute challenges to the democratic value of news and journalism underpins the need for an empirically informed understanding and analysis of the factors that influence the production of news.

What Is News? ‘News’ is the name given to a diverse range of media products with the character of regular informational output. As with other core concepts at the heart of this book, such as journalism and democracy, news as an object of study is a contested concept and open to various interpretations. For the questions explored in this book, news is something distinct from journalism. While the two terms are often conflated and used interchangeably, there is a difference. News refers to content, the product of a news production process. Throughout the book, we focus on the production of news which is essentially a process of selection and gathering (from those events/circumstances/accounts which will form the basis of a news item and those parts which will be given emphasis), and construction (the organisation of the news narrative and its component elements). Importantly for this perspective, we take journalism to be the act of producing news rather than the text produced as the result of such action. This helps clarify our object of study and locates journalism as an observable practice embedded in news organisations. Journalism is of course also considered in the collective sense as a profession with which individual journalists identify, and we explore the dynamics of this status in Chaps. 5 and 6. Further, the analytical framework proposed in Chap. 3 calls for us to think of news as more than simply the result of journalistic practices or the work of journalists. Journalists are of course key actors, but they must negotiate power relationships with multiple actors and other factors beyond their control which shape the end product that is news. Viewing news through this lens acknowledges that it is the result of a complex interplay between a range of factors at work in its production. As we will see in Chap. 3, depending on their proximity to the news production

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process, we can distinguish between intrinsic spheres of influence such as journalism norms, values and role perceptions, journalism ethics, and news organisations and extrinsic spheres such as news audiences and news sources.

News and Politics As a scholar of both political communication and journalism studies, I approach news and journalism as fundamental elements of the political information environment. While people may learn about politics and current affairs from a range of other sources, news is the most common source of political information, fulfilling a vital role in meeting the information needs of the public in their role as citizens (Aalberg and Curran, 2013; Blumler and Coleman, 2015). News and journalism can of course be conceptualised in a variety of other ways—as a commodity, a cultural product, crucial to social cohesion, creating cultural identity, and as entertainment, to name a few—but, in aiming to encourage critical reflection about the distinctive democratic contribution of news and journalism to society, this book focuses on the production of news about political and current affairs—news journalism. This necessarily excludes the many other forms of journalism that report on other areas of life. Our focus is also restricted predominantly to understanding influences on news produced by legacy mainstream media organisations and the journalists they employ: the news media. Despite the rapid expansion in sources of news, particularly those produced and distributed digitally, news produced by established news organisations remains the most popular, the most accessed, and the most trusted source of news (Newman et  al., 2021; Ofcom, 2021).1 As has happened at other times of crisis, audiences turned to established news providers as sources of information during the global pandemic that began in 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic exposed how politics is embedded in our everyday lives—the right to go to school, to go outside, to take exercise, to visit relatives, to go to the shops to buy groceries—and revealed how these taken-for-granted actions are profoundly political (Samanani, 2022). As we see in our discussion of routines and practices of news production in Chap. 4, legacy news also retains a dominant role in the news ecology due to its influence on the rest of the news cycle as an agenda setter and the original source of many aggregated and curated stories. Studies of news sharing indicate that news from the legacy mainstream outlets is the most shared. Another reason for our focus on legacy news media is that although scholars have begun to turn their attention towards emerging types of news production such as digital natives (Stringer, 2018), entrepreneurial news production (Deuze and Witschge, 2020), and citizen journalism (Thorsen and Allan, 2014), the vast majority of research available to inform our view relates to legacy mainstream news media. Similarly, despite supporting the 1  For example, in the UK, the most used source of news among adults is TV at 79% closely followed by online at 73%, radio 43%, print 32%, and newspapers rising to 49% when apps and print editions are combined (OFCOM 2021).

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de-­Westernising agenda of the field (Waisbord and Mellado, 2014), the discussions in the book are unavoidably shaped by the dominance of research based on the situation in the USA, Western Europe or other liberal democratic contexts, especially when it comes to early studies. As we see throughout the book, this imbalance in our understanding of the contexts of news production highlights a gap which is particularly significant when we consider the extent to which research illustrates the importance of national cultures and contexts as distinguishing features and shaping forces.

Why Is News Important? A Vital Role in Democracy The way that we perceive news and the role we attribute to it in society determines its value, the norms, values, and qualities we expect of it and of the journalists and the news media that produce it. These perceptions determine how we evaluate news and set the criteria for the questions we ask about the role and performance of news in society. The reason these questions are important is because news matters, and we now turn our attention to asking why studying influences on the production of news is of value. I introduce some key theoretical perspectives that attribute a significant role to news and journalism for the well-functioning of democracy. My aim in discussing normative theories is not to get bogged down with the intricacies and many debates about how the media should be organised for the good of society. Rather it is to briefly introduce the normative roles attributed to news and journalism as a way of establishing the importance of studying and analysing influences on the production of news, and to establish the terms of reference by which we can judge the implications of influences on the production of news.

Democracy, the News Media, and Journalism: An Interdependent Relationship It may be useful for those new to thinking about the media and democracy to begin with a brief note to explain the principles that underpin democracy. The role of the news media has predominantly been theorised in the context of the form of liberal democracy common to Western democracies where representative democracy operates according to liberal political ideology. Developed from the ideas of Adam Smith and John Locke, the principles of classical liberalism recognise the moral primacy of the individual and fundamental rights for all. The purpose of democracy in this context is to protect these rights and freedoms: the right to practice any religion or none; equal rights for all citizens to participate in elections; freedom of individual expression; the right to privacy/a private sphere; freedom of assembly and association; and freedom of the press. Historically, the political role of the media developed in parallel with the rise of liberal democracy. It was not until universal suffrage was achieved in the early to mid-twentieth century that the media were attributed a role in informing

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and educating the public in their new capacity as citizens who needed to be informed in order to vote. Political communication scholars attribute the news media (and the news they produce) a powerful role in the interdependent relationship between the state, the public and the media, allowing governments to connect indirectly with the public in the classic political communication triangle. Grounded in theories of media effects, political communication theories attribute the news media with the potential to influence public opinion through agenda setting and framing (Dearing and Rogers, 1996; Entman, 1993). Through the process of selecting issues for inclusion, the news media’s agenda primes readers to not only learn about a given issue, but also suggests how much importance to attach to that issue (McCombs and Shaw, 1972: 176). Furthermore, through including, excluding, or emphasising various characteristics and properties in news content—framing—the media can influence the way the public evaluates an issue. According to Entman, “to frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described” (Entman, 1993: 52). Evidence suggests that the capacity of the news media to influence public opinion and voting depends on the context of public opinion. For example, the capacity of the media to shape the public agenda is greater when the public have low levels of knowledge or little direct experience of an issue (Iyengar, 1991; Kahneman and Tversky, 1984). Regardless of its efficacy in influencing public opinion, research certainly shows that the news media contributes to public knowledge of political affairs. We also know that the type of news available to the public has implications for levels of political knowledge, with public service television news in particular making a strong contribution to levels of public knowledge (Strömbäck, 2017; Aalberg and Curran, 2013).

Normative Theories About the Role of News and Journalism in Liberal Democracy The mutually dependent relationship between journalism and democracy was famously described by communication theorist James Carey, “Without journalism there is no democracy, but without democracy there is no journalism” (Carey, 1999: 51). Carey’s statement introduces us to key normative ideals and expectations of news and journalism as well as the pragmatic considerations of how society, and the news media particularly, ought to be set up to function in this way. It relates to the idea that journalism functions as a system for ensuring that citizens have access to the trustworthy reliable information that they need to exercise their freedoms and to be self-governing (Strömbäck, 2005; Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2003). Referring to the existence of journalism as dependent on democracy relates to the conditions necessary for news and journalism to be able to provide such information. In a democratic context, the news media

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must have the ability to exercise freedom of speech and to operate independently and autonomously from government to provide such information (freedom of the press). Normative theories are part of a wider set of ideas about how media systems should be organised in terms of how relationships between elected officials, institutions like the state, the public, and the media, guarantee democratic principles. A normative theory of public communication is “the reasoned explanation of how public discourse should be carried on in order for a community or nation to work out solutions to its problems. It is a theory in that it attempts to explain how certain forms of public discourse lead to good collective decisions” (Christians, 2009: 65). The ‘Four Theories of the Press’ was one of the first descriptions of the range of media systems in operation around the world: authoritarian, Soviet communist, libertarian, and social responsibility (Siebert et  al., 1956). The typology took a normative position that, in theory, all societies ought to work towards the press fulfilling a social responsibility role, assuming that liberal democracy is favourable in preference to authoritarian or other political systems (something for which it has been widely critiqued (Merrill, 2002; Nerone, 2002). This social responsibility involves the press exchanging freedom from government intervention with the obligation to provide citizens with adequate information to make informed decisions. The notion of social responsibility invokes the ideal that the news media should act in the service of the public thereby acting in the public interest (though as we see in Chap. 6, interpretations of what constitutes the public interest vary enormously and it is a muchcontested concept). The public service role of the media is therefore a normative expectation with the media duty bound to provide information and opinion about political issues to enable the public to fulfil their role as citizens (Christians, 2009). Journalism is also expected to serve as “a proxy for the public, scrutinizing government and holding it to account on behalf of the wider community” (Steel, 2016: 37). Certain conditions are thought to be necessary for the news media to fulfil a public service role and act in the public interest. These include being independent and autonomous from government and other sources of power and being trusted by the public. As discussed further in Chap. 8, autonomy is positioned as a key condition for journalism to be able to fulfil its democratic role, with higher levels of autonomy associated with higher levels of news quality (Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2003). Given that in their role as citizens normative theories expect the public to participate in democracy by forming public opinion and voting, trust in the media is seen as a form of social capital that is vital for a healthy democracy because it fosters citizens’ participation in the polity (Putnam, 2000). If we define trust as “the willingness of citizens to be vulnerable to news content based on the expectation that the media will perform in a satisfactory manner” (Hanitzsch et al., 2017: 5) then we can see that without trust the news media are unable to fulfil the function of informing citizens (Engelke et al., 2019). As shown by the example of the actions of the Russian government in 2022 in shutting down independent news media and banning

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journalists from referring to the invasion of Ukraine as an act of war, citizens cannot hold those in government to account without accurate information provided by a trusted and independent news media.

The News Media, Deliberation, and Public Opinion: The Public Sphere Another important theory about the relationship between the news media, politics and public opinion is Jurgen Habermas’s conceptualisation of the public sphere which has come to dominate much theorising about the political role of the news media since his work was translated into English in 1989 (Habermas, 1989). Originally conceived with the coffee houses of the eighteenth century in mind, Habermas’s public sphere described a space where citizens could access information on political issues to facilitate debate and to form public opinion. Although Habermas’s original concept referred to an arena of political life that was far from equitable because it was only accessible only to men and elites, its ideals demand that the public sphere is open to all (with status differentials set aside) and located in the private realm of society so as to be autonomous from power. With building consensus as the ultimate aim, public opinion is formed through rational and critical debate between individuals who participate on an equal basis. The concept of the public sphere is not without its critics but, for our purposes, it is useful to point to news as the “media-­ constructed public sphere” (Blumler and Kavanagh, 1999: 11). The news media facilitate two key dynamics of the public sphere: public deliberation leading to the formation of public opinion; and they “reconstitute private citizens as a public body in the form of public opinion” (Curran, 1991: 872).

Normative Functions of Journalism in Liberal Democracy Discussions about the functions that journalism is expected to fulfil in the liberal model commonly agree on three roles, all of which emphasise the expectation to act in the public interest: as information providers; as watchdogs holding governing bodies and other powerful organisations to account on behalf of citizens; and as representatives of the voice of citizens (Peters and Witschge, 2015; McNair, 2009; Gans, 2010; Barnett, 2009). The informational function of journalism is universally agreed on, with news expected to supply citizens with information to enable them to evaluate issues, take collective decisions on those issues and vote accordingly. Given that democracy requires the public to be politically informed to make a reasoned, rational, and informed choice it is generally agreed that in its informational role news should be accurate, truthful, objective, and, in the case of broadcast news in the UK, impartial.

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In the watchdog capacity, journalism is expected to hold governmental and political institutions to account on behalf of citizens, to protect the interests of the public, to look out for and expose abuses of power, and to monitor the actions of politicians. Preventing abuses of power requires journalism to apply critical scrutiny to all spheres of society where power is exercised, including government, business, and anywhere else where power can be abused. The watchdog function is strongly connected with the position of the press as the Fourth Estate, and though the two terms are often used synonymously, there is a subtle but important difference. The notion of journalism as the Fourth Estate originated in the eighteenth century in debates in the UK about freedom of speech and the capacity of journalists to operate without interference from government. Originally describing the powerful position of the press as the Fourth Estate of the realm alongside the three established powers of the Parliament, the Church, and the Judiciary,2 the term now describes the more abstract concept of the role of the news media as independent defenders of the public interest. The representative role relates to three aspects of representation: providing a mass channel of communication through which the preferences of the public can be made salient; providing the public with information about the opinions of fellow citizens; and providing “the government with the information it needs in order to make decisions in the common interest sensitive to public sentiments” (Strömbäck, 2005: 332). That the news media is just as necessary as a source of information to governments about the public as it is as a source of information for the public draws our attention back to the political communication triangle, emphasising the interdependent relationship between the three actors. In facilitating dialogue between the public and government journalism can also be seen as a mediator (McNair, 2009; Peters and Witschge, 2015; Barnett, 2009; Strömbäck, 2005). In a fourth function, journalism can take on a proactive campaigning (Barnett, 2009) or participant/advocate role (McNair, 2009). While the three other roles are uncontentious, the extent to which journalism can and should fulfil an advocacy role runs counter to the values of objectivity and neutrality which have evolved as strong norms and ideals of professional journalism. For this reason, advocacy is associated predominantly with specialist forms of journalism that are not bound by expectations of impartiality, most commonly practised by newspapers. These cover “a broad church of subjective forms of reporting that promote social issues and causes, such as ‘muckraking’, ‘crusading’, ‘alternative’, ‘activist’, ‘peace journalism’, ‘civic’ advocacy journalism and ‘interpretive’ journalism” (Fisher, 2016: 714) or distinctive formats such as newspaper editorial columns where the opinions of a paper as an organisation are explicitly expressed (Firmstone, 2019). Campaigning is most associated with newspapers, which run campaigns because of conscious editorial decisions 2  There are multiple interpretations of the three other realm, including the House of Lords, but the Judiciary is most relevant to contemporary politics.

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to intervene in policy debates with the express intention of effecting change (Howarth, 2012; Firmstone, 2008).

Democracy and News Quality: Quantity and the Issue of Diversity Despite consensus that the provision of quality information is central to democracy, ideas about how to define and conceptualise quality are diverse and contested (Van Aelst et al., 2017; Zaller, 1992; Strömbäck, 2005; Fürst, 2020). There is a consensus that the more political information available via the news media the better, with a high level of news about politics and public affairs most likely to meet the information needs of citizens. Though there are undoubtedly more sources of news available than ever before, interpreting whether there is enough news is most easily done in a comparative context. For example, cross-nationally comparative research and/or longitudinal studies can inform judgements about what is a lot or a little by comparing levels of coverage in different countries or in different time periods (Strömbäck and Kaid, 2008). The quantity of news can also be evaluated in proportional terms. For example, despite the emergence and prevalence of online news having led to an increase in political news in absolute terms, the proportion of content that provides political news has declined due to an accompanying increase in the overall supply of media content (Van Aelst et al., 2017). Clearly, a more sophisticated measure of quantity needs to take the type of news that is available into account. This brings us to a common proxy for quality: diversity. In addition to a sufficient supply of news, the concept of diversity is based on the idea that citizens should have access to news that reflects different interests and values in society, provides them with access to a wide range of voices, and exposes them to a range of ideas (Karppinen, 2018). Further, the sources (actors/people) and issues in the news should be diverse enough to accurately represent the public and to guard against an over-emphasis on powerful sources who represent certain political agendas and ideologies (Gans, 1979; Soloski, 1989; Kleemans et al., 2015). As with other measures of quality, there are many approaches to defining and applying measures of diversity to evaluate news media quality. Here, I draw attention to two common indicators of news diversity. The first is diversity in the number and variety of news outlets available to citizens, sometimes called source diversity and commonly referred to as plurality (Karppinen, 2018). The idea is that a plurality of news outlets enables citizens to access a wide range of viewpoints across a variety of platforms and that diversity in ownership prevents too much influence over the supply of information being exercised by any one media owner (Ofcom, 2015). The second kind of diversity concerns two interconnected measures of representation: (1) content diversity evaluates the range of issues, viewpoints and frames in the news; and (2) the diversity of sources in the news evaluates the range and type of individuals and institutional actors in

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the news, with the rationale being that a variety of sources will bring a variety of viewpoints and issues into coverage (Voakes et  al., 1996). Both concepts suffer from problems of definition in practice—what does plurality of ownership look like? And how diversified should news be (Raeijmaekers and Maeseele, 2015)? Further, whereas concerns about quality used to focus on a perceived lack of diversity leading to homogeneity in content, the recent proliferation of news outlets has raised new concerns that too much diversity has potentially undesirable implications that stem from increased audience fragmentation, segmentation, and potential polarisation. Regardless of these difficulties, as we see in the research explored throughout the book, the concept of diversity is often invoked in discussions about the implications of changes in news production practices for quality, particularly in relation to questions of equality and representation explored in Chap. 9—News Sources. For instance, who has a voice in the news and which actors have the power to set news agendas? We also see that practices of aggregation and curation have the potential to result in a lack of content diversity, homogenisation, and a narrowing of sources in Chap. 4—Routines and Practices: studying the making of news.

Content Characteristics and Quality There is general agreement that, in theory, in its informational role news should be accurate, truthful, timely, relevant, fair, balanced, unbiased, objective, and, in some cases, impartial. Indeed, as we see in Chap. 5—Journalism norms, values and role perceptions, these qualities are core values of journalism as a profession. In reality, it is crucial to note that the extent to which most of these values are a feature of news is the subject of much debate and varies across different news mediums, formats and outlets. National cultural contexts created by political, regulatory and legal systems shape the ability of and requirements for news organisations to fulfil certain roles, as do the differing political and economic aims and intentions of news organisations. For instance, broadcast news is most often obliged to be impartial whereas the printed press usually operates according to different values. In the UK, despite the tradition indicated by the Editor’s Code of Practice (IPSO, 2021) that newspapers should clearly distinguish between fact, opinion, comment, and conjecture, the line between opinion and fact-based news reporting is blurred and the UK press is famously partisan. In the ‘free’ press system typified by the UK, newspapers operate a kind of ‘competitive partisanship’, with news largely freed of many requirements of political balance and fairness since newspapers are seen legitimately to be ‘politicized’ agencies chosen as such by their readerships. In contrast a ‘regulated impartiality’ model applies to television and radio news which operate as public service broadcasters. Legislation is attached to broadcasting licences that regulates news content in the interests of the broader ‘public’ and guards against what the regulator calls “the undue prominence of views and opinions” (Ofcom, 2020). In the UK at least, these conditions greatly affects the extent to which a ‘public service’ frame can be seen to be operative in

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journalism, with this role far more marginal in the (commercialised) press than in the case of broadcasting. The recent arrival of more explicitly politically aligned television news channels such as GB News and Talk TV is, however, testing the limits of how the requirement for ‘due impartiality’ can be interpreted. As we see throughout the book, differing economic contexts underpin differences between news organisations in relation to their commitments to the values associated with informational news. News organisations operating in the free market follow commercial priorities to produce news that returns a profit whereas organisations funded by the public (public service media) are expected to prioritise news that meets their obligation to serve the public. In the realm of commercially funded news, political and economic interests are often intertwined. Political alignments can serve as a marketing strategy designed to attract partisan audiences and/or to express support for political parties and governments whose policies sustain favourable business conditions for the industry e.g. the history of the majority of the British press supporting the Conservative party. Beyond the core qualities expected of informational news, other qualitative measures of content characteristics that evaluate the subject, tone, form and framing of news have emerged to describe the widespread (and age old) concerns about a perceived decline in news quality. A variety of terms describe the phenomenon and consequences of ‘low quality news’ designed to appeal to mass audiences: tabloidisation, celebrity news, dumbing down, infotainment, sensationalism, marketisation, commodification, popularisation, and clickbait. These terms are interpreted and operationalised in a multitude of ways by research describing content characteristics and formats. A further characteristic commonly distinguishes between hard and soft news, another concept with multiple definitions. Some definitions incorporate a sense of timeliness, e.g. breaking news (hard) versus non-time-sensitive (soft), others see the main difference in terms of ‘serious’ and ‘important’ topics such as politics and current affairs (hard) versus human interest stories (soft), and others make a distinction on the basis of the framing of an issue (for an excellent review of concepts see Reinemann et al., 2012). Whatever the nuances of the definition, the important point is that a focus on popular or ‘soft news’ is thought to come at the cost of pushing out other more normatively valuable genres such as hard news, investigative journalism, and international coverage (Davis, 2014; Boczkowski, 2009), and a de-emphasis on news produced according to other indicators of quality such as objectivity and impartiality.

What Is Wrong with Low Quality News? These sentiments are well summarised in this quote from Brian McNair: “The rise of infotainment is argued to have major adverse consequences for the integrity of the public sphere and the management of society, in so far as it deprives citizens of the information necessary for them to make rational choices about politics and other significant matters. It trivialises serious issues,

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marginalises important information and leads to mass apathy and cynicism about the world—a dumbing down of the culture—which is bad for society as a whole”(McNair, 1999: 44). A perceived increase in ‘low quality’ news is criticised as responding to the commercial imperatives of the market and appealing to audience preferences, with ‘market driven’ news failing to provide news in the public interest or to serve the needs of a deliberative public (McChesney, 2012; McManus, 1994). The concern is that such an orientation risks narrowing the range and quality of news according to what audiences want/what sells (the market model) as opposed to what journalists’ professional judgement suggests that audiences ought to know to ensure they can be informed participants in democracy (the trustee model) (Schudson, 1999). A vast body of research in the field of political communication that evaluates a range of specific content characteristics of political news such as emotion, personalisation, scandal, negativity, and types of framing should also be noted (see for example De Vreese et al., 2016). Indeed, the almost limitless ways of evaluating news content is one reason why it is so difficult for scholars to find agreement on what constitutes quality in news. We should of course be very careful in making normatively-led judgements about news quality in isolation from considerations of what members of the public consider as quality (Costera Meijer, 2022). Research conducted with audiences shows that their perceptions of what characteristics should be demonstrated by ‘good journalism’ or ‘quality news’ concur at a general level with the perceptions of journalists and normative theories. Audiences rank diversity, representation, objectivity, and journalistic independence as important (Fürst, 2020; Steppat et al., 2020; Wurff and Schoenbach, 2014; Gibson et al., 2022). At a more specific level, however, audiences are likely to vary in their perceptions of quality according to taste, preferences, and demographic factors such as educational level. Output that may fit normative criteria and be rated as ‘high quality’ by one person may be perceived as overly long and complicated by another. Furthermore, audience understandings of what constitutes quality do not necessarily translate into patterns of news consumption. As is demonstrated by the popularity of the UK tabloid press, whilst audiences recognise certain qualities as ‘ideal’, there is a significant demand for news that does not aim to meet these ideal values. Some argue that making news more accessible aids democracy by making news appealing and understandable to more people, especially those who would otherwise be apathetic or have no interest in politics (McNair, 2000; Brants, 1998). While this suggests that news formats that do not necessarily meet the ideals proscribed by normative theories are not entirely without merit, the idea that it is better that people access some ‘low quality’ news rather than none at all does not mean that we should not continue to have high expectations of news quality. Here we should also note that though normative theories about the relationship between news, journalism and democracy remain dominant in academia, the assumptions of this cognitive framework and its usefulness are sometimes questioned. Pointing to the changing (worsening) conditions of the

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contemporary information environment, several scholars suggest the values by which we judge journalism should be reappraised, arguing that we should expect less of journalism (Nielsen, 2017), re-evaluate the purposes of civic communication (Blumler and Coleman, 2015), re-evaluate the requirements in times of crisis (Blumler and Coleman, 2021), and even that we should ‘decouple’ journalism and democracy altogether (Josephi, 2016; Steel, 2016; Zelizer, 2012). Further, as we will see throughout the book, many ideal roles of journalism are not reflected in the way that journalism is practiced in the West and elsewhere, leading scholars to caution against the idea that only one kind of journalism should exist (and that it should be the type that is thought to facilitate the style of governance favoured by the West) (Zelizer, 2009). Arguing for a global approach that recognises the Western bias of much theorising about journalism, the view that journalism exists in many places in the world where democracy does not is of course true (Conboy, 2017). It is, however, beyond the scope of this book to expand our discussion outside the frame of liberal democracy. Where possible I have included research from a range of countries, and much space is given to cross-nationally comparative approaches, thereby emphasising that journalism is certainly not the same everywhere and neither should our expectations of it be. Indeed, as is illustrated in the rest of the book, journalism has always had internal tensions of aims and purpose and emerged to fulfil normative ideals to different degrees. Rather than comment on democracy itself, this book is about debates and observations within news production and journalism, observing how these tensions play out and operate as shaping pressures on what journalists do and the resulting news content. At several points in this book, I make reference to the democratic qualities or democratic value of news. Using these terms synonymously, I mean the extent to which news fulfils, at least in some part, the expectations set out by normative theories. As the earlier discussion makes clear, there is no single evaluative frame for democratic quality. Rather, in keeping the democratic role of news in mind throughout the book, we will consider a variety of dimensions. As a baseline, I am interested in the extent to which the public has access to sources of news that provide independent and trustworthy information. One aspect of such an evaluation is the extent to which the norms and values associated with the informational role of news are realised in news content. Yet democratic qualities are not just a matter of news flows or content. The structure within which news is produced governs how democratic (or not) news can be and the resultant qualities of content. As indicated in the earlier discussion of the conditions necessary for journalism to fulfil a democratic role, political, economic, organisational and market structures determine the extent to which news can be seen to be independent and autonomous from sources of power, thereby serving the public interest. Moreover, the potential of news as a tool in civic engagement and its role in constructing a ‘public’ is dependent on more than information provision, requiring news that adequately represents the range and diversity of the public, as well as news that is capable of engaging the public. In short, democratic qualities and value

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relate to both the democratic characteristics of news content and the structures within which news is produced.

Change and Crisis: Threats to the Democratic Value of News and Journalism In this final section we consider how the landscape of the news media has undergone fundamental transformation in the last 30 years, fuelled by concurrent changes in technology and significant shifts in the economic context of news. Against this background, the industry, journalists, government inquiries, and scholars have framed journalism as in crisis (McChesney, 2012; Mancini, 2013; Barnett, 2002; Firmstone, 2018; Cairncross, 2019), a state which is described as ‘gaining momentum’ (Pope and Bell, 2020), and which contributes to and is exacerbated by an accompanying continuation of a crisis of public communication (Blumler, 2018; Blumler and Gurevitch, 1995; Blumler and Coleman, 2010). Research into changes and the perceived crisis in journalism consistently points to gaps between the ideal functions attributed to news and journalism, and reality. The existence of these gaps is of concern to those who care about the well-functioning of democracy. Concern about the performance of news and journalism are of course not new, and neither is the evolution of journalism and advances in technology, but the arguably greater complexity and faster pace of change brought about by the participatory potential of the Internet and concurrent big shifts in societal and political circumstances—the rise of populism, issues of representation and freedom of speech raised by Black Lives Matter, the #MeToo movement and LGBTQ+ issues, the global pandemic and the threat to world order from the war in Ukraine—highlight the importance of understanding the implications of changes in news and journalism for its role in democracy. Opinions about the conditions and causes of the crisis are diverse but coalesce around a common range of issues including the collapse of the business model for news, job cuts and closures in the newspaper industry, changes in audience habits leading to increased competition for audiences, a crisis of trust in journalism among the public, challenges to the authority and professional status of journalism, and to the credibility and status of the mainstream media. While it is important not to be blinded by the rhetoric and sense of panic invoked by discussions of change and crisis, an understanding of these changes and the current context is crucial to our main aim: understanding the factors that influence the production of news and the implications they have in shaping the democratic qualities of news. We now take a brief tour around the key changes that provide an essential backdrop to the rest of the book. Throughout the book we explore the implications of these changes for the routines and practices of news production, the professional norms, values, role perceptions and ethics of journalism, as well as the roles played by audiences, sources and news organisations in the production of news. As we see in subsequent

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chapters, the implications of these changes raise numerous questions and concerns relating to the authority and legitimacy of journalists, the way that journalistic norms and values relate to practices, and the democratic qualities of news.

Changes in the Economics of News Commercialisation has been a major shaping force on the activities of journalists and news organisations for many decades. In simple terms, commercialisation is the process of designing and marketing a product—in this case news—as a commodity to be sold in the marketplace principally for financial gain. From a critical perspective, the conditions of the commercialisation of news have put news organisations under intense economic pressure as they strive to make a profit in the face of declining newspaper circulations, the fragmentation of audiences, and declining advertising revenue (conditions that represent the collapse of the business model for news), all of which have intensified competition. For example, the combined circulation of the UK’s major national newspapers has fallen dramatically from 21.2 million in 2000 to 7.4 million in 2020 (Mayhew, 2020). This has resulted in a major loss of print-advertising revenue and newspaper sales that has yet to be replaced by revenues from online audiences, either through subscriptions or as eyeballs to sell to advertisers. Competition with online platforms for a share of advertising revenue is fierce. Google’s parent company Alphabet, Facebook owner Meta, and Amazon together control more than half the global advertising market outside China (Gray, 2021). In the UK, Google and Facebook account for 68.5% of the digital advertising market (He, 2019). From a broader point of view, legacy news media are in competition with a range of other actors who can also provide information in the public sphere, ranging from influencers to NGOs. With fewer resources, news organisations have engaged in cost-cutting and diverted resources away from some journalistic activities in order to maintain profits, resulting in fewer journalists and resources for original reporting (Davies, 2008; Hollifield, 2011) and a decline in  local journalism (Firmstone and Whittington, 2021; Firmstone, 2016). Taken together with a host of technologically driven developments which we address below journalists are expected to ‘do more for less’. In addition, the context of commercialisation fuels enduring questions about the tension between the aims of news as a business and the normative ideals of news that serves the public interest.

Threats to Public Service Media Of course, not all media is commercialised. In theory, public service media offer a counterbalance to the limitations associated with commercialised news, with publicly-funded media offering a place where independent journalism focused on improving public knowledge can thrive. Research suggests that public service media fulfil a valuable democratic role, producing more news

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that contributes to an informative news agenda than commercial television and tabloid newspapers (Reinemann et al., 2017), and sustaining higher levels of political knowledge (Aalberg and Curran, 2013; Strömbäck, 2017). Public service media also enjoy far higher levels of trust than other news sources (Newman et al., 2021; EBU, 2021; Gibson et al., 2022) and have seen a resurgence in audiences seeking credible news since the pandemic and war in Ukraine (Van Aelst et  al., 2021; Coleman et  al., 2020). The continued capacity of public service media to fulfil these expectations is, however, at risk. Publicly-funded media such as the BBC are not immune to the pressures faced by commercialised news. Indeed, although it does not need to maximise profits, the BBC competes for audiences in the same market as commercially-funded news media and must justify how it spends the licence fee that funds its activities (Myrie, 2021). Concerns that the BBC’s pursuit of large audiences and deployment of fewer resources to producing serious political analysis is leading to a gradual dilution of the ‘civic mission’ of the BBC are not new (Blumler and Coleman, 2010:145). In this market, where audiences now get news from an abundance of outlets due to the opening of markets to competition and a proliferation of producers due to digitalisation, the purpose and value of public service media is also being questioned by critics. Although there have been concerns about the threats to public service media (PSB) since the 1990s, concern has increased in recent years with many facing funding cuts from governments, opposition to fees such as the BBC’s licence fee, and claims that the entrance of public service broadcasters into the domain of online news provides PSBs with an unfair competitive advantage (Cushion, 2012, 2021; Just, 2020; Sjøvaag et al., 2018).

Changes in Technology Many aspects of technology have changed the production of news, but arguably the Internet, digitalisation, and social media have made the largest impact, fuelling a multitude of developments in the production, distribution, and consumption of news that raise a range of implications and concerns which are explored in subsequent chapters. In the following summary, we see that technology has been the catalyst for changes that simultaneously present significant challenges to traditional news organisations, journalists, and the norms and values of journalism while also providing opportunities to democratise news production through opening up news production to a more diverse range of actors, voices and the potential to empower audiences. The Arrival of New Actors and New Outlets Since digital technology and social media have lowered barriers to entry to news production there has been an unprecedented expansion in the scope and variety of news content produced by a diverse range of actors, some of whom may not be considered ‘professional journalists’ or news outlets in the traditional sense. Smart phones and the Internet have dramatically increased the

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opportunities for ‘non-professionals’, particularly members of the audience (a.k.a. the public), to contribute to the production of news through social media, user-generated content (UGC) and citizen journalism (Wall, 2015; Usher, 2017; Thorsen and Allan, 2014). This has led to concerns about the de-professionalisation of journalism and a blurring of the distinction between professional and non-professional journalists. The primacy of legacy mainstream media is being challenged by the emergence of hyperlocal news providers (Harte et  al., 2019), digital natives (Stringer, 2018), entrepreneurial start-ups (Deuze and Witschge, 2020), and alternative and hyper-partisan news media (Steppat et al., 2020; Cushion et al., 2021). This expansion of actors other than journalists who contribute to news flows raises questions not only about what news is or can be, and expands the scope and variety of what is now called journalism, but is also at the heart of discussions about challenges to the authority and legitimacy of journalists in the current information environment (Carlson, 2017). New entrants may pursue different norms and values and operate according to different standards than professional journalists. Changing Priorities and Constraints in News Production The sense of immediacy which has long characterised news production is heightened by the demands of the online environment. Successive developments in technology have shortened the news cycle, eventually flattening it into one of constant 24/7 production where the once unmoveable space constraints of the printed press and broadcast news bulletin have been replaced by unrestricted space that needs filling, updating, and replenishing on a constant basis. Alongside this fast-moving news cycle, increased competition for audiences has dramatically increased the need to ‘get there first’, putting pressure on journalists to prioritise speed over accuracy. Amid the innovation and expansion brought about by digital media, intensified competition and falling profits have led to cost-cutting and a squeeze on resources for sourcing and gathering news. This has resulted in a decline in some areas of news production, particularly investigative journalism (Starkman, 2014; Davies, 2008) and a decline in the quantity and quality of local and regional news (Firmstone, 2016; Hess and Waller, 2017; Abernathy, 2020; Karlsson and Rowe, 2019; Firmstone and Whittington, 2021). Having to produce more material than ever with fewer resources has led to an increase in deskbound journalism and a decrease in original reporting, with journalists increasingly dependent on public relations and news agencies as a key supplier of content, and a heightened likelihood that journalists will replicate ‘second-hand’ content without adequately checking and verifying it (Lewis et al., 2008). Most recently, debates framing journalists’ use of ‘second-hand’ information as a threat to independent journalism and, by extension, the democratic quality of news, have turned to the proliferation of digitally aggregated and curated news (Usher, 2016; Anderson, 2013). An increase in aggregated news raises questions about levels of diversity including concerns about homogenous news and a narrowing of sources. In addition, accuracy and truthfulness

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is at stake—faced with huge amounts of information and in the current climate of fake news, disinformation, and misinformation, having adequate time and resources to scrutinise and verify sources is important if journalists are to avoid inadvertently reproducing misinformation (Cushion et  al., 2021). As we explore in Chaps. 4 and 9, these changes raise questions about who has power and control over news content. New Formats, Mediums, and Forms Publishing across multiple platforms as a result of the convergence of print, broadcast and digital news is now the norm not the exception. Convergence requires TV and radio journalists to engage with digital formats, publishing on websites and using social media to promote stories, to give more detail, depth, and context. Digital news requires content to be tailored for delivery on websites, social media, and blogs, as well as for multiple devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops, smart TVs etc.). This constantly evolving variety of formats requires journalists to be multi-skilled and have a diversity of storytelling skills to suit a variety of news forms. News forms have evolved beyond ‘bulletin’ or ‘edition’ level to a variety of ‘item’ level forms with platforms and applications requiring bespoke content, often accompanied by an expectation for journalists to interact with the audience (see Chap. 8) and providing increased opportunities for journalists to demonstrate transparency (see Chap. 4). Intensified Competition for Audiences In the ‘era of abundance’ that has been developing for some time, audiences can easily go elsewhere (Blumler and Kavanagh, 1999). Traditional news organisations must compete for audiences who are fragmented into smaller groups and shared across more sources of news than ever before. In this ‘high choice’ (Van Aelst et  al., 2017) and highly competitive news environment, understanding and taking account of audience preferences is no longer perceived as optional in the battle for audience retention. Changes related to the pursuit of audiences raise the following issues: (1) how far do attempts to appeal to mass audiences lead to a rise in low quality news? Despite content analyses showing a mixed picture with variations across time and countries as well as across media types within countries (Van Aelst et al., 2017; Reinemann et al., 2017), concerns about the quality of market-driven news remain strong; (2) the arrival of audience metrics and data from social media has created an unprecedented proliferation of opportunities for audience preferences to be analysed and responded to. As we see in Chaps. 4 and 8, audience analytics have become an influential part of journalistic decision-making (Welbers et al., 2016; Carlson, 2018; Petre, 2021; Bunce, 2019). Though audience metrics have the potential to empower audiences by having their preferences and interests catered for (Fürst, 2020), they also raise fundamental questions about the

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authority and autonomy of journalists in decision making with the potential for analytics to replace professional news values as a driver of news selection (Welbers et al., 2016; Anderson, 2011; Örnebring, 2016). Changes in the Distribution of News For much of the twentieth century, news production was defined by its focus on distribution to a mass audience and mass production, but increased commercialisation and new technologies are changing the mass distribution model. Though television and radio news are still distributed to mass audiences, the very concept of the mass audience does not fit much of the highly individualised nature of news use and the non-linear delivery of digital news to multiple audiences (Loosen, 2019; Nelson, 2018). Distribution is no longer the sole domain of journalists and news organisations. Social media platforms and aggregation and curation formats mean that news has a life beyond the original publisher, and the audience plays a greater role with digital news distribution potentially driven by audience analytics, algorithms and by audiences through practices of sharing. These changes raise several questions that are explored in Chaps. 4 and 8 where we ask about the implications of news selection led by algorithms and audience analytics, and the involvement of audiences in the distribution of news through audience-led practices of news sharing. What do these practices mean for who sets the news agenda, and what are the implications of personalised distribution based on analytics and algorithms? The concern is that segmentation and personalisation moves audiences away from shared media experiences and leads to a lack of diversity in exposure to opposing opinions. This may create echo chambers, filter bubbles and/or a lack of a common point of reference in political issues, which may lead to a public polarised in in its political positions (Mutz and Young, 2011; Pariser, 2012). A Crisis of Public Trust In the broader context of the political information environment, and the place of news and journalism within it, we see a common pattern of falling levels of public trust in news providers and journalists—a crisis of trust. Though there are major differences in levels of media trust across countries and between media systems (Strömbäck et al., 2020), an average of only 42% of respondents drawn from 46 countries say they trust most news most of the time, and there is a particularly low level of trust in the UK (36%) (Newman et al., 2022: 5). Levels of trust increased slightly during the global pandemic and have started to fall back again (Newman et al., 2022). Prior to the pandemic, a survey of 27 countries found that trust in legacy media decreased over a five year period (Ipsos, 2019). There are many reasons why audiences do not trust news sources, but many cite a concern about the prevalence of fake news, mis- and disinformation, perceptions that powerful actors use the media to push their

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own political or economic interests rather than represent ordinary readers or viewers, a perception that some news outlets encourage polarised views, and concerns over the work of journalists in verifying facts, checking sources and providing evidence (Newman and Fletcher, 2017).

Next Steps: How Can We Understand the Factors at Work in Shaping the Democratic Value of News? While some have argued that it is not helpful to define the current conditions that news and journalism find themselves in as a crisis (Zelizer, 2015), it is undeniable that the contemporary situation raises important questions about what we expect and what we want from news and journalism. Describing journalism as an “inescapable normative domain”, Blumler and Cushion encourage “scholars not only to examine empirically how journalism is organized and what it does, but also to discuss the values that journalism should embody and the quality of news that could be produced” (Blumler and Cushion, 2013: 262). Indeed, having dedicated his long career to normatively-driven research and to reflecting on the evolving conditions of ‘the crisis of public communication’ (Blumler and Gurevitch, 1995; Blumler, 2018), Jay Blumler argued at a Leeds University seminar in 2018 that the conditions of the current political information environment are so dire that the positivist notion of an objective researcher is totally inadequate for the severity of the situation we find ourselves in, noting that values and normative implications must be at the forefront of future research. As mentioned in Chap. 1, critically reflective research that explains why news is like it is can highlight examples of contexts and practices that produce news that fulfils normative expectations and news that does not. The reason for doing this is to diagnose problems and promote reform for the benefit of society (Christians, 2009). Having set out some core ideas about how we can evaluate the implications of news production practices for the democratic qualities of news in this chapter, the next chapter explores the question of how we can understand and analyse the factors at work in shaping the production of news.

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Van Aelst, P., Strömbäck, J., Aalberg, T., Esser, F., De Vreese, C., Matthes, J., Hopmann, D., Salgado, S., Hubé, N., Stępińska, A., Papathanassopoulos, S., Berganza, R., Legnante, G., Reinemann, C., Sheafer, T. & Stanyer, J. 2017. Political communication in a high-choice media environment: a challenge for democracy? Annals of the International Communication Association, 41, 3–27. Van Aelst, P., Toth, F., Castro, L., Štětka, V., Vreese, C.  D., Aalberg, T., Cardenal, A.  S., Corbu, N., Esser, F., Hopmann, D.  N., Koc-Michalska, K., Matthes, J., Schemer, C., Sheafer, T., Splendore, S., Stanyer, J., Stępińska, A., Strömbäck, J. & Theocharis, Y. 2021. Does a crisis change news habits? A comparative study of the effects of COVID-19 on news media use in 17 European countries. Digital Journalism, 9, 1208–1238. Voakes, P. S., Kapfer, J., Kurpius, D. & Chern, D. S.-Y. 1996. Diversity in the news: a conceptual and methodological framework. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 73, 582–593. Waisbord, S. & Mellado, C. 2014. De-westernizing communication studies: a reassessment. Communication Theory, 24, 361–372. Wall, M. 2015. Citizen journalism. Digital Journalism, 3, 797–813. Welbers, K., Van Atteveldt, W., Kleinnijenhuis, J., Ruigrok, N. & Schaper, J. 2016. News selection criteria in the digital age: professional norms versus online audience metrics. Journalism, 17, 1037–1053. Wurff, R. V. D. & Schoenbach, K. 2014. Civic and citizen demands of news media and journalists: what does the audience expect from good journalism? Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 91, 433–451. Zaller, J. R. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. New York, CUP. Zelizer, B. 2009. Journalism and the Academy. In: Wahl-Jorgensen, K. & Hanitzsch, T. (eds.) The Handbook of Journalism Studies (pp. 29–41). New York, Routledge. Zelizer, B. 2012. On the shelf life of democracy in journalism scholarship. Journalism, 14, 459–473. Zelizer, B. 2015. Terms of choice: uncertainty, journalism, and crisis. Journal of Communication, 65, 888–908.

CHAPTER 3

Understanding and Analysing Influences on the Production of News

Introduction It has long been argued that understanding the origins of media content is important if we want to put the study of the media’s influence on public and policy agendas into a political and social context (Kosicki, 1993). Journalism, media, and political communication scholars have called for research that aims to explain and contextualise evaluations of the types of news available to audiences in relation to the context in which that content is produced. There has been a resurgence of media sociology and proponents of its approach since the mid-2000s (Waisbord, 2014; Philo, 2007; Anderson, 2013a, b; Shoemaker and Reese, 2014; Cottle, 2003; Benson, 2004; Weaver, 2015; Usher, 2014). Such an approach aims to answer questions about how news is produced in order to explain, and in some cases theorise, why news is like it is. Indeed, in relation to the crisis in journalism noted in Chap. 2, Nikki Usher proposes that the “economic and technical causes of the perceived crisis are indeed real, but these factors cannot be explained without contextualisation in the practices and profession of journalism itself” (2016: 171). While journalism researchers have always had a primary interest in the way news work is organised, they have tended not to apply that knowledge to explaining and accounting for variations in the qualities of news content or to have adopted a normative perspective that questions the values that news should embody for the well-functioning of society (Blumler and Cushion, 2013). Looking back on four decades of research about journalists and their work, veteran journalism scholar David Weaver called for more research into “the conditions under which journalists are able to produce high-quality journalism” (2015: 14). In the neighbouring field of political communication, researchers have drawn most of their conclusions from research that uses media content as the main source of information. Such research has concentrated on analysing news agendas and how news is framed (with a view to its potential © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Firmstone, The Shaping of News, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21963-4_3

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effect on audiences) with far less attention paid to considering what factors influence such content (Dearing and Rogers, 1996; Gandy, 2003; Vliegenthart and van Zoonen, 2011). Media sociologists argue that on their own, measurements of content do not provide sufficient evidence of the factors that shape it (Cottle, 2003; Philo, 2007; Vliegenthart and van Zoonen, 2011; Morrison and Tumber, 1988). Suggesting how best we can explain media output, Simon Cottle argues “if we want to understand why news representations assume the forms that they do as well as the silences found within media discourse, we cannot rely upon readings of media texts alone, no matter how analytically refined and methodologically sophisticated these may be” (2003: 5). Similarly, referring to the Glasgow Media Group’s landmark studies of media representations, Greg Philo notes that it was important for their research “not to look at the descriptions which were offered of the world in a specific text, but to look at the social relations which underpinned the generation of these descriptions” (2007: 178). Crucially, the group’s work considered the news media as a contested space, where not everyone enjoys the same amount of power and where journalists are subject to a range of pressures that shape their production of news, and ultimately influence the content of news as a text. By emphasising the need to understand the context within which news is produced, these scholars point to the ability of empirical studies of news production to go beyond problematic inferences based on content and on the often speculative claims of media theories (Cottle, 2003; Tuchman, 2002). As I propose in this chapter, taking such an approach requires us to think holistically about the production of news by looking not just at the site of production itself, but at other factors outside the newsroom that also play an important role in shaping the context of that production.

Beyond Analysing Content: What Shapes News? So, how can we understand and analyse the factors that influence the production of news and the implications they have in shaping the democratic qualities of news? In this chapter I develop an answer to this main question of the book through a mapping of the ways in which influences on the production of news have been theorised and researched. By influence, I mean factors that have an important effect in shaping news production practices or the context that they operate in. I work with the assumption that such factors are not malign or suspect but merely active in news construction. As such, throughout the book I refer to influences and shaping factors interchangeably. I identify factors that, regardless of the disciplinary or theoretical perspective taken, are consistently attributed an influential role in shaping practices for producing news content. We begin by taking a tour through the evolution of the main disciplinary and theoretical approaches that have been applied to the study of news and journalism. We find that the news media, journalists, journalism, and news have been studied in a rich variety of ways and that the complexity of how research has

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evolved has led to an almost overwhelming diversity of approaches. From this mapping I identify five sources of influence that are consistently attributed an influential role by studies of news production: journalism norms, values and role perceptions; journalism ethics; the news organisation; news audiences; and news sources. Inspired by others who have described the differing sources of influences on news in terms of levels (Cottle, 2003; Shoemaker and Reese, 1996; Shoemaker and Reese, 2014; Dimmick and Coit, 1982; McQuail, 2000), these sources are represented visually as spheres of influence in a ‘Framework for Analysing Influences on the Production of News’ (see Fig. 3.1). The framework proposes that news content is the result of news production

Intrinsic spheres

Extrinsic spheres

Journalism norms, values, and role perceptions

News audiences

culture & technology

culture & technology

Journalism ethics News sources

culture & technology

culture & technology

The news organisation culture & technology

News production practices Sourcing — Selection — Writing culture & technology

News content, news content, news content, News content, news content, news content. Fig. 3.1  Framework for analysing influences on the production of news

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practices which can be imagined as shaped by a range of factors operating both inside and outside news organisations. The framework fulfils two purposes. First it informs and structures the critical synthesis and reflections about the factors that shape the production of news—and ultimately content—offered in the rest of the book. Second, it equips readers with a visualisation of a conceptual framework that can be used to analyse how each sphere of influence shapes practices for producing news and to organise reflections about the implications of these influences on the democratic qualities of news content. As discussed in Chap. 2, by democratic qualities and value I mean the extent to which news fulfils, at least in some part, the expectations set out by normative theories in relation to both the democratic characteristics of news content and the structures within which news is produced.

Disciplinary Approaches to the Study of News Knowledge about influences on news has been generated within two common frames of reference: disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. We begin by asking how academic disciplines have developed to address questions about influences on news. There is no discipline called ‘news studies’. Instead, a multiplicity of disciplines includes the study of news and/or journalism in some form or another in their sphere of inquiry (Zelizer, 2004; Conboy, 2013; Wahl-­ Jorgensen and Hanitzsch, 2020; Zelizer, 2009). The wide-reaching significance of news and journalism in society has meant that news has been studied and theorised in media and communication, political science, political communication, sociology, cultural studies, computer science, psychology, languages, and journalism studies. Scholars from these fields and disciplines have studied news from many different perspectives, including its production, content, consumption, meaning or effect, and from social, cultural, and political perspectives. Two main fields (arguably not yet disciplines) have studied news from a democratic angle: journalism studies and political communication. In the following discussion, we locate journalism studies in the wider context of its development as a sub-field of media and communication, and explore how, along with the field of political communication, it has contributed to our understanding of influences on news. Here the distinction between news as content and journalism as the process of producing content referred to in Chap. 2 is central to understanding the different ways in which these two fields have developed.

What Is Journalism Studies and What Does It Tell Us About Influences on News? Over the last two decades the distinct field of journalism studies has emerged from an interdisciplinary landscape, with ‘journalism studies’ as a discipline still relatively new and encompassing what has variously been termed media sociology, the sociology of news and sociology of journalism (Berkowitz, 2011: 1).

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We can see from the several available comprehensive reviews of the development of journalism research and scholarship that studying news from multiple disciplinary perspectives has resulted in a fragmented range of theoretical approaches; that the geographical focus of studies has been uneven with a disproportionate focus on the USA and Western Europe; that there has been a disproportionate focus on the press and elite publications; and that the wide range of different methods that have been employed has limited what studies have been able to tell us (for example the lack of ethnographic studies in the 90s/2000s) (Wahl-Jorgensen and Hanitzsch, 2020; Franklin, 1997; Zelizer, 2004, 2009). A brief look at the historical development of journalism studies establishes why the body of research and theories amassed to date only partly connects practices for producing news with their implications for content. Karin WahlJorgensen and Thomas Hanitzsch (2020) trace the chronological development of journalism research through five phases, all of which feature to some extent in journalism studies scholarship today: normative, empirical, sociological, international comparative, and diversification and fragmentation. Each of these phases has pursued different research agendas, and the differing research methods they used have played a role in shaping the kinds of questions they answered (and were able to answer), and hence determined their explanatory potential. The normative phase of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century theorised about what journalism ought to be and how it should contribute to society. The empirical phase of the early twentieth century followed three agendas: journalism education to produce well trained journalists; evaluating news as a potential influence on the public and on voters as part of the ‘media effects’ tradition; and the sociological study of news work. Sociological studies of the 1970s and ’80s laid the foundations for much of what we know about the workings of news production today, generating ground-breaking concepts and theories that we will explore in later chapters such as the routine nature of news production, gatekeeping, newsworthiness, and news values. The international comparative phase indicates the increasing visibility of attempts to understand journalism by comparing experiences of practices in different national cultural contexts and to de-westernise the field (Waisbord and Mellado, 2014; Wasserman and de Beer, 2009). The fragmentation of the field describes the multiplicity of distinctive approaches now taken by researchers, including an important recent turn to focus on the practices of journalism and a renewed interest in news audiences, both of which are key to the framework for analysis advocated by this book. As a disciplinary approach grounded in sociology, we see later in this chapter that journalism studies has added a great deal to our understanding of influences on news through its focus on journalists, production practices and, to a far lesser extent, the news texts they produce. Yet the initial premise that news can be explained predominantly as the work of journalists working within the constraints of news organisations neglects the influence of other factors. In sum, until recently, there was a tendency to attribute

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too much weight to journalists and news organisations as explanatory factors, excluding consideration of other factors that play an important shaping role, such as news sources, audiences and political economic contexts.

What Is Political Communication and What Does It Tell Us About Influences on News? Like journalism studies, political communication is an interdisciplinary field which incorporates perspectives from sociology, anthropology, psychology, linguistics, journalism, public relations and economics (Bennett and Iyengar, 2008: 709). The field tends to be concerned with the work of the ‘news media’ as an institution, political actor or part of the broader media system rather than the internal workings of news organisations. In grouping individual news organisations together as a singular institution (the news media), most usually at the level of the nation state, taking a neo-institutionalism perspective considers the rules and norms that govern the news media as a whole as “typically more important than what distinguishes one news media company, outlet, type or format from another” (Strömbäck and Esser, 2014: 12). As we see later, this view of the news media as an institution is important in understanding how media systems can determine the extent to which news is produced independently from political parties and governments. On the other hand, taking this macro view of news organisations is less helpful if we want to explain the variety and range in the aims and objectives of the organisations characterising the contemporary news ecology and their differentiated outputs. Another important focus of political communication is its primary interest in content and its strategic intent as “purposeful communication about politics” (McNair, 1999: 4). Communication through the media, including the news, is therefore only one of several forms of communication studied by political communication scholars alongside the communication of a range of other actors—political actors, NGOs, campaign groups, the public—in political speeches, campaign materials, websites, social media accounts, visual communication, political advertising, and election communication (all of which may also feature in news). News content is analysed by political communications scholars in one of two ways, both using mostly quantitative methods: (1) in descriptive terms to show how politics is reported and issues are given attention (agenda setting) and how they are framed; and (2) as an independent variable that can cause an effect on the public by influencing public opinion or voting intentions. As we saw in Chap. 2, political communication provides some important benchmarks for evaluating the qualities of news content in normative terms, giving us valuable ideas about how news can contribute to democratic discourse, particularly through its potential to inform audiences. Indeed, the research agenda of the field has predominantly been concerned with measuring the influence and effect of persuasive communication, “usually about who in government and politics says what to whom, through what media, on

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what topics, according to what norms, with what effects on the attitudes and voting decisions of citizens” (Schudson, 2004: 272). This interest in who says what to whom and the implications for citizens means that political communication has been significant in highlighting the potential influence of a range of actors in addition to journalists and news organisations in setting the conditions of the political information environment, such as the role of news sources (particularly political actors) and the public as citizens.

Theoretical Perspectives for Analysing Influences on News Before we look at what theoretical perspectives tell us about influences on news, I want to briefly clarify what we mean by theory and how theory can be useful. John Corner and others (Corner, 2011; Schutt, 2019) describe theories as propositional systems. In making proposals and propositions about empirical reality, theories attempt to describe the relations between researched phenomena, helping us to define and classify key concepts, processes, and causal relationships (sometimes framed as hypotheses or deductions). Theories serve to help us to understand existing relationships, by explaining how and why they occur, and can help us to predict what might occur in unknown situations. According to the founder of action research, Kurt Lewin, “good” theory enables us to understand, explain and predict reality and “there is nothing so practical as a good theory” (Lewin, 1951). Theories are therefore not just for grand thinkers or the domain of abstract and potentially useless ideas that lack relevance in real life. Theory can help us to make positive changes to practices. Further, Corner points to the role of theory in imbuing ‘significance’ to empirical research by situating it within a broader conceptual frame (2011). For example, researching how journalists adapt to digital workflows matters because of the significant role attributed to journalism by democratic theories. In relation to one of the aims of this book, to encourage a critical approach to analysing news, structuring our understanding according to theory is important if research findings are to have the potential to make a difference to the way news and journalism functions in society. As McQuail asserts, “the value of theory should lie in its potential to explain and assess the reality of journalistic work. It is an essential aid to criticism and self-awareness as well as attempts at reform” (McQuail, 2013: 10).

What Theories Have Come from the Sociology of News? We now move on to explore the question of what theories and concepts have been developed to explain the factors that shape the production of news. Attempts at classifying the many different theoretical approaches have identified three main sociological perspectives: ideological (including political economy); social organisation; and cultural (Schudson, 1989; Tuchman, 2002; Cottle, 2003).

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Here it is important to note that the varying descriptions of these theories as approaches, traditions, perspectives, and lenses point to their relatively ‘loose’ status as theories. As we will see, these sociological approaches offer different frameworks or lenses through which we can analyse and evaluate the factors that shape news, but they also have three things in common: • All challenge the ‘realist’ idea that journalists simply report reality and that the news media is simply a mirror on the world. One obvious reason for this is that a selection process must take place to choose what gets made into news—judgements must be made on what to include and what to ignore. This has led researchers to describe journalists as constructing, making, or manufacturing news. Though we might expect journalists to contest this kind of language as implying that they are somehow not being truthful or faking the news, that is not what sociologists are trying to say. Rather they are saying that journalists make the news, not that they make it up—it is a product of a process rather than a natural occurrence. • Though each approach emphasises the importance of different settings— macro, meso, micro—each looks at the way news is produced in these settings in order to reveal how journalists are constrained or empowered by their interactions with others (Zelizer, 2004). By constraints, this means that theoretical approaches try to understand how the ideal functions of news that we explored in Chap. 2 are affected, and in some cases limited, by the realities of how news production is practised. For example, the quality of news may be impacted by time pressures, lack of resources, or the imbalance of power in relationships with sources. • The approaches all have in common the underlying reason why scholars are so interested in what shapes news and journalism: power. Who or what determines the distribution of power in the production of news is an important question given the potential of news to inform and shape public opinion. We now turn to the main task of this chapter: to develop a framework to structure our critical reflections of the factors that influence the production of news and their implications for news content. For this, we turn to journalism scholar Michael Schudson’s accounts of the differing approaches that have been taken to explaining and accounting for news within the sociology of news because they are arguably the most definitive and widely accepted interpretations of the field (1989, 2000, 2005, 2019). Schudson’s original ordering applied a much-needed logic to what, at the time, was a scattered and emerging set of concepts about what he termed “the different approaches to studying the social manufacture of news” (Schudson, 2000) or, latterly, the “distinct approaches to explaining how news is produced” (Schudson, 2019). The original typology classified existing research into three approaches: the political economy of news; the social organisation of news work; and cultural approaches (Schudson, 1989). Later, in one of his regular updates of the typology, three

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categories were expanded to four, dividing political economy into the economic organisation of news and the political context in response to the problem associated with conflating ideological and economic notions of power (Schudson, 2005). Schudson’s categories serve two important purposes for our aims. First, they provide us with an uncontentious map, a historical account of the overall directions in which the field developed with examples to illustrate the key concepts that each has generated. The following discussion of each perspective lays the foundation for the factors I identify as explanatory variables for inclusion in the framework for analysing influences on the production of news. Secondly, Schudson’s account pushes us to consider what additional factors might be important in such an analysis. His critical reflections about the contribution of each theoretical approach and its adequacy for explaining news production in the contemporary news ecology conclude that the value of each of the perspectives depends on what aspect of news is being investigated or explained and that “none of the three perspectives, by itself, can account for all that we might want to know” (Schudson, 2000: 195). The recognition that each approach has its strengths and weaknesses requires us to engage with wider debates about where the explanatory emphasis should be placed when studying news. We now discuss each of the perspectives, reflect on the pros and cons of each approach and consider what critiques about their limitations and recent changes to the context of news production mean for the factors that we can identify as important influences on the production of news.

The Political Economy Approach and the Economic Organisation of News The political economy approach to explaining news production is a critical perspective which engages with basic moral questions of justice, equity and the public good. It “relates the outcome of the news process to the structure of the state and the economy, and to the economic foundation of the news organisation” (Schudson, 2000: 177). Rather narrowly, it sees news as a commodity produced by industrial and commercial organisations. The ‘political’ in political economy is indicative of the critical and ideological stance taken by political economy scholars to the ownership of media organisations. Explanations about news production from this perspective adopt a Marxist interpretation which sees ownership functioning as a means of control resulting in news that is ideologically biased in favour of certain social groups. Its central concern is that the news media routinely privilege the views of elites (through the use of elite and official sources) and reproduce the dominant ideology of the ruling class through media representations. According to Schudson, the political economy approach attributes too much weight to the concept of hegemony at the expense of considering other political contexts such as the relationship between the media, political parties and the legal system (which are considered in media

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systems approaches). As an abstract ‘macro’ perspective it can also be critiqued as reductionist as it rarely makes a connection between political economic conditions and actual practices. Some of these critiques are overcome by economic explanations of news that have emerged in addition to the critical political economy approach. Reflecting this development, Schudson’s later ordering differentiates between theories based on evaluating the economic organisation of news and those that focus more on the political context (Schudson, 2005). Economic explanations of news predominantly refer to the macro-level organisation of the business of news and cite patterns in media systems such as commercialisation and concentration of media ownership as key influences on the work of the news media as an institution. While some research in this area is relatively uncritical and descriptive, others continue the political and ideological direction of critical political economy. Most importantly for our purposes, the main message from such work is that the macro level structures within which a news media organisation exists are an important part of the setting for news production. As we saw in the discussion of commercialisation in Chap. 2, recent disruptions to the economic structure of the news media industry mean that considering the political economy of the landscape within which news is produced provides an invaluable contextual backdrop to analyses of news production. As such, the link between ownership models, market structure, production practices and content will be taken into consideration when thinking about the way in which the context of a news organisation shapes news in ‘The News Organisation’ sphere of influence in the framework (see Fig. 3.1).

The Political Context and Media Systems Initially, political economy approaches largely overlooked potential differences derived from the political context of news production due to an emphasis on seeing politics through an economic lens (Schudson, 2019). As a distinct approach, an analytical focus on the political context emerged from the geographical expansion of news sociology beyond an initially limited range of liberal democratic countries (the USA and UK) to a broader consideration that included countries with differing political and democratic cultures. The political context is most commonly taken into account by the media systems approach which proposes that the structure and output of the mass media is dependent on the norms and organisation of the social and political system within which the media operates. The theory is that the structure of media markets, including the balance between publicly funded, commercial, and state-controlled media impacts the news available to citizens in terms of its independence and autonomy from government, the diversity of political viewpoints available, and freedom of expression. This context includes consideration of how governments, political institutions, political parties and legal systems structure the relationship between the media and politics.

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The media systems approach began with a normatively driven theoretical typology which aimed to account for the range of media systems in operation around the world. Framed as “concepts of what the press should be and do” (Siebert et al., 1956), four systems were suggested: authoritarian, libertarian, social responsibility, and Soviet communist. As a theory based on what is imagined rather than the complexities of the empirical reality, the model has been much criticised (Nerone, 2002; Hallin and Mancini, 2004, 2017; Ostini and Ostini, 2002). More recent systems approaches have taken an analytical turn away from the four theories normativity to employ comparison and typologies as an explanatory tool (Pfetsch, 2014; Hanitzsch et al., 2011; Koopmans and Statham, 2010). In particular, Hallin and Mancini’s model has been widely adopted by political communication scholars as a blueprint for structuring cross-national comparative analysis of the media and identifies four dimensions of media systems that structure the organisation of relationships between the news media and politics: (1) the development of media markets; (2) political parallelism; (3) the development of journalistic professionalism; and (4) levels of state intervention in the media system (2004, 2017). In contrast to the empirical basis of social organisation perspectives which focus on the work of individuals within the constraints of meso-level influences (organisations), media systems approaches are principally concerned with theorising about macro-level influences which operate at the level of the nation state. Analysing media systems therefore reveals more about how a country’s news media as a whole operates in theory than how it relates to the practices and content of individual news organisations or sectors within countries. Hallin and Mancini characterise media systems as singular or homogeneous entities, contending that a “fundamental element of the systems perspective is the idea that systems are not reducible to their component parts”, arguing that we should see systems as types in the Weberian sense of identifying typical patterns (2017: 167). Typologies of media systems have been used for a range of purposes including theory development and as a rationale for the selection of countries chosen as case studies for cross-national comparisons, but questions about the form and content of news, which ultimately relate to the democratic quality of news, have been little explored by this approach (Hallin and Mancini, 2017). This limitation does not, however, mean that consideration of media systems cannot contribute to our understanding of the factors that shape news production. As with all explanations of news production, the media systems perspective has pros and cons. Treating media systems as homogenous ensures that a systems approach is very useful for cross-national comparison but less helpful for nationally based explorations of different types of news media and different forms of journalism, e.g. public service versus commercial media. As we see through much of the research synthesised in this book, cross-national comparative studies reveal how the characteristics of national media systems can play a valuable explanatory role in explaining differences and similarities in news production practices, and in some cases, the quality of content produced.

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In addition, typologies of media systems allow us to give at least some consideration to the political context of a news organisation’s relationship or its place within a media system as an influence on its work. For example, in many countries newspapers and broadcast news operate according to different regulatory requirements, with only broadcast news required to be impartial, which clearly has implications for the norms and values applied in news production. For these reasons the media system is included in ‘The News Organisation’ sphere of the framework because we consider an organisation’s relationship or place within a media system as a potential influence on its news production practices. Given the difficultly of linking abstract notions of media systems with news production, media systems do however only form a small part of what we consider in the model.

The Social Organisation of News Work Research that takes a social organisation approach explains news from the perspective of asking how journalists are constrained by organisational and occupational demands. Fundamentally, these sociologically driven studies locate news as a product which is manufactured by journalists within a set of organisational constraints. A group of landmark studies provided the groundwork for our understanding of influences on news from this perspective (Schlesinger, 1978; Tuchman, 1978; Gans, 1979; Fishman, 1980; Breed, 1955; White, 1950; Tunstall, 1971; Golding and Elliot, 1979). These studies focused on examining how the work of journalists is enabled or constrained by the institutional settings within which journalism takes place, e.g. news organisations. Early studies of news production focused on identifying common routines established by journalists and news organisations to bring efficiency and order to the production of news, with standardised routines seen as the only way to make the daily task of producing news manageable (Hirsch, 1977). Research into media routines has focused on ways in which organisational routines operate in order to manage physical constraints such as time and space limitations. Classic studies see media routines as the logic that news organisations use to actively construct reality—for example see Fishman (1980) and Tuchman (1978). In terms of the power relationships at play in the production of news, routines are conceptualised as organisationally orientated constraints that are more powerful than individual journalists in shaping news (Belair-Gagnon and Revers, 2018; Breed, 1955; Gieber, 1964; Sigelman, 1973). The emphasis on the explanatory value of routines gave precedence to the idea that shared routines are adopted and implemented universally, with the notion that if you change the individual, the news produced would not vary (Molotoch and Lester, 1974). The study of these routines has been key to our understanding of the social interactions involved in the production of news and generated many of the concepts that are fundamental to our understanding of news production, including news beats, newsworthiness, news values, as well as routines that guide the writing of news such as objectivity. Tuchman famously described

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objectivity as a ‘strategic ritual’ which structures the routine practice of news production (Tuchman, 1978). Having identified a handful of routines, news production scholarship somewhat ground to an “unfortunate and premature” halt in the 1980s (Paterson, 2008: 2), leaving behind three assumptions that shaped this constructivist perspective of news gathering for some time after. First, that news is a social construction of reality (Tuchman, 1978), reflecting not a world ‘out there’ but the “practices of those who have the power to determine the experiences of others” (Molotoch and Lester, 1974); second, that journalists apply a common set of routines to the production of news regardless of the distinctive characteristics of the news organisations they work for (Breed, 1955; Gieber, 1964; Sigelman, 1973); third, it was assumed that these routines would not change (Tuchman, 1978; Molotoch and Lester, 1974). Despite a resurgence of newsroom ethnographies (for example: Boczkowski, 2004; Anderson, 2013a; Petre, 2015; Usher, 2014; Ryfe, 2012), studies of routines remain rare and are limited to the USA, Western Europe and other liberal democratic settings geographically and culturally, with the result that it remains the area of news and journalism that we know least about.

The Social Organisation Approach: Accounting for Changes in News Production Perhaps unsurprisingly, what were once considered as fixed routines for producing news are changing, not least because journalists and news organisations must develop new processes in response to technological innovations, the proliferation of different types of news organisations, the production environment of reduced resources, and shifts in audience preferences and roles (the changes that were summarised in Chap. 2). Established ideas about how routines shape news are therefore increasingly being revisited and re-examined due to disruptions to journalism caused by these changes, all of which are bound to lead to diversity in routines for producing news. How might we re-examine routines to explain and account for the consequences of these changes? As part of this re-examination, some scholars have called for the extension of the study of routines into the broader concept of practices as a way of overcoming some of the limitations associated with the organisational approach to explaining news (Cottle, 2003; Dickinson, 2007; Cottle, 2007; Anderson, 2013a; Usher, 2016). By practices I mean the customary, habitual, or expected procedures or ‘ways of doing’ rather than the more theoretical view of practices as a ‘social good’ in the way implied by practice theorists (Ahva, 2017; Ryfe, 2018; Wheatley, 2018; MacIntyre, 2013). Simon Cottle advocates a conceptual shift away from an emphasis on routines towards the study of production practices: “The earlier theoretical and explanatory emphasis placed upon routine tended towards a form of organisational functionalism in which ideas of journalistic agency and practices became lost from view in the workings of bureaucratic needs and professional norms” (2003: 17). The importance of this fairly subtle

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shift is based on the critique that previous approaches conceptualised routines as inflexible and fixed, with journalists expected to adopt organisationally imposed routines unquestionably and having few opportunities to adapt routines in response to change. In contrast, practices are seen as more adaptable and discursive, which is an important distinction if we consider that “news is both a permanent social structure and a means of social reflexivity and contestation; a product as well as a productive process” (Tuchman, 2002: 90). Further, by viewing journalists as practising journalists who do not simply repeat and enact routines, it is argued that the concept of practice imparts journalists with greater human agency and assigns journalists a more purposeful role in the construction of news (Cottle 2007; Dickinson, 2007). The distinction in reality is more nuanced, since routines can also be the result of ‘bottom-­up’ preferences in combination with ‘top-down’ requirements and practices can be imposed with an equally strong element of imposed management built into them. Nevertheless, in its favour, a shift in thinking towards practices changes how we understand influences on news by instigating a subtle expansion and openness to consideration of a broader range and interaction of potential influences, namely the role of journalists as individuals and the responses of journalists and news organisations to changes in the landscape of news production. Another approach of such a re-examination should include a focus on what Cottle calls the moment of production. He argues that due to the dominance of two opposing theoretical perspectives in explanations of news—political economy and cultural studies—the “‘middle ground’ of organisational structures and workplace practices” has been left under-theorised. He cautions against attempting to examine and explain media operations and outputs from only one perspective and treating the various ways approaches to explaining news production as mutually exclusive because this would “fail to consider the possibility of the complex interplay between these different factors and the dynamics that come into play within particular fields of production” (Cottle, 2003: 5). In other words, without empirical knowledge of how macro and/or meso influences operate in practice (at the moment of production) we risk making assumptions based on abstract notions. This is not to say that explanatory research should focus on practices or news organisations to the detriment of considering other perspectives such as the political economy. Indeed, on political economy, Cottle highlights that some political economists acknowledge that “critical political economy is a necessary precursor to an adequate sociology of cultural production; it is not a substitute for it” (Murdock, 1995: 92 cited in Cottle, 2003: 13).

What Does This Mean for How We Should Analyse Influences on the Production of News? These interventions suggest that we should approach explaining ways of producing news from a broader perspective than that of a set of fixed routines that constrain individual journalists. Ultimately, moving beyond the narrow

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lens of news as structured by institutionally constrained routines to view news as shaped by routines and practices leads to a richer and more complex understanding of influences on content with the potential to consider the role of being a journalist separately from the work of a journalist as an employee of a news organisation. I therefore view news through the prism of practice in the framework, with news content shown as the result of news production practices (see Fig. 3.1). The news production process is positioned as separate to the other spheres of influence to demonstrate it as a process that is shaped by the other spheres in the model. This gives the possibility of explaining the differentiated nature of news production practices, which, as we will see throughout the book, vary between news organisations, platforms, publications, formats and cultural settings, and reflect the many different types of journalism that exist. Based on the findings of classic empirical studies, the framework divides news production practices into three stages: sourcing; selection; and writing.

How Can We Understand the Role of Journalists? In addition to the subtle shift from routines to practices, scholars have pointed to other important reasons to consider the agency of journalists in explanations of news. While not denying the importance of social structures or the influence of organisational constraints, David Morrison and Howard Tumber’s formative research with journalists during the Falklands War was critical of the ideological premise of much news sociology of the time which tended to push the journalist as a news gatherer, and as a person, out of sight in explanations, leading them to call for “a more humanistically inclined individual perspective” (1988: x). Gaye Tuchman argues that despite the determining influence of organisational practices and professional protocols it “remains important to ask to what degree journalists in different media and cultural contexts perceive their role, for example as information dissemination, interpretation and investigation, or an adversarial relation to institutions of power” (2002: 90). Such a focus is reflected in the expansion of research over the last few decades that aims to understand the ways in which identification with the professional culture of journalism and journalistic role perceptions shapes journalists’ work (Deuze, 2005; Hanitzsch, 2007; Hanitzsch et  al., 2011; Hanitzsch et  al., 2019; Mellado et al., 2017; Mellado, 2021; Weaver and Willnat, 2012; Weaver and Wu, 1998; Willnat et al., 2013; Örnebring, 2016). The professional roles approach is based on the argument that how journalists understand, define, and identify with their role guides their attitudes and behaviours, which in turn affects the kinds of news they produce (Donsbach, 2008; Van Dalen et  al., 2012). This body of research is particularly helpful in pinpointing the variety of role perceptions that characterise journalists’ beliefs about the norms and values of professional journalism and the potential impact of these beliefs on news production practices and content. The shaping role of journalists in the

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production of news is therefore included in the framework in a sphere of influence called ‘Journalism Norms, Values and Role Perceptions’. Journalism ethics are principles and guidelines designed to help journalists make decisions about what they should do to contribute to the good of society and to avoid unethical or immoral practices. Ethical principles such as protecting sources are an important part of the shared professional norms of journalism and most journalism cultures have codes of conduct. Ethical decisions are visible in the day-to-day production of news through the routines and practices that underpin journalism’s claim to produce accurate, truthful, and fair news. Ethics are also the reference point for debates about the perceived failures of journalism to achieve these goals and in the arguments about news coverage that frequently result. Despite their potential significance, and the key place of ethical principles in journalists’ role perceptions, journalism ethics have been curiously neglected by the social organisation perspective. What explains this lack of engagement with the question of ethics as an influence on the production of news? The assumption by the social organisation approach that organisational and institutional factors overshadow the shaping role of journalists as individuals may well account for the absence of ethics. Further, professional ethical codes of conduct tend to focus on providing guidance in contentious aspects of news production, and it is perhaps this emphasis on the contentious rather than everyday newsgathering that has kept ethics out of studies of journalism practice (or at least annexed it to a parallel subfield of media ethics). In addition, ethics and the associated concept of press freedom are, at heart, philosophical debates about morality, meaning that the field of media ethics has a strong theoretical focus, leaving issues of practice less researched. Addressing this gap, the framework therefore includes journalism ethics as a sphere of influence, allowing us to consider how the way that journalists identify with shared ethical norms and values shapes their practices.

The News Organisation Where does paying attention to journalism norms, values, role perceptions and ethics as distinct spheres of influence leave our understanding of the organisational context of news production? As we have noted, early studies saw news as an organisational accomplishment. Here it is crucial to distinguish between the differing meanings of the word ‘organisation’ and to recognise that the social organisation approach is about the organisation of news work not about studying news organisations. Understanding news as an organisational accomplishment in terms of the way that news production is organised and achieved is very different from looking at news organisations as contexts where the structure and culture of an organisation can be viewed as an explanatory variable. Of course, routines and practices take place within an organisational setting, but the tendency of research in the social organisation approach to view routines as common and static overlooks the distinctive characteristics of individual news organisations, and the powerful differentiating role of organisational contexts

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in shaping the work of journalists and news production practices (Cowling, 2017). The important connection between organisational settings, routines and practices, and content is also argued by Tuchman who, like Cottle, says that it is essential to examine routines and practices at the point of production to fully understand their effect: “A detailed empirical accounting of the daily routines and practices of news production is required in order to explain how social infrastructures, institutions, and their interests are translated into concrete news texts” (Tuchman, 2002: 86). This interpretation provides further reason to include ‘the news organisation’ as a separate sphere of influence in the framework.

News Audiences and News Sources Up to now, we have introduced the rationale for the inclusion of three of the five spheres of influence in the framework: the news organisation; journalism norms, values and role perceptions; and journalism ethics. We now turn to consider the traditional gatekeeping role of journalists, and their associated autonomy, has been transformed and challenged by the digital empowerment of audiences and rise in the professionalisation of news sources. Recognising the need to attribute greater significance to influences operating outside of news organisations, the framework therefore includes news audiences and news sources as distinct extrinsic spheres of influence. Since the classic studies of the social organisation approach, the relationship of audiences with the production of news has evolved from being considered as passive consumers to a more active and multidimensional role in which audiences can participate in the production of news. Technological developments, particularly the interactive capabilities of digital media and smart phones, have encouraged a rethinking of the audience-­journalist relationship which conceptualises audiences as active participants and potential producers. Audiences have shifted from a virtually voiceless, unknowable figment of journalists’ imaginations to a more tangible, measurable, and visible influence on the production of news. The proliferation of opportunities for audiences to play a more active, participatory role has turned academic attention towards a number of ways in which audiences can participate and engage in the construction of news. These include as producers of user-­generated content, by engaging with news in comments sections, as distributors, disseminators, and sharers of news via social media, and as news sources. In addition, digital journalism offers the potential for journalists to develop a more detailed understanding of, and closer relationship with, their audience. Unprecedented opportunities for journalists to respond to and have their production practices shaped by data driven understandings of online audiences heightens the need to understand the influence of audiences in the digital domain. Given that online journalistic practices have been credited as having the democratising potential to give “voice to the voiceless” (Gillmor, 2006), it is also important to ask what consequences the heightened participatory role of audiences has for the type of

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news produced as well as for the democratic qualities of news. Alongside the participatory turn in journalism (Singer et  al., 2011; Borger et  al., 2013; Lawrence et al., 2018), a relatively recent resurgence of interest in news audiences has led to what is known as an audience turn in journalism studies (Loosen and Schmidt, 2016; Costera Meijer, 2013, 2020). Identifying news audiences as a sphere of influence in the framework and engaging with this body of research enables us to explore these studies and to address questions about the balance of power and control in the production of news between journalists, news organisations, and audiences. While the social organisation perspective contends that both journalists and sources play an important role in the ‘manufacture’ of news, a focus on explaining how journalists use sources has meant that media-centric understandings have prevailed (Schudson, 2000; Schlesinger, 1990). Media-centric approaches explain the work of the news media by researching the practices of journalists to the exclusion of other potentially influential actors. Source-media relations have long been identified as a ‘lacuna’ in literature, with little attention paid to the tactics and strategies of sources who seek media attention (Schlesinger, 1990). Given the increasingly powerful role attributed to sources in shaping news by media and communication and political communication scholars and calls for a less media-centric approach to understanding the influence of sources on news content (Schlesinger and Tumber, 1994; Vliegenthart and van Zoonen, 2011; Ericson, 1989), news sources deserve more extensive consideration in their own right. Such a position recognises the increasingly professionalised practices and resource-rich activities of sources such as public relations professionals, politicians, and NGOs (Davis, 2014; Macnamara, 2014; Ericson, 1989). I therefore position news sources as a distinct sphere of influence in the framework to allow us to consider the consequences of the aims and practices of sources themselves in addition to the implications of the sourcing practices of journalists.

Cultural Approaches The final approach identified by Schudson is the cultural approach. Cultural approaches are based on the idea that it is impossible to separate processes of news production from the culture within which they take place: “the production of news cannot be understood merely as a function of media ownership, nor as a consequence of journalists’ professional routines, but reflects the impact of cultural and ideological influences” (Franklin, 1997: 45). Defining culture as “a given symbolic system within which and in relation to which reporters and officials go about their duties” (2005: 189), Schudson suggests two divergent strands of cultural explanations. The first and most common interpretation positions cultural approaches as dependent on analysing news texts to detect the influence of culture: “Like news events, societies and cultures become meaningful and interpretable when they are considered in their textual or symbolic forms” (Tuchman, 2002: 88). This approach argues that

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some aspects of news production go beyond sociological explanations which tend to focus on interactions between people whereas cultural approaches examine the relationship between the content of news (narrative, form, themes, frames) and the cultural traditions of the symbolic system that news is produced in. For instance, storytelling and interviewing conventions are considered important in shaping news (Wahl-Jorgensen and Schmidt, 2020). The media are obliged to represent the culture within which they operate and to use cultural symbols and ensure that stories ‘fit’ cultural expectations (Schudson, 2011). Cultural studies of news are therefore less focused on the practices of news production and more on what is communicated by the texts produced and on how those texts are received and consumed by audiences. The second strand overlaps significantly with aspects of the study of the social organisation of news, with Schudson pointing more broadly to the importance of understanding the cultural context in which the production of news takes place. Here, explanations of news interpret journalists’ news decisions in the context of local and national cultures. For example, news definitions and news values differ across cultures (in different countries): “reporters breathe a specifically journalistic, occupational cultural air as well as the air they share with fellow citizens” (Schudson, 2005: 193). As I now address, analysing the influence of culture as ‘the air we breathe’ presents a significant challenge, with cultural approaches offering the least analytically clear pathways to explaining what shapes news. How then should we deal with culture when analysing influences on the production of news? It is difficult to disagree with those who suggest that it is neither possible nor desirable to single out culture as a distinct factor, or as an independent variable. For example, Benson states “To claim that news discourse in any national context is shaped in part by culture, and thus by history, is both true and a paralyzing sort of truism” (2004, 279). If we agree that culture is something which is itself shaped and influenced by a set of “social struggles” (Benson, 2004: 279) then we can see the difficulty of considering it as something which can be isolated for analysis. The problem of evaluating cultural influences is addressed in several ways in the framework and throughout the book. First, the all-encompassing nature of culture means that a cultural sphere of influence is not singled out in the framework. Rather it is visualised as inseparable and integral to each sphere of influence as indicated in Fig. 3.1. Second, to a large extent cross-national comparative studies can help us to understand the influence of national cultures on news. The benefits of comparative research are demonstrated throughout the book, with examples drawn from research based on comparative analyses of different countries and cultural contexts. Until relatively recently, cross-nationally comparative studies of journalism were rare, and the increasing prominence of such research addresses calls for us to broaden our understanding of news and journalism. Global comparisons are valuable and welcomed by scholars who criticise the ethnocentricity of journalism studies (Esser, 1998; Hanitzsch et al., 2019) and those who advocate the de-westernisation of the field as essential to end

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assumptions of the cultural hegemony of Western orientated understandings of professional norms (Hanitzsch, 2007; Mellado et al., 2017; Wasserman and de Beer, 2009). Though efforts have been made to include research from all over the world in the discussion of each sphere of influence, ultimately the synthesis is limited by the continued dominance of research based in the USA or other liberal democratic contexts. Third, the cultural history of each sphere of influence is taken into account by taking a temporal approach that embeds a consideration of change into the analysis of each sphere. Each chapter considers how we can understand the shaping role of that sphere of influence through three lenses of the past, change and the contemporary situation. The chapters ask: (1) What theories and concepts were developed by landmark studies about this sphere of influence?; (2) What key changes have occurred within each sphere of influence since these ideas became commonplace?; and (3) What key questions and concerns arise from the contemporary and evolving context? Despite these attempts to include culture in the analysis, it is wise to acknowledge that culture remains elusive and difficult to reify. Astute readers will note that technology is conspicuous in its absence from each of the perspectives charted by Schudson. Arguably, the influence of technology used to be more contained, which may be one reason why it did not feature prominently in sociological explanations of news. While it used to be understood in terms of the implications of new platforms and technologies on production, the influence of digital media is more widespread and transformational, even reaching beyond the point of production to consumption. Giving prominence to the evolution of findings and implications related to each sphere of influence over time by taking the temporal approach described above is essential to place the somewhat rapid pace of technological changes in news and journalism in context. Taking this approach is also a way of avoiding technological determinism and avoiding the pitfall of assuming that all change is driven by technology. Indeed, as Karin Wahl-Jorgensen has argued “the adoption, appropriation and use of particular technologies are contingent on and interact with a broader array of political, economic and social circumstances” (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2016). Technology is therefore dealt with in the framework in a similar way to culture in that it is indicated as integral to each sphere and is integrated into the discussion of each sphere in the forthcoming chapters (see Fig. 3.1).

A Framework for Analysing Influences on the Production of News We have seen that influences on the production of news have been researched from a diverse range of perspectives, providing a rich variety of insights into the factors that shape news. Yet, the critiques and limitations of each perspective highlight the challenges for those wishing to understand current transformations in news and journalism and the implications of these changes for the democratic qualities of news. How can influencing factors be evaluated in a way that has both analytical clarity and can take the limitations of existing approaches into account?

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There is a consensus that future explanatory approaches need to integrate multiple perspectives (Schudson, 2005; Cottle, 2003; Ahva, 2017), to consider the ‘complementarity’ of different approaches (Tuchman, 2002), to allow for multiple influencing factors to be considered simultaneously rather than in isolation (Benson, 2004; Shoemaker and Reese, 2014; Vliegenthart and van Zoonen, 2011), to focus on practices at the ‘moment of production’ (Cottle, 2003; Philo, 2007), and to approach questions about new types of journalism with an openness to a variety of methods and theories (Anderson, 2013b). At the same time, explaining and accounting for ongoing transformations in news production and consumption, and their connections to the omnipresent and dynamic influences of technology and culture, requires an approach that can handle such fluidity. Referring to Giddens’ concept of structuration, Tuchman encourages us to see news and its antecedents as constantly evolving “The constitution of news, like the constitution of society itself, is perhaps best described as a complex and continuous structuration (Giddens, 1984), involving infrastructural, organisational, as well as discursive components” (2002: 90). How then can we take an approach to explaining news production practices and their implications for content that avoids disciplinary silos, is not blinkered by treating theoretical perspectives as mutually exclusive, and takes an inclusive view of the range of possible influences on content that does not place too much weight on one particular factor? Here we turn to the levels approach, which uses the organising logic of classifying influences according to levels that have a specific relationship to the object being influenced. Levels have been used to explain media decision making (Dimmick and Coit, 1982), media organisations (Cottle, 2003; McQuail, 2000) and media content (Shoemaker and Reese, 1996, 2014). A levels approach combines potential influences together into ‘levels’ or groups, suggesting that influencing factors operate simultaneously and can be viewed as a set of macro, meso, and micro levels of influence. Shoemaker and Reese’s hierarchal model of influences has been particularly influential in shaping discussions of influences on media content and groups influences into the following levels: social systems; social institutions; media organisations; routine practices; and individuals (2014). In addition to responding to the limitations of either one of the explanatory perspectives we have considered in this chapter, a levels approach is an advantageous response to calls for multi-level analyses which can address questions about differentials in content in relation to a variety of influences on news (Pan and McLeod, 1991; Vliegenthart and van Zoonen, 2011). This includes Vliegenthart and van Zoonen’s call for a return to the sociological approach of early studies of frame building to “emphasize that frames do not come about intentionally but are the result of interactions and conflict between collective and individual social and media actors” (2011: 107). In advocating for multi-­ level analyses, these scholars caution against overemphasising any one factor in the framing process, particularly the agency of individual journalists. They point to the importance of additional influences, including “organisational processes, ideological leanings of the news organisation, market constraints,

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differential power of social and political actors, or national and international cultures and structures” (Vliegenthart and van Zoonen, 2011: 107). Taking a levels approach, the ‘Framework for Analysing Influences on the Production of News’ illustrated in Fig. 3.1 aims to address the main question explored in the book: how can we understand and analyse the factors that influence the production of news and the implications they have in shaping the democratic qualities of news? The framework imagines news content as the result of news production practices (sourcing; selection; writing) that are themselves shaped by a range of factors that can be visualised as five spheres of influence: journalism norms, values, and role perceptions; journalism ethics; the news organisation; news audiences; and news sources. The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic spheres is based on the proximity and relationship of the spheres of influence to the practice of producing news. The first three spheres—journalism norms, values, and role perceptions; journalism ethics; and the news organisation—are classified as intrinsic influences because they have a direct influence on the production of news due to their constitutive relationship with news. The other two spheres—news audiences; and news sources—are considered as extrinsic influences due to their physical distance and separation from sites of organised news production (the news organisation). As indicated in the model, culture and technology are integral to each sphere of influence. The framework is intended as an additional tool to complement rather than replace existing levels models and is used to structure the critical exploration of influences on news production practices offered in the remaining chapters of the book.

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CHAPTER 4

Routines and Practices: Studying the Making of News

Introduction The obvious place to start in understanding influences on news is the place where news is made—the newsroom. Historically, journalism scholars began studying the factors that influence news by observing journalists at work and the processes of news production. In focusing on the ‘News production practices’ part of the ‘Framework for Analysing Influences on the Production of News’ introduced in Chap. 3 (see Fig. 3.1), this chapter has two aims, each of which are focused on the question of how the routines and practices enacted by journalists within the constraints of a news organisation shape news content. First, we begin by introducing a selection of landmark studies from the social organisation approach that have been central in defining our understanding of the organisation of the collective production of news. In establishing what these classic empirical studies tell us about the key routines of news production, the chapter highlights a fundamental concept in the sociological study of news—that news is located as a product that is manufactured by journalists within a set of constraints. Discussing these routines introduces us to key concepts in journalism studies, including the routine nature of news production, gatekeeping, and news values. Our second aim is to consider what recent studies tell us about new and emerging practices. The focus of many landmark studies not only on the press, but also on a bygone era and a set of routines that were assumed to be stable, requires many of the conceptualisations of news production practices to be re-­ thought in light of the current conditions of journalism. These include the demands of 24-hour continuous news cycles, the fragmentation of audiences, the new potential for audiences to participate in producing and distributing news, an increased emphasis on immediacy, the potential for automated news, the routine use of audience analytics and other aspects of the news ecology that

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are changing due to digital news. In the second part of the chapter, we explore some evolving routines and practices in digital journalism including aggregation, curation, and the use of audience analytics. Focusing on the changes that these practices represent we ask to what extent they replace or supplement existing practices, what distinguishes the routines and practices of today from the past, and what implications do these distinctions have for news content? Before we begin, I want to briefly discuss change. The narrative of change is dominant in contemporary journalism scholarship and given the undeniable state of flux that journalism is in, the story in this chapter is unavoidably centred on recent changes in news production. It is, however, important to be mindful that it is almost impossible to have an appreciation of change without an understanding of what has gone before. It is essential to have a yardstick to measure change against. Therefore, in order for readers—particularly those new to the study of journalism—to put current changes to routines and practices in context, it is essential to first establish how things used to be (and as we shall see to some extent still are). The enduring value of early studies in illuminating the key stages in the production of news means that they remain crucial in structuring our understanding of what happens when journalists turn information into news.

Studying the Making of News: Routines and Practices We begin with a reminder of a fundamental concept in the sociological study of news noted in the previous chapter, that news is a product manufactured by journalists. We also saw that early research explained news production in terms of the routines that journalists follow to organise news work. Routines can be defined as “repeated practices and forms that make it easier for journalists to accomplish tasks and ensure immediacy in an uncertain world while working within production constraints” (Lowry 2014: np). Latterly, scholars have reframed and expanded the study of news production beyond this very narrow focus on routines to emphasise the practices of news production (Cottle 2003; Dickinson 2007; Anderson 2013a; Usher 2016). As we explored in Chap. 3, the difference between the two can be important because the concept of practice attributes greater agency to journalists in the production process and acknowledges that practices change and develop in response to changes such as advances in technology. In contrast, the routines identified by early studies were seen as fixed, applied in the same way by all news organisations, and unlikely to change even if the journalists carrying them out changed. Ultimately, and importantly for the focus of this book on understanding what shapes news, studying the work of journalists at the point of production in terms of routines and practices can help us to explain patterns and variations in news content including in the quality and range of coverage (Tuchman 2002; Cottle 2003). Here I want to draw attention to the key justification for understanding the processes of news production: that they determine the social reality portrayed

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in news (Shoemaker and Reese 2014). We define news production practices as consisting of three stages: selection, sourcing, and writing of news.

News Selection We now look at key concepts that explain news selection, including the routinisation of decisions for selecting topics, issues, and events from an unpredictable flow of information through the process of gatekeeping and judgements of news value. News selection is an inescapable stage in the production of news. Faced with an almost infinite number of issues, topics, and events journalists must choose what to include and what to omit. Scholars have developed two key theories of news selection which are fundamental to how we understand news selection processes and the judgements that guide them: gatekeeping and news values.

What Is Gatekeeping? Gatekeeping began as a narrowly defined theory of news selection. It was used to explain the decision-making process employed by an individual journalist involved in selecting a news item for inclusion or exclusion in a newspaper. The gatekeeping metaphor describes the flow of information between sources of news such as a government official, journalists, news organisations and the audience. The concept originated from a study which analysed the reasons provided by an American newspaper journalist to justify their decisions to select or reject stories that were sent to their news desk from a news agency service (White 1950). David Manning White’s study was ground-breaking in applying the concept of gates and channels—which social psychologist Kurt Lewin had previously used to describe how people make decisions about eating—to news production. Gatekeeping describes news as flowing into a news organisation and passing through a series of gates before it arrives at a mass audience. Each gate represents a decision by a journalist or other news worker—a gatekeeper— to include or exclude a story.

What Does Gatekeeping Tell Us About the Influence of Routines on News? By asking how decisions about news selection are made at the point of production, White opened up the ‘black box’ of news production which is crucial to one of the central questions of this book: how can we understand the factors at work in determining news content? Until his relatively basic study, the internal workings of the processes of news production were not understood. At the same time, because White’s study attributed a powerful role to individual journalists in determining what becomes news, he unwittingly initiated what was to become an enduring debate among journalism scholars about the balance

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between the relative power of individual journalists versus other factors in shaping news. White described selection decisions as “highly subjective”, remarking on “how reliant upon value judgements based on the gatekeepers’ own set of experiences, attitudes and expectations the communication of ‘news’ really is” (1950: 386). This description was criticised for attributing too much power to journalists. The concept was also seen as too simplistic because it did not consider the numerous other ‘gates’ in a news organisation and treated the process of selection in isolation from other potentially important influencing factors (Schudson 2000; Wanta 2009). Subsequent sociological investigations into selection began to address these criticisms by trying to understand the organisational context of gatekeeping— the influence of news organisations on selection. For example, studying how news workers are socialised into the rules and policies of news organisations, Breed suggested that the gatekeeping function is more diffuse than White’s initial suggestion. Breed found that journalists in more senior positions in organisations also serve as gatekeepers, and proposed that they may actually exert more power over what becomes news than those making the original selection decisions (Breed 1955). Later, Breed and others advanced the study of gatekeeping, looking at decision making beyond the initial acceptance or rejection of news by a news editor. The study of gatekeeping expanded to include additional aspects of news selection, such as decisions about placement, how much coverage to give an issue (time, space, number of stories), and whether to return to a story beyond an initial report (Shoemaker et al. 2009). By the end of the twentieth century, the concept of gatekeeping had developed into a subfield of journalism studies. The nature of this expansion is important because it means that we should be aware that the concept of gatekeeping serves a dual purpose when it comes to explaining influences on news. First, in the original sense, gatekeeping focuses us on the routinisation of decisions about news selection. Second, in the broader conceptualisation, gatekeeping is an umbrella ‘catch all’ concept to encompass the entirety of news production, going beyond selection and the judgements of individual journalists to include “the process of selecting, writing, editing, positioning, scheduling, repeating and otherwise massaging information to become news” (Shoemaker et al. 2009:73). In some ways the morphing of gatekeeping into a concept that is difficult to distinguish from the broader concept of journalism (cf. Vos and Heinderyckx 2015) and into a term that regards all journalists as gatekeepers is unhelpful. Yet critiquing the limitations of the original concept of gatekeeping as incomplete as an explanation of “why news turns out the way it does” (Vos 2015) opens up the possibilities for understanding selection as only one part of a process that is dependent on a complex interplay of decisions and interlocking influencing factors. As we explore in the rest of the chapter, at its core, the gatekeeping concept remains of fundamental importance to our understanding of influences on news now and into the future.

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News Values Despite their importance, it is fair to say that original gatekeeping studies did not tell us much about what informs and guides gatekeeping decisions. Having established gatekeeping theory, the next question for journalism scholars was therefore to understand how journalists decide what information to allow through the gates. What kinds of issues and events get through and what is rejected? What criteria do gatekeepers use to evaluate the newsworthiness of an issue or event? For this we need to turn to the concept of news values. As another preeminent and enduring ‘theory’ of news selection there are many comprehensive discussions of the concept (Brighton and Foy 2007; Caple and Bednarek 2013; Harcup and O’Neill 2001, 2017; O’Neill and Harcup 2009). Instead of replicating these discussions, after briefly explaining the origins of news values, I want to focus on how the study of news values contributes to our understanding of influences on news. In the next section I identify four important themes to emerge from news values research before moving on to consider how thinking about changes in news values can inform how we understand routines and practices of news selection in the digital age.

What Are News Values? Galtung and Ruge’s study of common characteristics in news coverage of international crises in four Norwegian newspapers in 1965 brought news values as a set of selection criteria to notoriety. They hypothesised that the more of the following 12 criteria an event satisfies the more likely it will be selected for inclusion: frequency, threshold, unambiguity, meaningfulness, consonance, unexpectedness, continuity, composition, reference to elite nations, reference to elite people, reference to persons, and reference to something negative (Galtung and Ruge 1965). A great many alternative criteria have been proposed since, usually on the basis of content analysis (Golding and Elliot 1979; Brighton and Foy 2007; Harcup and O’Neill 2001, 2017; Caple and Bednarek 2013; Palmer 2000; Bednarek and Caple 2017).

How Do News Values Influence News? Four Themes We now explore the question of how news values shape what becomes news by looking at four themes that emerge from research. 1. News values as an unconscious influence: First, news values operate as a necessary filtering system, a means of selecting and prioritising issues, used to decide what should be transformed from information into news. It is, however, a common mistake to assume that journalists get issued with a rule book or code of news values. Instead, news values are a set of criteria developed by scholars to understand what guides journalists’ decisions about what becomes news.

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When I first heard the question “What is news?“ in journalism school, I was a bit shocked by the arrogance of the answer: “News is what I say it is.” That’s the way it was in the old school. The old pros who said it, meant it. News is what we say it is. They spoke as members of the journalism profession, which was to them almost the priesthood. (Bettag 2000: 105)

As Bettag’s quote demonstrates, when journalists are asked how they decide what becomes news, their decision making criteria appear opaque (1973), intangible, and unconscious. Journalists commonly have difficultly articulating what informs their decisions and describe their news sense as ‘you just know’, ‘it’s instinctive’ ‘it’s a gut feeling’ (Schultz 2007; Brighton and Foy 2007). Bettag’s reference to journalistic training (where learning about news values has become ubiquitous) and experience highlights that journalists’ decisions about what is selected to become news are shaped by professional judgements that are learnt ‘on the job’ as part of their socialisation into the newsroom (Breed 1955). This does not mean that news values do not exist. Through the study of news content, the existence of patterns in what becomes news is clear (that news values are manifest in news content). The theory therefore assumes that for these patterns to be replicated in mass news production a shared set of selection criteria governs news selection, even if these criteria are applied unconsciously. 2. News values as an influence beyond selection: The influence of news values extends well beyond decisions of inclusion or exclusion. Assessments of news value shape decisions about prominence, positioning, whether issues are repeated or returned to, and feed into broader judgements about the importance of an issue or story to a publication (Hartley 1988). Judgements about an issue’s news value therefore determine not only its place in the news agenda and its salience but also its framing. In this sense, how news values are applied to specific stories plays a significant role in news representations, emphasising some aspects more than others and indicating the importance of the issue to the audience. 3. News values as one of many other influencing factors: Despite this clear importance, the significance of news values should not be overstated. Such judgements are only one small part of the jigsaw puzzle of forces that drive the selection, framing, and prominence of news. Despite a general agreement that the role of news values in the routinisation of news judgements exerts a strong influence on news, there are limitations in the potential of news values to fully explain selection decisions (Harcup and O’Neill 2017; Palmer 2000). Contrary to original proposals, the inherent news value of an event or issue cannot on its own explain why it is selected (Strömbäck et  al. 2012; Niblock and Machin 2007; Allern 2002). In addition to the ‘objective’ or inherent newsworthiness of an event or issue, many other factors come into play—these include other influences explored in this book, such as considerations of the interest of the audience, the interests and objectives of the news organisation, the availability

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of time and resources to produce an item, and relationships with news sources. Taking this argument further, some scholars have asserted that ideological influences on news values have worrying consequences for ‘truth’. In particular, Hall cautioned against regarding news values as “a set of neutral, routine practices” (1973) and argued that they form part of an ideological structure that privileges the perspectives of the most powerful (see Chap. 9 for more on this). The role of these factors in selection creates tensions between the competing interests that journalists must balance in their everyday work. The tensions created vary according to the differing political, economic or public service orientated goals of news organisations. They include the mismatch between commercial imperatives such as the pressure to minimise costs and to maximise the appeal of news to an outlet’s audience while producing news according to professional values that are usually orientated towards serving the information needs of the public. The differing motivations underlying such judgements mean that the commercial context of news production, such as market orientation and practical and resource-based considerations play a significant role in shaping selection decisions. Over 30 years ago, Bell (1991) voiced a concern that has since come to dominate discussions of news performance: that decisions about news value are often dependent on opportunities to take advantage of “information subsidies” (Gandy 1982). As we explore in more detail in Chap. 9 on News sources, the concern is that journalists may select an issue or event because it enables them to take a short-cut by using content that is already written up in a ‘pre-existing text’ rather than because it satisfies the criteria of being newsworthy (Bell 1991). 4. Variations in news value as an influence are context dependent: The applicability of the criteria generated by scholars is acknowledged as varying across different types of news outlets, various news forms, and in differing cultural contexts. It makes sense that the news medium, form, brand, and local context of the news outlet all demand differing values (Palmer 2000). A ‘common’ set of news values does not apply equally to the many differing formats news takes, such as live news, breaking news, op-ed columns (Brighton and Foy 2007), and editorial comment (Firmstone 2008). For example, a study of TV news in the 1970s drew attention to the potential for the technological imperatives of broadcast news to override subjective news judgements (Schlesinger 1978), e.g. pictures are required. Further, the vast majority of studies have produced categorisations of news values in a UK or USA context, but an increasing body of research shows that these values are not universally applicable to non-­Western contexts and to conflict situations (see review in O’Neill and Harcup 2009). In short, “who is selecting news, for whom, in what medium and by what means (and available resources), may well be as important as whatever news values may or may not be inherent in any potential story” (Harcup and O’Neill 2017: 1483).

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Limitations and Uses of News Values in Explaining Influences on News An important additional contextual note is that news value criteria are not, as one might logically assume, based on research observations of journalistic practices. In fact, they are extrapolated from measurements of news content. This method of deducing selection values warrants a warning sticker of ‘apply with caution’. Ultimately news values tell us more about the treatment and coverage of news than about the workings of selection practices (Staab 1990; Harcup and O’Neill 2001). This is an appropriate reminder that the methodological premise of a theory or concept has implications for its explanatory potential. Given these limitations, we may well ask: what is the value of news values? Although limited by the above caveats, news values give us a good understanding of why some issues/phenomena become events and others do not (O’Neill and Harcup 2009). They provide insights into the somewhat intangible ‘news sense’ that journalists say they learn on the job because they provide concrete evidence of the outcome of news selection decisions for news content. News values are also valuable in providing a more sophisticated assessment of the qualities required for events or topics to get into the news than basic lists of issues and topics provided by most content analyses. But perhaps their greatest value is as a measure of change—changes in the topics/events/issues that are selected suggest that influences on news production are shifting and in this sense news values serve as a bellwether of change. In 2017, Harcup and O’Neill’s content analysis added five new news values—audio-visuals, exclusivity, conflict, drama and shareability—to the original list of “surprise; entertainment; follow-up; the power elite; relevance; magnitude; celebrity; good news; bad news; news organisation’s agenda” (Harcup and O’Neill 2001). These new categories give some first indications of how shifts in audience preferences and the capabilities of technology influence what gets selected to become news.

Gatekeeping in the Era of Digital News Although it retains its value as an easy-to-understand metaphor to conceptualise the principles of news selection, ideas about how gatekeeping works in practice need to be constantly re-evaluated and re-investigated to keep up with new technology and changes in journalism. Reviewing changes to gatekeeping practices, Bro and Wallberg describe three models of gatekeeping (Bro and Wallberg 2015). In the original model, journalists were the dominant actors since they operated as the last gate in deciding what information flowed from sources to the audience via inclusion in a newspaper. Digital technology has changed the nature of the linear relationship between the key actors—journalists, sources, and the audience—to a nonlinear one. Now, in the second model, gatekeeping is no longer solely in the hands of journalists. While gatekeeping was one of the markers of journalistic authority and jurisdiction, journalists now share the role with audiences, sources, and algorithms. Social media enables sources of news

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and the audience to publish and distribute news themselves and to communicate directly with each other. In addition, opportunities for audiences as members of the public to become potential sources of news for journalists have expanded. Given the potential for sources and audiences to fulfil the role of publisher and distributor, Bro and Wallberg’s third model proposes a flow of communication which does not include the journalist. This elimination of ‘the middleman’ represents the most extreme predictions of the fate of journalism and has been referred to in a number of ways, including as disintermediation (Firmstone and Coleman 2015; Bardoel and Deuze 2001). This change in the power relationship between journalists and other actors as definers of news introduces us to discussions about the jurisdiction of journalism caused by the tension between emergent participatory culture and journalism’s professional logic of control over content (Carlson 2017; Carlson and Lewis 2015; Lewis 2012). However, the scenario that sees journalists as gatekeepers dying out has been contested by those who caution against overemphasising the role of the audience as gatekeepers and argue that journalists still dominate the selection, production and circulation of news (Vos 2015). Considering this extreme is useful, however, because it prompts us to consider the consequences of a dilution of journalists’ previously dominant role for the role of other actors in the production of news. We consider the role of two other protagonists in the production of news—audiences and news sources—in Chaps. 8 and 9. The online environment turns the fundamental basis of gatekeeping on its head. Whereas gatekeeping was an essential practice to limit an abundance of information due to the space restrictions of traditional media, online news producers face different challenges. Instead of limiting their output, the challenge is the opposite—unrestricted space allows for the unlimited distribution of news, demanded continuously, 24/7. Add to this the context of vastly expanded competition for increasingly distrustful, fragmented audiences in an overall economic context where less money is available for original reporting and there are fewer journalists. How then are journalists’ routines and practices evolving to respond to these conditions? What does gatekeeping in the digital era mean for who has most power over selection decisions? In this next part of the chapter, I want to focus on two practices that are evolving as central in the selection, sourcing, and writing of digital news and that have opened the previously closed area of the distribution of news to new actors: 1) aggregation and curation; and 2) audience analytics. These practices are growing alongside the related potential for automated news production via digital algorithms and suggest that gatekeeping is no longer the unique domain of journalists and humans (Nechushtai and Lewis 2018; Lewis et al. 2008). As we will see, it is almost impossible to identify discrete boundaries or typologies of production practices between aggregation, audience analytics, and algorithms because they are being adopted into newsrooms in a multitude of ways which also overlap. For example, audience analytics are often used in conjunction with practices of aggregation, and news can vary in the extent to which humans and algorithms have contributed to processes of its selection, sourcing,

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construction and distribution, with many cases where all three are combined to produce a ‘hybrid’ news product. Before we take a closer look at the implications of how journalists are adopting and applying these practices, I first want to introduce algorithms, aggregation and curation.

Algorithms and News An algorithm is “a self-contained step by step set of operations to be performed, such as a calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning—a set of rules that precisely defines a sequence of precise instructions that can be understood by a computer” (Linden 2017: 62). Algorithms are used in three main ways in news production and distribution. The purest form is also the least common to date and involves the construction of news stories entirely without human intervention from data based on a formula (algorithm) for what makes a news story. Thinking about this type of ‘robot journalism’ has gradually changed from a kind of science fiction fantasy to reality in the last decade (Van Dalen 2012). Algorithmic news is becoming more common, albeit on a restricted range of issues where source material is a good fit with the categories required by an algorithm. For example, news agencies across Europe are using algorithms to publish data about social issues and elections (Fanta 2017), and algorithms are commonly used by news agencies such as the Associated Press to publish automatically generated financial news and sports results (Linden 2017). The second, more common, use of algorithms is in the selection and rejection of new stories that have usually been generated originally by humans for aggregated or curated content, replacing the need for journalists’ news judgements and human gatekeepers. Some news output is a hybrid of algorithmically formed news, processes of aggregation, and human intervention. For example, the Press Association produces automated stories for local newspapers based on local data trends on issues such as recycling rates or cancelled operations (Baraniuk 2018). Third, algorithms can be employed in conjunction with audience analytics to drive news distribution in a variety of ways. This includes deciding what gets shared via social media platforms, prioritising what content Facebook and Twitter aim at users, and personalising story recommendations to audiences based on their previous engagement.

What Is Aggregation and Curation? Aggregation involves taking information from other news outlets, news agencies, citizens, or audience sources to produce news without any significant alteration of the original content. In the context of gatekeeping, Bruns terms the process of filtering and reinterpreting news after it has been published by other sources ‘gate-watching’ (Bruns 2005). Broadly defined, aggregation is “taking news from published sources, reshaping it, and republishing it in an abbreviated form within one single place” (Coddington 2018: np). Definitions vary and, as an evolving set of products and practices, aggregated news takes

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many forms, can be human led, automated by algorithms, or a hybrid of the two. More precisely, aggregation and curation can be conceptualised as representative of a range of evolving practices. More advanced and sophisticated forms of aggregation typically involve additional treatments to re-purpose, re-version, re-write, or combine the acquired content into a ‘new’ news product tailored to the specific interests of an audience. Many regard this as a more discerning form of selection and refer to it as curated content. We could also think of curated content as ‘value added’ aggregation that is usually the result of a manual, human-led process and can be defended as a responsible and acceptable form of news production (Coddington 2018). Aggregation is no longer the sole domain of aggregation sites that have been dubbed ‘the enemy’ of journalism and regarded as ‘parasites’ due to their reliance on news produced by others (Chyi et  al. 2016). While legacy news organisations used to favour ‘original’ reporting (Galbraith 2008), such reporting is increasingly supplemented with curated content. Aggregation and curation practices can of course also involve the incorporation of content that originates from the public. These ‘ gate opening’ practices (Boczkowski 2004) and their implications for who gets a voice are explored in Chap. 9 on News Sources.

What Is New About Aggregation and Curation? Aggregating and curating news is not a new phenomenon. Copying news from other news sources has featured in journalism’s history since the seventeenth century when British newspapers began as collections of accounts published elsewhere. Journalists reproduced copy from court reports and other newspapers, and the news agency services of today grew out of the informal exchanges of material between newspapers (Coddington 2018). This ‘industrialisation’ of news led to a dichotomy between routine news—that was so neutral in style and broad in its appeal that it could be taken by any newspaper and shaped to suit their specific audience (‘vanilla’ journalism)—and ‘exclusive’ news (Phillips 2010). Online aggregation can also be considered as the younger (digital) sibling of the well-established offline practice of ‘churnalism’ that we explore further in Chap. 9. As a pre-cursor to aggregation, and a practice that emerged in response to similar pressures to produce more news in less time, churnalism is a derogatory term. It refers to the practice of presenting news as original reporting when it is in fact heavily reliant on—and in some cases replicates verbatim without crediting the source—press releases, video news releases, or news wire copy (Davies 2008; Jackson and Moloney 2016; Lewis et al. 2008). Debates about the consequences of the widespread proliferation of digitally aggregated and curated news are therefore a continuation of deep-rooted critiques of newsgathering practices that are reliant on second-hand information and are seen as a threat to independent journalism and, by extension, the democratic qualities of news.

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How Is Aggregation and Curation Changing Practices and What Are the Consequences for Content? The principal way in which aggregation is thought to be changing established production practices is as a challenge to the largely offline traditional practices associated with original reporting. Overall, aggregation is seen to have fostered an environment where two different news making practices occur in parallel: reporting and aggregation (Anderson 2013a). News aggregation is a passive form of newsgathering and in describing it as a newly emerging form of ‘second order’ news work which joins other existing second order functions such as editing, designing and layout, Anderson means that it comes second to the once primary act of news reporting. Reporting involves offline sourcing practices whereas aggregation gathers and bundles information from online only, although the two practices are becoming “increasingly tangled” (Anderson 2013a: 57). Critiques of aggregation tend to contrast the two and overall find aggregation to be inferior. Although we shall see that aggregated news also has benefits, a great deal of concern and controversy surrounds news produced in this way, especially in the wake of the rapid pace at which aggregated news is gaining popularity, particularly among younger audiences (Newman et  al. 2021). Given the strong links between aggregated and algorithmically driven news, we consider the implications of aggregation in conjunction with understandings of how replacing or supplementing journalists’ selection judgements with algorithms shapes news.

What Is Wrong with Aggregation and Automation? Two structural characteristics of aggregation and automation—the pursuit of immediacy and the practice of following the agendas of other news providers— have consequences for news performance. The value placed on immediacy and popularity is thought to compromise news quality (Coddington 2018). News outlets closely monitor and follow each other’s coverage. This has many advantages, including avoiding missing out on stories, gaining legitimacy from matching the output of others, benefiting from the newsgathering of others by using their output as a source of raw material, relying on the gatekeeping judgements of others, and by-passing some of the time-consuming aspects of producing an original story, such as verification (Usher 2016). In some sense this is nothing new because news organisations have always shared information, mainly through news agencies, and rivalry has long motivated journalists to closely monitor the output of their competitors (Gans 1979; McCombs 2004). However, instantaneous and easy access to replicable content via social media and the online news environment exacerbates the quest for speed and immediacy, which has long been a fundamental value of the occupational ideology of professional journalism (Deuze 2005). It takes ‘pack mentality’ to a new level, putting greater pressure on journalists to “monitor and match competitors’” (Chadha and Wells 2016: 8). These practices result in four concerns:

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1. A lack of diversity, homogenisation, and a narrowing of sources: Sourcing news solely from pre-published sources increases the amount of news, yet decreases the variety of content, which has significant consequences for the diversity of news available to the public (Phillips 2015). The fact that news sites publish the same stories, albeit perhaps in slightly different formats, only serves to exacerbate the pre-digital tendency towards content homogenisation when news outlets covered similar issues (Boczkowski and De Santos 2007) and gathered news from similar sources (Duffy et al. 2018). Aggregators reference a smaller number of external sources than other news providers, leading to claims that they produce poorer quality material (Hurley and Tewksbury 2012: 145). 2. Legacy news providers have a disproportionate influence on agendas: Another impact of replicating news from legacy news organisations is in creating a circle of self-reference which gives legacy news organisations a potentially disproportionate power over not only what gets into the news in the first place, but also what stays there. The influence that news can have beyond its own audience by shaping the agenda of other news outlets has long been noted by political communication scholars as the process of inter-media agenda setting (McCombs 2005). Within the network of self-reference, newspapers have traditionally exerted a stronger influence on the agendas of broadcasters than the other way around (Vliegenthart and Walgrave 2008; Golan 2006) and, on the basis of observations, it seems likely that newspapers will maintain this influence in online news agendas (Rogstad 2016; Sjøvaag et al. 2019). 3. A loss of more valuable content: Focusing resources on covering the same news as other news outlets detracts from opportunities to produce different and potentially more valuable content. Usher (2016) highlights an important concept when it comes to reflecting on the consequences of news production practices: they should be considered in the context of the overall diversity and plurality of the news rather than on an individual story basis. In other words, we should evaluate the consequences of new practices in the context of what they replace, what is lost and what this means for the overall diversity and plurality of news. Using the term commodity news to describe news replicated from readily available information, including non-exclusive sources such as press releases and eyewitness accounts of observable events, Usher suggests that “this repetitive and banal news takes away from the larger issues and more significant stories that newsrooms might otherwise produce to create a more knowledgeable audience” (Usher 2016: 180). 4. What kind of news do we want? Automated news is highly contingent on both the quality of the data it is based on and the human-led ‘criteria’ that informs the algorithm. In other words, algorithms are not infallible or neutral, raising concerns about accuracy and necessitating an interrogation of “the cultural and social consequences of news algorithms” (Anderson 2013b). In contrast to industry claims of increased accuracy

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(Linden 2017), several examples question the legitimacy of automated news. For instance, an automated report of a 6.8 magnitude quake turned out to have been based on data from 1925 which had been released in error by the USA Geological Survey (Baraniuk 2018), and there have been numerous reports of algorithms distributing news that later turned out to be ‘fake news’ (Carlson 2018). Beyond issues with the accuracy of data, until AI takes over, algorithms can only produce the kind of news that humans programme them to—it is therefore important that journalists ask the question: what kind of news gatekeepers do we want machines to be (Nechushtai and Lewis 2018)? Many scholars consider it crucial that critical questions around the issue of algorithmic accountability (Gillespie 2014) that have long been explored by those researching the search engine industry are now asked of journalism and news media organisations (Nechushtai and Lewis 2018; Carlson 2018; Linden 2017; Anderson 2013b). Aggregation and curation practices have been called ‘Frankenstein Journalism’ with claims that “Similar to Frankenstein assembling body parts into human form, the resulting creature has a kind of life, but it does beg the question first of where the body parts came from, and second of what kind of life it is” (Duffy et  al. 2018: 1366).

The Benefits of Aggregation and Automation Alongside these concerns, aggregation practices have several potential advantages. These include increasing the accuracy and quantity of news, freeing journalists from repetitive tasks, and saving time (Linden 2017). Although news created by algorithms lacks “in depth and critical examination” in can provide a quick summary of new data or a first version of a story (Fanta 2017). In addition to benefiting from the potential for a greater availability of news, the economic benefits of aggregated news can enable news outlets to increase output and therefore provide more choice for audiences (Carlson 2018). Despite concerns over a lack of diversity in aggregated news, audiences may benefit from being able to engage with a broader range of news sourced from a wide variety of publications in a more efficient manner than if they only consult one source (Coddington 2018). More profoundly, the widespread adoption of aggregation could fundamentally alter the type of news journalists are expected to produce. The time saved by aggregation can release journalists from repetitive tasks, creating more time for more advanced journalistic practices to produce richer ‘value-added news’ (Fanta 2017). This concurs with observations about the dynamics of digital journalism more broadly, which describe technology as encouraging a shift from traditional on-the-spot reporting towards analysis and contextualisation with the direct reporting of facts ‘outsourced’ to wire services and press releases (Van Hout and Van Leuven 2016: 118), or to verification and interpretation

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(Anderson 2013b). Some of the more creative practices of re-purposing and curating content can also lead to news that is made more rather than less relevant for specific communities, particularly in a local context. Done in the right way, interpreting and making sense of news for specific communities could represent a significant improvement in news quality (Coleman et  al. 2016; Goode 2009; Anderson 2010).

What Are Audience Analytics? We now turn to look at audience analytics, which are Internet-based tools used by news organisations to track and measure the behaviour and activities of audiences. Audience analytics (sometimes called audience or web metrics)1 provide an easier, faster, and cheaper way to measure (digital) audience preferences that is unprecedented. Software provides the potential for real-time analyses of audience behaviours to measure the popularity of items, to access journeys and pathways through news and to measure audience engagement in terms of time spent reading and levels of comment. Prior to this, as we see in Chap. 8 on News Audiences, news organisations relied on finding out about the preferences of their audiences through the far less accurate means of ratings measurements and surveys. Analytics provide much more specific and immediate information based on actual behaviour rather than self-reported recollections.

How Are Audience Analytics Changing Practices and What Are the Consequences for Content? Audience analytics have become an influential part of journalistic decision-­ making (Vu 2014; Phillips 2015; Carlson 2018; Firmstone and Whittington 2021; Petre 2021). Journalists “now believe that to survive they need to create clickable, likeable, sharable content” (Usher 2016: 187). In many newsrooms, analytics are replacing journalists’ subjective judgements in news selection by guiding decisions in editorial meetings, via circulation by email, and as real-­ time measures on screens in the newsroom. Data also feeds into decisions about whether to continue covering an item, to allocate more resources to developing a story and the level of attention or space given to a topic (Welbers et al. 2016). The routinisation of analytics into news selection decisions represents several shifts in the location of power and authority over what becomes news (gatekeeping) and how news is distributed. Power shifts away from journalists towards the audience and potentially further towards the profit-making 1  Zamith differentiates between “non-purposive forms of audience feedback gathered by sophisticated audience information systems (audience analytics), and distilled into real-time, quantified measures of user-behaviours (audience metrics)” (2018: 1118). Zamith, R. 2018. On Metrics-­ Driven Homepages. Journalism Studies, 19, 1116–1137.

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orientations of news organisations (in a more quantified and targeted way than in the past). From a normative perspective, this change in practice towards news agendas driven predominantly by what audiences want in the context of the pursuit of profits creates two tensions. First, there is a fear that audience analytics encourage news providers to assess the value of a news story based predominantly on its commercial logic—its commercial translation into ‘eyeballs’ and ‘clicks’ that can be sold to advertisers. For example, journalists at a UK paper were encouraged to write stories containing the word ‘breast’ because it elicited the most clicks through search engine optimisation. The result was a batch of sensationalised stories about breast enlargement operations (Phillips 2015). Others predicted that ultimately a journalist’s survival may become dependent on individual measures of popularity: “we’re probably headed toward a new model where reporters get paid by clicks” (Anderson 2011: 559). Such an approach perpetuates a longstanding source of conflict between journalistic and commercial values—to attract advertising revenue news organisations need to attract audiences, so news is skewed towards issues that attract the largest audiences. Because not all audiences are equally valuable to advertisers, some news organisations pursue certain audiences at the expense of others, leading to a lack of diverse news that appeals to the interests of all social classes and sections of society (Gandy 2000). Second, the transformation of the audience from an almost imaginary entity into one that is “knowable and quantifiable” assigns the audience an increased role in news selection (Tandoc 2014: 560) while potentially eroding the autonomy of journalists in news decisions (Anderson 2011). Those who see audience analytics as a ‘game changer’ and potential replacement for journalistic news values recognise the potential for analytics not only to shape what becomes news, but also who gets to produce it by fundamentally challenging the authority and autonomy of journalists (Welbers et  al. 2016; Petre 2021). As we explore further in Chap. 7 on The News Organisation, journalists’ responses vary. There are those who are wary of letting their news judgement be shaped by analytics (Hanusch 2017), those who say that the autonomy of their professional value judgements are not undermined, and others who see analytics as the ultimate in curbing journalistic autonomy over selection decisions (Petre 2015; Welbers et al. 2016; Petre 2021). The latter response is not surprising when we consider that “what journalists are economically encouraged to do, and what they are normatively inclined to do, are in conflict with each other” (Welbers et al. 2016: 1050). While there are clearly benefits to audiences having more of a voice in what kind of news gets produced through analytics, it is important to consider these benefits in the context of two risks to news qualities. The first is from the often unwitting creation of echo chambers and filter bubbles via news personalisation by audiences (explored in Chap. 8 on news audiences). The second comes from new selection practices that risk narrowing the range and quality of news according to what audiences want (the market model) as opposed to what journalists’ professional judgement suggests that audiences ought to know (the trustee model) (Schudson 1999). Although the

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tension between the two competing purposes for journalism is not new, it is further exacerbated by the affordances of audience analytics. In serving the demands of the market, analytics exacerbate an overall trend towards news that places more emphasis on increasing market reach to serve the commercial imperatives of the market rather than the needs of a deliberative public. This was a common critique from political economists long before the arrival of analytics (McChesney 2003; McManus 1992). On the other hand, the ‘trustee’ model of selection was critiqued pre-analytics for not taking sufficient account of audience preferences, risking a disconnect between journalists (as elites) and their audiences, thereby creating a lack of trust. As explored in Chap. 8 on News Audiences and Chap. 9 on News Sources, journalists have traditionally operated at a distance from their audiences, deciding what becomes news based on their own values and interpretations of what is ‘best’ for the audience. Clearly, if news selection practices go too far in either direction the ability of journalists and the news media to adequately inform audiences to make decisions in a democratic context is called into question.

Conclusion Overall, because the incorporation of audience analytics, aggregation and algorithms into news production practices is new and rapidly evolving it is early days in terms of finding patterns and consistency in empirical evidence for their influence on content. We should also not forget that the adoption of new practices is rarely universal or uniform (Hanusch 2017). For example, some organisations embrace analytics wholeheartedly and incorporate them into daily editorial meetings and decision making, whereas others prefer to keep them in the background (Usher 2016: 184; Petre 2021). Such variations point to the importance of the aims, objectives, and values of an individual news organisation in shaping the way that technology is adopted and integrated into news production practices—we explore this further in Chap. 7 on The News Organisation. Based on existing evidence, algorithms and aggregated news practices serve predominantly as a supplement to other more traditional and complex forms of news production. In this sense they are expanding the repertoire of news production practices rather than completely replacing the relevance of the selection and sourcing routines associated with gatekeeping and news values. For the moment, automated news algorithms are only suitable as a replacement for very specific and simple aspects of news production that can be reduced to a set of rules and for topics where structured datasets exist (Linden 2017; Van Dalen 2012). More complex types of news—what Linden calls ‘advanced journalism’—are more difficult to automate due to the difficultly of creating a set of rules which replicates journalistic decisions. Ultimately, attempting to translate news selection and construction practices into rules that can be followed by a computer exposes the complexity of the decisions that journalists make on a day-to-day basis—what has been characterised as the ‘messy’ world of

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journalism (Schudson 1995; Carlson 2017; Linden 2017). Linden explains the challenge for those creating algorithms: “A journalism algorithm needs to reflect a behaviour that is not always rule-based but reflective and flexible in the sense that the application of explicit and internalised rules to complex situations is ambiguous” (Linden 2017: 64). This perhaps brings us full circle to Hall’s (1973) observation about the opacity of journalistic decision making. Journalistic judgements are based on a set of rules that even journalists find difficult to articulate, and are dependent on a myriad of social interactions, influences from within news organisations and less than straightforward normative considerations such as the public interest. We should note that changes to practices often raise issues of jurisdiction and boundary work (Carlson 2017; Carlson and Lewis 2015) because by removing professional journalists or challenging their authority, journalists have less control over news. Producing news with algorithms rather than the professional judgements of human journalists risks delegitimising journalism as a profession. Clearly, certain developments demand more urgent attention from researchers than others, and for example, Carlson considers critical inquiry into the impact of algorithms as particularly urgent “given the impact of algorithmic practices on the epistemic premises that legitimate journalism” (Carlson 2017: 1757).

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Van Dalen, A. 2012. The algorithms behind the headlines: how machine-written news redefines the core skills of human journalists. Journalism Practice, 6, 648–658. Van Hout, T. & Van Leuven, S. 2016. Investigating ‘Churnalism’ in Real-Time News. In: Franklin, B. & Eldridge, S. (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Digital Journalism Studies. London, Routledge. Vliegenthart, R. & Walgrave, S. 2008. The contingency of intermedia agenda setting: a longitudinal study in Belgium. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 85, 860–877. Vos, T. P. 2015. Revisiting Gatekeeping Theory During a Time of Transition. In: Vos, T. P. & Heinderyckx, F. O. (eds.) Gatekeeping in Transition (pp. 3–24). New York, Routledge. Vos, T. P. & Heinderyckx, F. O. 2015. Gatekeeping in Transition, New York, Routledge. Vu, H. T. 2014. The online audience as gatekeeper: the influence of reader metrics on news editorial selection. Journalism, 15, 1094–1110. Wanta, W. 2009. Gatekeeping. In: Donsbach, W. (ed.) The International Encyclopedia of Communication. London, Blackwell. Welbers, K., Van Atteveldt, W., Kleinnijenhuis, J., Ruigrok, N. & Schaper, J. 2016. News selection criteria in the digital age: professional norms versus online audience metrics. Journalism, 17, 1037–1053. White, D. M. 1950. The “Gate Keeper”: A Case Study in the Selection of News. Journalism Quarterly, 27(4), 383–390. Zamith, R. 2018. On metrics-driven homepages. Journalism Studies, 19, 1116–1137.

CHAPTER 5

Journalism Norms, Values, and Role Perceptions

Introduction Journalists’ routines and practices for producing news are shaped by their beliefs about the values, norms and ethics that journalism represents as these combine, and sometimes conflict, with the priorities, allegiances and working conventions of the organisations they work within. In this sense, we can conceptualise the role of journalists in the production of news as a combination of beliefs and practices. While it sounds like a truism to say that individual journalists occupy a powerful position in the news production process, the dynamics of the factors that guide and shape their role are less obvious. Exploring the relationship between beliefs and practices in this chapter, I want to explore two key questions in journalism studies: how does the way that journalists identify with the shared values of the profession serve as a guide for their actions and how does ‘being a journalist’ shape news? The chapter is divided into three. We begin by considering the importance of journalism’s claim to the status of a profession, introducing the characteristics of journalism as a profession, and asking what gives journalists and journalism a special status in society. We establish that professional journalists commonly identify with a set of shared norms and values which they interpret and implement in what are often very different ways. We then move on to reflect on how journalists’ identification with this professional culture shapes their approach to producing news. We do this by looking at the variety of professional roles that journalists identify with. We examine studies that compare journalists’ role perceptions across cultures, finding that a range of contextual factors shapes the way these roles guide journalistic work and the news that journalists produce. In the third part of the chapter, we consider two values that guide journalism’s professional culture in depth—objectivity and transparency. Looking at the origins of the longstanding contention over objectivity,

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we consider claims about whether objectivity can and should shape journalists’ work, finding a problematic relationship between objectivity as an ideal and as a practice. Finally, we consider how journalism is evolving in response to contemporary challenges and changes in society. Citizen journalism, social media, distrust in journalism, and the problems of ‘fake news’, misinformation and disinformation are just some of the recent challenges which have prompted a re-evaluation of journalism’s core values. Taking transparency as an example, we see how the assumed supremacy of the objectivity norm is questioned by the potential of transparency as a ‘better’ way for journalists to demonstrate the methods and practices by which they reach their version of ‘the truth’.

Journalism as a Professional Identity I want to start from the premise that it is possible to identify who is a professional journalist, an assumption that is becoming more and more difficult due to the once firm boundaries of journalism becoming more porous (Carlson and Lewis 2015). What was once an exclusive occupation with a monopoly on access to mass audiences is now open to claims from anyone with access to social media and an interested audience. Indeed, questions about the identity, boundaries and jurisdiction of journalism are fundamental to the future of journalism in the digital age (Carlson 2017). Despite these challenges, professional journalists remain central actors in the production of news, and some would argue that they are becoming more rather than less valuable in the current context where the legitimacy and credibility of news and information is being called into question by the proliferation of mis- and disinformation. It has long been argued that journalists’ identification as members of a profession is stronger than their sense of belonging to a specific news organisation (Russo 1998). This identity has significant consequences for news products. This is not to say that the culture of the news organisation where a journalist is embedded does not play an important role in shaping practice (see Chap. 7). Rather that it is important to recognise that the diverse and varied cultures of different news mediums and organisational environments intersect with what are thought to be an established and shared, if sometimes rather loose, set of values of journalism as a profession. I now want to introduce some concepts that shape journalism as a profession. Until the late twentieth century, media sociologists knew surprisingly little about what it meant to be a journalist, as illustrated by this quote from sociologist Jeremy Tunstall, who conducted the first study of journalists in the UK in the 1970s: “Journalism is a label which people engaged in a very diverse range of activities apply to themselves” (Tunstall 1973: 98). Today, scholars have amassed a vast knowledge base over the last five decades which means that we now have a far better understanding of what it means to be a professional journalist and how this identity and professional culture guides the production of news.

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Why Is It Important to Ask What It Is to Be a Journalist? The fact that journalists have privileged access to information and agency over decisions about what becomes news gives them a powerful role in society. Professional status affords journalists “the authority to isolate, transmit, and interpret the most publicly relevant aspects of social reality” to society at large (Anderson and Schudson 2009: 95). In making and maintaining their claim to this status of a profession, journalists had until recently created an effective monopoly over the production of information for the masses. As the following example shows, who and what kinds of organisations are officially recognised as ‘professional journalists’ dictates who has access to the sources and information required to produce news. From The Independent, 25th February 2017: “The National Press Club has condemned Donald Trump’s exclusion of select media outlets from a White House press conference, calling the unprecedented action “deeply disturbing” and likening it to censorship. Senior figures from the world’s leading professional organisation for journalists joined a host of other industry leaders in protesting the decision announced by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer to block news outlets including CNN, The New York Times, BBC, The Guardian and BuzzFeed from the off-camera “gaggle”.” This example highlights some of the reasons why journalists believe in the importance of establishing and protecting journalism’s status as a profession. Not only did the White House press secretary contest the right of professional news organisations to access a governmental press briefing, but Trump subsequently denounced journalists from several established news organisations as producers of ‘fake news’ 320 times in 2017 alone.1

Is Journalism a Profession? Long before such contemporary challenges to its status, the very question of whether journalism should be afforded the status of a profession has fuelled a long-running and contentious debate. While we do not need to get deeply embroiled in this exchange, the dynamics of this debate provide a useful conceptual lens through which we can think about the role of journalists in shaping news (Zelizer 2005; Waisbord 2014). Despite the emphasis in recent scholarship on the boundaries and authority of journalism (Carlson and Lewis 2015), early scholarship about professionalism remains a valuable source of insights into the beliefs of journalists, how they operate, and how they shape news.

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 https://www.factcheck.org/2018/01/trumps-phony-fake-news-claims/

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How Is a Profession Defined? To establish whether journalism should be considered a profession, it is first necessary to consider how a profession is defined. For this we turn to two theoretical approaches from the sociology of professions as a way of evaluating when an (expert) occupation, trade, or craft achieves the more highly-valued status of a profession: trait theory and the historical development approach. For trait theorists, an occupation gains recognition as a profession when it can demonstrate a set of professional traits that function to distinguish it from non-­ professionals. These include: a systematic body of knowledge; authority arising from formal education; licensing or other barriers to entry to the field; adherence to professional codes of conduct and/or ethical codes which function in the interests of the public; a functional relationship between the profession and the public; and self-governing associations (Greenwood 1967). Historical approaches measure professional status according to a set of five common stages that an occupation goes through in order to become a profession: it sustains full-time employment, it establishes a training school, it has a professional association, political agitation is directed towards the protection of the association by law, and it adopts a formal code of conduct (Tumber and Prentoulis 2005: 60). In a valuable conceptual development, Hallin and Mancini advocate the advantages of measuring the degree and form of professionalisation as opposed to the dichotomy of profession vs occupation (Hallin and Mancini 2004). As part of their pioneering cross-nationally comparative study of the media systems in 18 Western democracies, they advocated three closely related dimensions of journalism’s professional character as indicators of the level of professionalisation: the degree of autonomy enjoyed by journalists; the degree to which a set of shared professional norms distinct to journalism exist (see below); and journalists’ level of public service orientation. As we will see later when we observe the factors that constrain and enable the way that professional culture works in practice, it is significant that this approach acknowledged professionalisation as a constantly evolving process rather than a fixed status.

Evaluating Journalism Against the Criteria of a Profession What happens when we evaluate how journalism fits these criteria? The short answer is that it fits in some ways, but not in others. The long answer reveals nuances which have led to the question remaining unanswered in favour of pursuing questions about what role journalists can claim to have in society. Let us first consider how journalism fits with the criteria of trait theorists, historical approaches and Hallin and Mancini’s indicators. The body of systematic knowledge required to practice as a journalist is not clearly defined and overall journalists lack esoteric knowledge. Instead there is a requirement for practical skills of writing, editing, interviewing etc. which “brings journalism closer to a

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craft than a profession” (Tumber and Prentoulis 2005: 58). While being educated to degree or Master’s level is increasingly common (Thurman et al. 2016; Hanusch 2013), not all journalists have degrees in the specialised areas of journalism or media or communication (Josephi 2009). Even then, a high level of diversity in the curricula of journalism degrees reflects the lack of consensus about what constitutes the essential knowledge required by future journalists. Taking a global perspective, most journalists, particularly in Asia, receive in-­ house training, and there are important national differences in the pathways for entry into journalism (Josephi 2009). Given that in most of Western Europe, no formal qualifications are required to practice as a journalist and no formal training is required, entrance to the industry is not governed by a formal organisation or licensing (Hallin and Mancini 2004).2 The idea that a profession should serve the public by applying specialised knowledge and skills is therefore not a good fit given the inconsistencies in levels of specialised training and education. Neither is journalism necessarily a full-time occupation. Although most journalists are permanent and full time—74% in the UK (Thurman et  al. 2016)—freelancing and atypical forms of journalism are on the rise (Mathisen 2017; Örnebring 2009). Indeed, the seemingly ever-expanding groups of people other than journalists who are completing journalism work is at the heart of current discussions about challenges to the authority of journalists to claim a protected position in society to serve the public (Carlson 2017). As we explore in depth in Chap. 6 on ethics, most journalism cultures have codes of conduct. However, the extent to which codes are adopted varies across the world and the extent to which such codes are enforced is the topic of fierce debates about freedom of the press in many countries. The degree to which journalism as a profession can claim to be autonomous varies according to organisational setting as well as within different cultural contexts where a country’s media system determines the level of autonomy from the political system and government (see Chap. 7’s discussion of autonomy). To summarise, comparisons between journalism and other professions such as law, medicine, and the clergy have concluded that journalism is less professionalised than other liberal professions yet at the same time shares many of their characteristics (Hallin and Mancini 2004; Tumber and Prentoulis 2005). Despite not fulfilling all the criteria, it is generally recognised that journalism has successfully claimed a professional status for itself over the course of the twentieth century (Tumber and Prentoulis 2005) and that journalists would agree that they aspire to a level of professionalism in their everyday work (Aldridge and Evetts 2003; Örnebring 2016).

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 For an exception see Italy.

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Approaches to Understanding Shared Norms, Values, and Role Identities In the mid-2000s scholars moved away from somewhat ‘dead end’ evaluations of the status of journalism as a profession towards greater efforts to understand the ways in which journalists’ identification with the professional culture of journalism shapes practices and news content. For example, Deuze (2005) stresses the importance of understanding journalism in terms of how journalists give meaning to their news work. He proposed understanding journalism as an occupational ideology rather than a profession saying that what the overall findings and conclusions of research suggest “is that journalists in elective democracies share similar characteristics and speak of similar values in the context of their daily work, but apply these in a variety of ways to give meaning to what they do” (Deuze 2005: 445). Deuze identifies five ideal typical values, strategies and formal codes that characterise the shared occupational ideology of journalism: 1. Public service: journalists provide a public service (as a watchdog or ‘news-hounds’, active collectors and disseminators of information); 2. Objectivity: journalists are impartial, neutral, objective, fair, and (thus) credible; 3. Autonomy: journalists must be autonomous, free and independent in their work; 4. Immediacy: journalists have a sense of immediacy, actuality, and speed (inherent in the concept of ‘news’); 5. Ethics: journalists have a sense of ethics, validity, and legitimacy (Deuze 2005: 447). Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) description of the norms that feature in the professionalisation of journalism include a similar set of professional norms— the ethical principles shared by journalists such as protecting sources, values such as a public service orientation, a commitment to objectivity, and a commitment to practical routines such as selecting news according to a common sense of newsworthiness shared by those in the profession (Hallin and Mancini 2004). Understanding journalistic identities and the implications of being part of the professional culture of journalism can help us to appreciate how ‘being a journalist’ shapes news. We now put the ‘is it or isn’t it’ question to one side and look in more depth at the shared norms, values, and role identities of journalism before considering the ways in which these values guide journalists in their work. For this, we turn to one particular area of journalism studies research: the study of the roles that journalists identify with.

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How Do Journalists See Their Role in Society? Over the last few decades, a large body of research has concentrated on determining journalists’ self-perceptions of the profession and has established how journalists conceive of their role in society. Known as the professional roles approach, it is particularly helpful in pinpointing the variety of role orientations that characterise journalists’ beliefs about professional journalism and the potential impact of these beliefs on news production practices and content. Most research into professional roles has focused on measuring and describing journalists’ own perceptions of the roles they fulfil in a range of countries and news production contexts. Much of this work has been cross-nationally comparative. Studies such as ‘Worlds of Journalism’ (Hanitzsch et  al. 2011; Hanitzsch et  al. 2019), ‘Newsworkers: a European Perspective’ (Örnebring 2016), ‘Beyond Journalistic Norms’ (Mellado 2021), and the ‘Global Journalist’ (Weaver and Wilhoit 1991; Weaver 2007; Willnat et al. 2017) have vastly expanded our understanding beyond the national boundaries of many original studies.3 Measuring journalists’ perceptions through large scale surveys and interviews, the approach provides an evidence-based contrast to purely theoretical discussions about the normative roles that journalism should play in society at a collective level (see Chap. 2) (Christians 2009). The research is founded on the assumption that how journalists understand, define, and identify with the role guides their attitudes, behaviours, and practices which in turn affects the kinds of news they produce (Donsbach 2008; Van Dalen et  al. 2012). These behaviours and practices include the selection of news issues, use of sources, and frames and it is assumed that the way a journalist perceives and conceives their role determines how they decide what to say and how to approach a story (Shoemaker and Reese 1996). A range of terminology is employed interchangeably which variously describes the way that journalists understand their professional roles as perceptions, conceptions, enactment, paradigms, orientations, ideology and so on (Hanitzsch and Vos 2017; Mellado et al. 2017b). In some cases, the distinction between these terms is conceptually relevant and they are used to describe different aspects of how journalists evaluate their role: what they as individuals want to do and think is important (conceptions), what they think they should do (perceptions), and how they perceive what they think they do (enactment) (Mellado 2021). In other cases, terms are used interchangeably and less purposefully. The most important point is that an awareness of journalists’ beliefs illuminates our understanding of how journalists shape the production of news. Unless an author has specifically used an alternative term, this chapter uses both perceptions and conceptions to refer to what journalists ‘think’ about their role.

3

 For an overview of the vast amount of research in this area see Mellado et al. 2017b.

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What Roles Do Journalists Identify with? Like much journalism research, the earliest studies into roles were conducted in the USA and we have a far greater understanding of journalism in this context than anywhere else. Three classic studies concurred in their findings and categorised journalists as identifying as either neutral or participant reporters (Janowitz 1975; Johnstone et al. 1976; Cohen 1963). In the neutral role journalists act as gatekeepers who relay information to the public, whereas in a participant orientated advocacy role journalists act as a representative of those who “are denied a powerful spokesman and he must point out the consequences of the contemporary power balance” (Janowitz 1975: 619). Of course, this underestimates the fact that journalists, particularly at newspapers, are not always working for the underprivileged, as they also often advocate and promote the agendas of powerful actors. In Johnstone and colleagues’ survey, journalists were more likely to support fulfilling a participant role than a neutral role and placed more importance on contextualising and interpreting information for identified publics, readerships and audiences instead of prioritising the transmission of facts (Johnstone et  al. 1976). Later, Weaver and colleagues conducted a series of surveys of “the American Journalist” over four decades. They asked journalists to rate how important they considered a range of journalistic functions and categorised these into four overall orientations. These were the interpretive/investigative role (participant); the disseminator role (neutral); the adversarial role (Weaver and Wilhoit 1991, 1996); and the more recently identified populist mobiliser role which emerged from the 1990s public journalism movement (Weaver 2007; Willnat et al. 2017). A key reason for understanding role perceptions is the implicit assumption of a direct relationship between perceptions and news content. Carpenter et  al.’s (2015) operationalisation of four roles provides a useful explanation that can help us to imagine the potential consequences that journalists’ identification with these differing roles may have for practices and news content. They point to the professional norms and values assumed to result from the enactment of each role. • The disseminator role is associated with getting accurate verified information to the public quickly which focuses on presenting facts objectively and impartially without much emphasis on the ‘how and why’ of an issue. Pursuit of this passive role is expected to result in news where the journalists’ voice and/or opinion is absent. • In contrast the interpretative role goes beyond imparting ‘straight’ information to provide “content that goes beyond descriptive, fact-focused, and source-driven journalism, which is characterised by journalistic explanations or contextualisation”, and places greater emphasis on enacting a public service of giving ‘meaning’ to news (Carpenter et al. 2015: 590-593). • In the active adversary role journalists explicitly become conflict protagonists and use their own voice to target an actor such as the government

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and to hold them responsible for a problem that requires action. In this capacity journalists intend to affect change through influencing public opinion or public affairs (Willnat et  al. 2017). Journalists must have autonomy from those who they intend to hold to account to fulfil this role. • The populist mobiliser role is enacted in stories that attempt to motivate ordinary people to participate in an activity and to engage with their community. We should of course note that these categories all assume a certain level of public service. Yet, the degree to which journalism and journalists are orientated towards serving the public, or perhaps more accurately the public represented by their audience, varies greatly depending on the organisation they work for, and macro political, economic, social and cultural conditions. For example, the increasing commercialisation of many Western media systems demands that journalists working for commercial news organisations place a greater emphasis on entertaining and securing audiences than producing news that serves the public interest (Hallin and Mancini 2004). Indeed, rather than operating under a universal and shared set of role orientations, roles are one of several dimensions that combine in different countries to determine a country’s journalistic culture. Hanitzsch (2007) conceptualises roles as a constituent part of the broader concept of journalistic cultures, which he defines as “particular set of ideas and practices by which journalists consciously and unconsciously, legitimate their role in society and render their work meaningful for themselves and others” (Hanitzsch 2007: 369). Hanitzsch et  al. (2019) develop the concept of journalistic culture further in the latest ‘Worlds of Journalsim’ study, proposing four models of journalistic cultures that are determined by five dimensions: 1) the roles journalists identify with; 2) journalists’ ethical orientations; 3) the extent to which journalists trust political institutions; 4) journalists’ perceptions of the extent to which their work is influenced by political, economic and organisational influences; and 5) the level of editorial autonomy that they experience. They suggest that national variations in these dimensions lead to variations in journalism culture and identify four models of journalism culture operating in different parts of the world: monitoring, advocative, developmental and collaborative (Hanitzsch et al. 2019). As we see later, roles research increasingly recognises that some journalists are more orientated towards providing commercially orientated news that attracts audiences than that which serves the public and roles differ in less democratic contexts where journalists have limited freedoms.

Role Identification Is Messy in Reality I now draw your attention to three key findings from roles research that are important for the question of how role perceptions and conceptions shape practices. Roles are not discreet categories, are non-mutually exclusive, and

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though journalists commonly identify with some of the same key roles across cultures, not all roles are universal. First, we should recognise that roles are theoretical constructs that exist in mixed forms in reality (Kocher 1986). Consequently, it may be more accurate to consider roles in terms of degrees of emphasis towards one role or another, or as dimensions rather than discreet categories (Hanitzsch 2007; Donsbach 2008). For example, roles can be thought of as continuums with journalists positioning themselves somewhere between one end of the spectrum or the other: participant-observational, advocacy-neutral, commercial-educational (Donsbach 2008). We must also recognise that survey questions limit journalists to a selective set of pre-­ determined categories and are designed by scholars based on pre-existing understandings of journalism, they therefore preclude nuances in descriptions of roles and involve some degree of foreclosure. Second, surveys have consistently shown that journalists rarely identify with a single role, with most subscribing to multiple overlapping roles that are not mutually exclusive (Weaver 2007; Hanitzsch et al. 2019). Third, in addition to the fact that journalists can identify with and perform multiple roles concurrently, roles are not universal (Hanitzsch et al. 2019). A large body of evidence has established that journalism is not the same everywhere and, perhaps most importantly, that we should be extremely cautious in assuming that knowledge built on the experiences of journalism in the USA applies to other cultural contexts. Indeed, one of the first studies to compare the importance of various roles to reporters from Germany, the UK, Sweden, Canada, and the USA concluded that American journalists were “a relatively peculiar breed within the profession” (Donsbach and Patterson 2005: 264). It was not until the end of the twentieth century that large-scale survey research expanded its agenda to a comparative endeavour, beginning with Western-oriented comparisons (Kocher 1986; Donsbach and Patterson 2005; Donsbach 1983; Örnebring 2016) before moving to a global comparative approach (Weaver and Wu 1998; Hanitzsch et  al. 2011; Mellado 2021; Mellado et al. 2017a; Hanitzsch et al. 2019; Willnat et al. 2013). To give a very brief synopsis, the endeavours of comparative research point to several similarities and differences in the functions and values that are shared, or not, across cultures. According to the Worlds of Journalism (WOJ) in 18 countries, strong similarities exist in the values journalists say they attribute to the norms and principles of reliability, factualness of information, impartiality, neutrality, and ethics, and the extent to which they are committed to the ideals of detachment, providing political information, and acting as a watchdog of the government (Hanitzsch et al. 2011: 205). The most recent study, expanded to cover 67 countries, found that journalists across the world agree on what they think journalism’s social role should be (its normative role): as informers, reporters, watchdogs, investigators, monitors, and educators (Hanitzsch et al. 2019: 165). Yet, in asking about the roles journalists describe as important to their own work, the WOJ study revealed cross-national differences across all four role dimensions—monitoring, collaborative, interventionist and

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accommodative. The monitoring role of holding power to account has the strongest support globally and is emphasised most strongly in the Western world. The interventionist role, which includes advocating for certain groups, promoting social change, and influencing public opinion, was most likely to be important to journalists in developing countries and transitional contexts, particularly Africa (Hanitzsch et  al. 2019: 192). Collaborative journalism “supporting government policy and providing positive image of political leadership is most strongly appreciated by journalists in countries that are socioeconomically less developed, in political climates that tend to restrict journalistic freedom, or in societies that combine both conditions” (Hanitzsch et  al. 2019: 189). Actively promoting particular values, ideas, groups and social change was not generally a characteristic reported by Western journalists. Identification with what is often termed development journalism is perhaps more natural in places that have experienced adverse societal conditions. The accommodative role, orientated towards the audiences as consumers, in providing orientation for the management of self and everyday life, is most strongly articulated by English-­speaking countries where journalism also tends to be de-regulated and market-­driven (Hanitzsch et al. 2019: 193). One of the most interesting discrepancies between countries is the value placed on subjectivity, showing that “the understanding of the objectivity norm is idiosyncratic even to journalists working in different Western contexts” (Hanitzsch et al. 2011: 287). These idiosyncrasies are indicative of the problematic nature of assuming that objectivity is a shared ideal, a question we come to later. In terms of which countries are more or less similar to each other, the WOJ and Global Journalism studies agree that “the patterns of similarities and differences are not neatly classifiable among common political or cultural dimensions” (Hanitzsch et  al. 2011: 287) with differences between Western and non-Western countries as well as differences within regions (Willnat et al. 2013). Variations in role perceptions and conceptions are more likely to be determined by a range of political, economic, social, cultural and linguistic contexts (Hanusch and Hanitzsch 2017). Influences on journalists’ ideals come from a country’s professional culture, which is dependent on the historical development of journalism and on the attitudes of other individual journalists (Donsbach 2008). These global comparisons are valuable and welcomed by scholars who criticise the ethnocentricity of journalism studies (Esser 1998; Hanitzsch et al. 2019) and advocate the de-westernisation of the field as essential for ending assumptions of the cultural hegemony of Western-­ orientated professional norms (Hanitzsch 2007; Mellado et al. 2017a). On the other hand, roles research continues to be criticised as skewed towards Westernised assumptions about journalism (Josephi 2005), and direct comparisons between countries are problematic given the different ways that journalists form different cultures interpret key concepts such as objectivity and the watchdog role (Mellado et al. 2017b; Hanusch and Hanitzsch 2017).

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The Relationship Between Values and Practices It is now time to consider a central question of this chapter: how does the way journalists identify with the shared values of the profession serve as a guide for their actions? Until recently, the causal connection between role perceptions, conceptions and actions was taken for granted, with empirical evidence to prove the assumption lacking (Van Dalen et al. 2012; Carpenter et al. 2015). Evaluations of this relationship are based not on what journalists think they do, but on measurements of what is called ‘role performance’ as evidenced in news content. Studies evaluate role performance by comparing journalists’ beliefs and self-reports of what they do with the presence of certain roles in news content. As we now see, despite the assumption of a strong relationship, research measuring content as a proxy for performance finds significant differences between what journalists think about their roles and how those roles translate into news content. Early research into the influence of journalists’ orientations on decisions and practices found some limited evidence of role perceptions influencing journalists’ news decisions (Starck and Soloski 1977; Culbertson 1983). More recently, researchers have combined large-scale survey methods with content analyses to quantitatively measure the relationship between perceptions, conceptions, and content (Carpenter et al. 2015; Mellado et al. 2020; Mellado 2021; Tandoc et al. 2013; Van Dalen et al. 2012). Results vary, with most showing a limited impact (Tandoc et al. 2013; Carpenter et al. 2015) and studies comparing role conceptions in different countries finding that differences in role conceptions are not always reflected in differences in content (Van Dalen et al. 2012). Those that do find a relationship show that the connection varies in strength between role-specific identities (Mellado et al. 2020). For example, research measuring six professional role orientations— Watchdog, Civic, Interventionist, Loyal-­ facilitator, Infotainment, and Service—found the biggest gaps between ideals and performance exist in roles that serve the public good—the civic and watchdog roles (Mellado et al. 2020). On balance, even though there is clearly some linkage between role perceptions, conceptions, practices and the resultant content, the relationship is not linear and does not necessarily translate into behaviour or exert a visible impact on the news produced (Tandoc et  al. 2013: 551). This is because although journalists identify with and support certain ideals and roles, other factors intervene to influence their ability to perform these roles (including the factors explored throughout this book). Tensions and gaps between the abstract ideals held by journalists and their ability to apply those ideals in practice are inevitable (Mellado et  al. 2017a; Preston 2009). For example, as we explore in Chap. 7, to some extent journalists must align with the priorities of the publication and organisation they work for. Here, some degree of compromise and self-censorship is inevitable—a calculated alignment to balance the tension between producing news according to professional roles at the same time as attending to the economically motivated priorities of the news organisation.

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Journalists cannot be committed at all costs to roles and shared professional norms such as objectivity. Similarly, in countries where press freedom is restricted, pursuing a watchdog role that criticises those in power may not be possible. Here, the most interesting point that we shall now pursue is not that a disconnect exists, or the size of the gap between perceptions, conceptions and performance, but explanations about why there is a disconnect between what journalists think they should do, what they want to do, what they say they do and what they actually do.

Explaining the Disconnect Between Role Perceptions, Conceptions, and Content We now consider some reasons that explain the gap between journalists’ perceptions, conceptions, and the performance of roles in content; this tells us a lot about the range of factors that shape news production in conjunction with the values of journalism as a professional culture. We must first realise that journalists struggle on a daily basis to reconcile the internal tensions present in some roles, which in some cases involve seemingly contradictory values and demand that journalists prioritise one norm over another. The difficulty of reconciling two or more opposing professional values has long been highlighted (Janowitz 1975; Johnstone et  al. 1976). How journalists decide to navigate and engage with these conflicts shapes the type of news they produce. A classic example of such an internal contradiction occurs when journalists must decide which part of the disseminator role to prioritise—speed or accuracy. Publishing a story quickly ultimately puts pressure on a journalist’s ability to verify facts to ensure accuracy. Other discrepancies exist between roles that appear antithetical such as the neutral and the participant roles. As we shall see, attempting to report objectively is problematic. A wide-ranging reason for this disconnect is because the ability to enact and perform roles is context dependent. Journalists’ role conceptions do not operate in isolation. Role enactments are influenced by a multitude of factors, including that journalists perform multiple overlapping roles, and that “news content is seldom an individual output” (Tandoc et  al. 2013: 551). Surveys measure role conceptions at an individual level yet the practice of producing news is collective, with other journalists, editors and news workers involved in the production of a news story, meaning that individual aims may be fragmented by the involvement of others (Mellado 2021: 151; Weaver 2015). News production is a collective endeavour and it is necessary to “analyse the interplay between journalistic ideals and professional practice as based on an understanding of role performance as a collective and socially constructed outcome” (Mellado 2021: 148). In addition, the power of an individual journalist to enact a role in a news product is moderated by the level of power and autonomy they have in the process. As Hallin points out, we should not assume that “journalists have enough autonomy that their individual role conceptions

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matter, and that the system is egalitarian enough that it makes sense to count each individual equally” (Hallin 2017: xv). As explored in Chap. 7 on The News Organisation, it is through socialisation into the culture of a news organisation that journalists learn which roles and norms are valued and prioritised by their employer. Indeed, tensions between fulfilling the often (but not always) competing expectations of organisational cultures (as commercial profit orientated entities) and the professional culture of journalism have long been emphasised as having significant implications for news production (Breed 1955). We now shift our focus to inquiring into the determinants of how such relationships play out in practice or, to put it another way, looking at reasons for the disconnect between beliefs and practice in more detail: What gets in the way? What enables and constrains journalists in enacting and performing certain roles and the norms and values associated with them? To explore these questions, we now examine two values that guide the professional culture of journalism: objectivity and transparency.

The Influence of Objectivity as a Shared Professional Norm In this third part of the chapter, we contemplate how objectivity as a core professional norm guides journalists’ work and news production practices. We begin by looking at how objectivity is conceptualised to help us to understand why the extent to which objectivity can, does, and should influence news has always been a matter of contention. We find that, like role conceptions, the principle of objectivity is not universally adopted. Objectivity varies in how it is interpreted, valued, and implemented across different cultures. Moreover, objectivity is only a minimal reference point for certain types of journalism and publications which, depending on their economic, commercial and political motivations, aim to privilege specific political or commercial perspectives, often marginalising others e.g. the British tabloid press. In addition, acknowledging that norms and values can evolve and change over time and in response to the social, political, economic, and technological context within which journalism is embedded, we conclude by examining the emergence of a potential new norm: transparency.

Conceptualising Objectivity Objectivity is the founding principle of journalism and as such has underpinned the legitimacy and credibility of the status of journalism as a profession. Objectivity provides “the abstract systems of knowledge that allows the differentiation of journalism from other ‘crafts’” (Tumber and Prentoulis 2005:64) and enables journalists to position themselves as separate from media critics and publics (Tuchman 1972). The pursuit of objectivity is how journalists have traditionally legitimised their claim to be reliable relaters of the truth and is the

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basis of their epistemological claims, or in other words how they evidence their “ways of knowing” (Wahl-Jorgensen 2016: 129). As the lynchpin of the epistemology of journalism, objectivity has functioned as journalism’s main source of credibility and attributed authority to journalists as ‘truth-tellers’ in the twentieth century (Maras 2013; Vos and Craft 2017). Objectivity is intertwined with other key professional values (impartiality, neutrality, balance, and fairness) and norms (truthfulness, factuality, completeness, and accuracy) which shape news production. It is worth noting that objectivity is often referred to as a norm although it is actually an ideal. The term ‘norm’ and ‘ideal’ have differing implications for their application and acceptance as ‘markers’ of the profession. A norm is attainable and is accepted as what should happen whereas an ideal is a push towards something that it is collectively agreed should be a marker of a profession but is not necessarily attainable for practical or other reasons. The problematic aspects of objectivity as an ideal have consequences for its role as a norm.

Defining Objectivity Objectivity is not easily defined. Schudson observes the duality of objectivity as both an ideal and a practice: “Objectivity is at once a moral ideal, and an observable pattern in news writing” (Schudson 2001: 149). Tuchman famously described objectivity as a ‘strategic ritual’ which structures the routine practice of news production (Tuchman 1978). Multiple definitions exist, with most positioning objectivity as multifaceted and more than the sum of its parts due to the inescapable reality that objectivity in practice is associated with a multiplicity of other journalistic values. Common elements include factualness, detachment, balance, fairness, the avoidance of bias, and neutrality—the pursuit of truth is a common aim linking all definitions. Maras’ book-long exploration of objectivity adopts a definition that highlights three key aims of objectivity: “1) Separating facts from opinion. 2) Presenting an emotionally detached view of the news. 3) Striving for fairness and balance” (Dennis and Merrill 1984: 11 quoted in Maras 2013: 8).

Can and Should Objectivity Influence How Journalists Produce News? In considering how the pursuit of objectivity influences how journalists produce news, we need to consider that even though objectivity may be considered desirable, it may be unattainable because a ‘truthful’ description of reality is simply impossible for two reasons. First, ideologically, objectivity is enmeshed with claims of presenting the ‘truth’, ‘reality’ or ‘the facts’. This lays it open to philosophical debates about the fundamental impossibility of defining what the objective reality or truth ‘out there’ is. One of the perpetual problems faced by journalism is that its key claim to legitimacy is based on an elusive and

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ambiguous concept. The ideal of objectivity is simply that—an ideal—and several factors make it impossible for journalists to achieve complete objectivity in the news. For example, the necessary process of news selection and the fact that all events must be placed in an evaluative frame of reference. By selecting, highlighting, framing, and shaping reportage, journalists can only create an impression or a version of events that is conveyed to audiences. Secondly—and this gets to the heart of the question of what shapes news—news production practices are both constrained and enabled by a range of intrinsic and extrinsic influences as indicated by the ‘Framework for Analysing Influences on the Production of News’ (see Fig. 3.1 in Chap. 3). For example, as we explore in detail in Chap. 9 on News Sources, “the news media reflect not a world ‘out there’ but ‘the practices of those who have the power to determine the experiences of others” (Molotoch and Lester 1974), including journalists and their sources. Introducing the question of power expands the debate about objectivity beyond whether it is achievable to whether objectivity should shape news due to the potential bias created by the political beliefs of individual journalists (Patterson and Donsbach 1996), the ideological leanings of news organisations (Schiller 1981; D’alessio and Allen 2000) and the power of official sources. Citing the example of President Trump’s blatant falsehoods, Birks points out that objectivity assumes that credible sources can be taken at face value, but that in political reporting, “sources appear in the news not because they are credible, honest or well-informed, but because they are powerful” (Birks 2021: 67). Indeed, objectivity has many critics, including those who see it as a tool in legitimating the dominant ideology. For example, “Objectivity is authority in disguise: ‘objective facts’ always support particular points of view, and their ‘objectivity’ can exist only as part of the play of power. But, more important, objective facts cannot be challenged: objectivity discourages audience activity and participation” (Fiske 1989: 158). Supporters of some specific forms of journalism have promoted the view that in certain cases journalists should not strive for objectivity and should instead reject the objectivity norm in favour of other norms and practices. In particular, the ethics of the pursuit of objectivity are contested by those who challenge the condition of objectivity that insists that journalists should remain detached and not allow themselves to become involved in the events they report on. These alternative approaches advocate for journalists to take a conscious decision to reject the objectivity norm to perform a ‘journalism of attachment’ or interventionist forms of journalism such as peace journalism (Bell 1998; Lynch and Annabel 2005) or ‘fact-checking’ journalism which has emerged in response to the rise of fake news (Birks 2021). This reminds us that there is no such thing as one type of journalism. Each of these forms of journalism are significant areas of interest where we can see that the values that guide journalists shift and develop in relation to conditions in society.

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How Does Objectivity Shape News? I now want to turn to consider how journalists’ pursuit of objectivity in practice shapes news. Even though defining objectivity is problematic, potentially unattainable, and subject to critique, journalists commonly identify with a commitment to objectivity (Deuze 2005; Örnebring 2016) and its principles, such as being a detached observer (Hanitzsch et al. 2019). It is widely held that journalists translate the ideal of objectivity in practice by following routines and practices guided by the objectivity norm (Karlsson 2010; Tuchman 1972). It is becoming increasingly important, however, to acknowledge that despite the important place of objectivity in the professional culture of journalism, interpretations and implementations of objectivity vary according to cultural, organisational, and political contexts in ways that have implications for news. Cross-national studies show that objectivity varies in value and importance in different journalistic cultures (Hallin and Mancini 2004; Hanitzsch et  al. 2011). Socio-political circumstances give rise to differing conditions that allow for more or less of an emphasis on values associated with objectivity, such as remaining detached, with countries where journalists have little political freedom identifying less with the monitoring role (Hanitzsch et  al. 2019). Objectivity is not always a key element of the profession—in some countries journalists are explicitly partial and opinionated, suggesting that adherence to objectivity may not be a good indicator of professionalisation (Skovsgaard et al. 2013; Donsbach and Klett 1993). For example in Germany, there is no clear distinction between subjective commentary and news reporting (Esser 1998; Hallin and Mancini 2004). These differences can be traced in large part to the differing historical contexts in which the objectivity norm has developed, with it being a particularly North American fixation (Anderson and Schudson 2009; Hallin and Mancini 2012). Further, the organisational context in which objectivity guides news production can create a disparity between the ideal and the reality of how journalism is practised. For example, in the UK the pursuit of objectivity is somewhat easier in the context of quality newspapers where objectivity is expected compared to the popular tabloid press where journalists face greater expectations to attract audiences with approaches to news that might place more value on sensationalism at the expense of objectivity. Indeed, Danish tabloid journalists ascribe less importance to being objective than journalists working for other organisations (Skovsgaard et al. 2012). In short, journalists need to balance professional norms and values to align with the priorities of their news organisation, meaning that norms such as objectivity are not pursued at all costs.

The Shifting Value of Objectivity The cultural context of political conditions can have consequences for the way that norms and values shape the work of journalists. We only have to look at today’s political environment to see that shifting political conditions

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complicate assumptions about the importance of objectivity and the associated values of neutrality and truth-telling. Debates about the ‘post-truth’ condition and challenges to journalistic truth-telling fuelled by populist politics, polarisation, the rise of conspiracy theories, and an associated public distrust of the media, have renewed interest in the value of interpretative journalism as an alternative to objectivity-driven descriptive journalism. By giving greater emphasis to the ‘meaning’ of news beyond the facts and statements of sources, to explanations and analyses, and to the voice of journalists, interpretative journalism goes beyond the descriptive style of journalism characterised by objectivity (Salgado and Strömbäck 2011; Esser and Umbricht 2014). The recent rise of fact-checking as a form of interpretative journalism is positioned as an effective counter to challenges to the integrity of journalism through its focus on explaining the relationship between observable facts and questioning of how factual assertions are used appropriately or misleadingly in arguments (Birks 2021). Other political conditions raise questions about the appropriateness of pursuing objectivity that stem from the difficulties associated with achieving one or more of its key constituent parts such as balance or impartiality in practice. For example, critics have been particularly vocal in relation to attempts to apply the objectivity norm to the reporting of issues such as climate change and health issues, including the Covid-19 pandemic, where the weight of evidence supports one side of the argument far more significantly than the other and there is a need to counter disinformation (Luengo and García-marín 2020; Klemm et al. 2019). Here it is claimed that the blind application of balance results in “a form of informational bias” (Boykoff and Boykoff 2004: 126), and that interpretive journalism, which rejects the objectivity norm, is far more appropriate in creating public understanding of complex issues like climate change and climate politics (Brüggemann and Engesser 2017). Similar problems have been explored with translating impartiality into a clear set of editorial guidelines (cf: Wahl-Jorgensen et al. 2017). Highlighting these shifts in the context of news production brings us to the final part of the chapter where we take a specific example—transparency—and explore how contemporary challenges to the credibility of journalism as a profession are compelling those journalists who are committed to the aims and principles of objectivity (and free to implement them) to rethink how best to achieve them in the digital age.

Objectivity in the Digital Age: Is Transparency the New Objectivity? Debates about the desirability of striving for objectivity have been eclipsed in recent years by an arguably more urgent need to defend the position of journalists as the arbiters of truth in society. Citizen journalism, social media, falling levels of trust in journalism, and the problem of mis- and disinformation are just some challenges to journalism which are causing some to question the

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assumed supremacy of the objectivity norm. In discussions of the ‘crisis of journalism’ scholars argue that credibility now matters more than objectivity (Usher 2016). Due to the interactive affordances of digital news, transparency has been pitched by scholars as a new alternative to objectivity in offering a better way for journalists to demonstrate the methods and practices by which they reach their version of ‘the truth’. As an alternative way of journalists showing ‘how they know what they know’ and performing being accountable, credible, and trustworthy, some claim that transparency represents a “full-blown epistemological shift in the basis of journalism” (Vos and Craft 2017: 1506).

What Is Transparency? Much like objectivity, inconsistencies and even contradictions exist in scholarship and journalists’ understandings of transparency (Craft and Heim 2008). Most commonly, interpretations describe transparency in terms of practices which aim to open up the news production process with the intention of demonstrating journalists’ accountability to the public (Singer 2007; Plaisance 2007). Transparency is attributed a normative value in contributing to democratic discourse by enabling citizens to more easily trace information to its source and in improving the quality of news via the increased attribution of sources (Phillips 2010; Karlsson 2010; Allen 2008).Transparency promotes a dedication to the truth by providing audiences with “a sense of how the story came to be and why it was presented as it was” (Kovach and Rosenstiel 2003: 83). In the rare cases where it features in codes of practice, transparency is mentioned as an ethical principle in relatively oblique terms. For example, Al Jazeera’s code of ethics simply states: “Observe transparency in dealing with the news and its sources while adhering to the internationally established practices concerning the rights of these sources”.4 The Society of Professional Journalists in the USA is more explicit, yet still fairly open to interpretation in practice: “Be accountable and transparent. Ethical journalism means taking responsibility for one’s work and explaining one’s decision to the public. Journalists should: explain ethical choices and processes to audiences. Encourage a civil dialogue with the public about journalistic practices, coverage and news content. Respond quickly to questions about accuracy, clarity and fairness. Acknowledge mistakes and correct them promptly and prominently. Explain corrections and clarifications carefully and clearly”.5 Having first been adopted by bloggers in preference to the traditional norms of detachment and objectivity (Singer 2007), demonstrating transparency is far easier in digital news publishing models. Digital news is not constrained by space, time, deadlines, and the restrictions of a one-way dialogue with audiences that characterise print, radio, and television journalism.

4 5

 https://network.aljazeera.net/about-us/our-values/code-ethics  https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

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How Does Transparency Shape Practices and Is It a New Professional Norm? We now need to examine how the pursuit of transparency shapes production practices and news content by examining what studies tell us about how journalists perceive transparency and how researchers have observed transparency in practice. As we see, transparency suffers from many of the same problems as objectivity, with three factors resulting in a disjuncture between the potential of digital news production practices to fulfil the normative ideals of transparency (accountability and openness) and the reality of transparency in practice: 1) definitional differences; 2) practical constraints; and 3) cultural variations. Such a disconnect reminds us that, on its own, technology does not guarantee change. Rather, as per the stance taken towards technology throughout this book, “the adoption, appropriation and use of particular technologies are contingent on and interact with, a broader array of political, economic and social circumstances” (Wahl-Jorgensen 2016). 1. Disagreements over the definition and importance of transparency within journalism: For transparency to become a professional norm it needs to be perceived as attainable and accepted as something that is desirable by those who identify as professional journalists. For norms to be accepted among a profession as a legitimatised institutional norm the value and definition of the norm must also be discursively constructed (Schudson 2001; Carlson 2017). Yet, looking at public narratives about journalism (where norms are discursively constructed) suggests that neither journalists nor news organisations agree on the definition, value, or importance of transparency. Analyses of the trade press and journalism association websites in the USA since 2000 find that although discussions have resulted in ‘a close to agreed on definition’ a continuing battle of legitimising and delegitimising discourses means that transparency is not yet “a settled institutional norm” (Vos and Craft 2017: 1516). Contrary to the democratic advantages posed by scholars, transparency is contested and far from being accepted as an unequivocal ideal by journalists. While transparency is positioned by some journalists as “the new objectivity” that gives the public “more reason to believe a report than the claim of objectivity did” (Weinberger 2009: np), others see practising transparency as placing yet another demand on journalists’ already scarce time which takes them away from other more important aspects of news production (Koliska and Chadha 2017). Some journalists also doubt the value and interest to the audience of practices aimed at letting “people see how the sausage is made” (Chadha and Koliska 2015), contesting the assumed link between enhanced openness and credibility (Koliska and Chadha 2017). Research with audiences suggests that these doubts are well-founded (Firmstone et al. 2022a). For example, transparency does not increase perceptions of credibility and is not demanded by Swedish audiences (Karlsson and Clerwall 2018b: 1930). Indeed, positioning increased transparency as a solution to falling levels of trust may be misplaced,

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since audiences place more importance on established values and norms such as objectivity, non-partisanship and verification (Karlsson and Clerwall 2018a). The evolution of transparency into an accepted shared professional value is also held back by concerns about its risks. Scholars and journalists argue that transparency risks laying journalists open to unwelcome scrutiny and increased criticism that can hinder journalistic autonomy (Allen 2008; Cunningham 2006). Concerns particularly relate to practices of self-disclosure where journalists go against the ‘distance’ norm of objectivity and expose their private views, opinions, and aspects of their private lives to audiences to foster a closer relationship. Such transparency practices, particularly on social media, lay journalists and their organisations open to accusations of bias and unsubstantiated criticism which could ultimately undermine rather than heighten their credibility (Chadha and Koliska 2015; Firmstone et al. 2022b). 2. Practical constraints on the normative potential of transparency: The development of transparency as a shared professional norm is limited by organisational decisions regarding how it is implemented. Even if journalists want to pursue transparency, such intentions must be matched with resources, and it may well be that news organisations restrict transparency practices to those that require the fewest resources in terms of journalists’ time and are made easiest by technology. Despite a host of possibilities, research illustrates that a narrow range of transparency techniques have been adopted. Common practices include linking to original documents, making corrections, providing journalists’ email addresses, linking to journalists’ bios and blogs, and time-­stamping articles (Chadha and Koliska 2015; Karlsson 2010). The more enhanced techniques of disclosure transparency that allow audiences to understand journalists’ views or opinions, methods and motives (e.g. news judgements and decision-making behind articles, sourcing practices) or provide opportunities for participatory transparency are less common. Many news organisations only support journalists to engage in ‘low risk transparency’ with the instrumental aim of appearing to be transparent (Chadha and Koliska 2015) thereby failing to fully commit to openness and accountability (Karlsson 2010). This may be explained by the fact that some journalists do not perceive transparency to be a normative ideal, seeing it as more of a ‘defensive strategy’ that is a necessary way to increase trust among their audience (Chadha and Koliska 2015). The ability to implement transparency techniques is therefore enabled and constrained by the same organisational factors that shape the enactment of other professional norms. 3. Cultural variations: In the same way that many claims about objectivity are based solely on the USA context, we should be cautious in assuming that the concept of transparency is proliferating and being adopted in similar ways in all journalistic cultures. Motivations and reasons for developing shared approaches to transparency differ across cultures. For instance, while transparency is a trust-enhancing strategy in the USA (Chadha and Wells 2016), such motivations are absent in Germany where audience trust in journalism remains high (Koliska and Chadha 2017).

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To summarise, although some transparency techniques are commonplace, there is limited evidence to suggest that transparency is replacing objectivity as a shared professional norm (Hellmueller et al. 2013; Chadha and Koliska 2015; Vos and Craft 2017). Transparency is far from being universally embraced and provides a good example of the difficulties of introducing and establishing new guiding values to professional cultures.

Conclusion Our key aim in this chapter was to critically reflect on what studies tell us about the importance of ‘being a journalist’ who produces news according to shared professional norms, ideals, values, role perceptions and conceptions. We have established that a set of core values are largely shared among journalists but, in practice, interpretations of many of these values vary according to culture, news organisation, and the type of journalism being pursued. Another important point is that journalists often identify with several roles simultaneously and swap between roles frequently, even in the course of producing one story. The way that journalists’ identify with certain ideals and roles and how this plays out in the production of news is complicated by the fact that what journalists think they should do, what they say they do and what they actually do is often very different from the qualities found in their news output. As I have noted earlier, journalists’ ability to enact and perform roles is highly dependent on the social, organisational, political, and economic context and this highlights the importance of opening up any analysis of influences on news to multiple factors (Hanitzsch and Vos 2017; Hellmueller and Mellado 2015). Of particular importance is considering the balance between the often competing values of a news organisation and the professional culture of journalism as supported by the conceptual framework advocated by this book (see Chap. 3, Fig. 3.1). It would be remiss not to point to several caveats in our knowledge of the professional culture of journalism. First, research is highly dependent on the self-reporting of journalists, which suffers from the problem that “much of the reasoning that drives human behaviour is inaccessible to conscious reflection” (Ryfe 2018: 350). In addition, the wide variety of methodological approaches used to investigate journalists’ identification with norms, values and roles limits the comparability of the studies and the conclusions we can draw from them as a collective body of work. Some studies draw on journalists’ conceptions of how they implement roles, others use experimental designs where journalists are asked to make hypothetical news decisions, some trace links between specific journalists’ conceptions and their individual output, and others make less rigorous correlations between theoretical conceptualisations of role conceptions and arbitrary news content (for a critique see Van Dalen et  al. 2012). Almost all the research referred to in this chapter relates to surveys that measure responses to predefined categories of possible roles, which is an obvious limitation. Those seeking a more nuance understanding of the influence of the norms and values associated with journalism as a professional culture on news

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production practices can of course also engage with the wealth of research that takes a more exploratory and qualitative approach to understanding how such values shape news work. For example, in semi-structured interviews with local journalists, I detected a shift in the value attributed to fulfilling an informational role towards a greater emphasis on pursuing a more campaign-orientated role as a way to create more distinctive news offerings in order to engage audiences (Firmstone 2016). Comparing journalists in six countries, Örnebring’s (2016) qualitative findings highlight an important difference between what he calls occupational professionalism and organisational professionalism. While journalists in his study identified strongly with the professional value of objectivity and neutrality, they also defined professionalism in terms of the ability to produce news that complies with the organisational demands of an established news organisation (Örnebring 2016). We explore these organisational demands further in Chap. 7 on the News Organisation.

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CHAPTER 6

Journalism Ethics

Introduction In a continuation of Chap. 5’s discussion about how journalism norms, values, and role perceptions shape news production practices, this chapter explores the role of journalism ethics as fundamental to the practice of journalism, to the trust placed in that practice, and to the consequences for public knowledge. Aligning with the view that ethics are “inseparable from journalism, and ethical discussion must be part of understanding journalism, its practice and its problems” (Belsey and Chadwick 1992: preface), we ask how journalism ethics operate as an influence on news production practices by exploring how they are perceived and negotiated by journalists. We start with some definitions and distinctions to help us proceed through what can be quite complex territory. Ethics refers to two interconnected concepts: 1) ethics are moral principles and rules about right and wrong; 2) ethics is also a field of study, also known as moral philosophy, concerned with studying the moral principles and rules by which people ought to live. In this chapter, we are concerned with journalism ethics, which can be defined as “the moral principles, reflected in rules, written or unwritten, which prescribe how journalists should work to avoid harming or distressing others, e.g. when gathering information; when deciding what to publish; when responding to complaints about their work” (Franklin 2005: 74). Considerations of ethics come into play in almost every aspect of journalism that we can think of. In one sense it is not possible to separate ethics from journalism because “the practice of journalism necessarily includes ethics” (Sanders 2003: 27) and “ethics is a central task for the profession of journalism in general” (Baugut et al. 2017: 340). As discussed in Chap. 2, at the theoretical normative level, discussions of ethics focus on assigning journalism a purpose in society. At another level, ethics are about protecting the boundaries of journalism by creating integrity and credibility, building essential trust between journalists, their sources and their audiences. In the day-to-day production of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Firmstone, The Shaping of News, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21963-4_6

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news, ethics are integral to the routines and practices enacted by journalists, underpinning journalism’s claim to produce accurate, truthful, and fair news. The chapter is divided into three sections. We begin by defining journalism ethics and considering the key areas of news making where ethical decisions come into play, looking at examples of ethical issues that highlight the need for ethical judgements at all stages in the news production process. In the second and third sections, we consider what research tells us about how ethics are manifested in the production of news. In the second part of the chapter, we consider how journalists position themselves normatively in relation to ethics in order to do the work that they do. This includes establishing what research tells us about the formal expression and definitions of ethics represented by codes of ethics. We also consider journalists’ ethical role perceptions to judge the extent to which journalists agree on ethical standards and the values that underpin them. We look at what research illustrates about the factors that determine how ethics operate in practice in relation to ethical codes of conduct, journalists’ ethical orientations, and the ethos of a news organisation. We find that the way that ethics are observed, enacted, and adhered to in practice is contingent on a range of contextual factors that constrain and enable journalists’ ethical behaviour.

Defining Journalism Ethics I now want to point to some of the general issues which have so often made ethical questions complex and confusing.

Ethics in Theory vs. Ethics in Practice Discussions about ethics are mainly concerned with very broad, theoretical normative notions of the role that journalism should serve in society on the one hand, or more specific concerns about how journalists and news organisations should act ethically in response to specific dilemmas on the other. Ward puts this another way and says that “journalism ethics is a species of applied media ethics that investigates the “micro” problems of what individual journalists should do in particular situations, and the “macro” problems of what news media should do, given their role in society” (Ward 2009: 296). In this chapter, we focus on ‘micro’ level ethics (the ethical dilemmas of news making that are central to the practice of journalism) as opposed to the broader theoretical normative debates about the democratic role of journalism that were explored in Chap. 2. The development of ethics (guidelines and principles) designed to deal with ‘micro’ problems do of course also reflect and uphold the more macro ethical questions about normative values such as the role of journalism in society, and the relationship between journalism and politics such as the watchdog role. Theorising about the latter necessarily involves discussions about the social responsibility of the media (Christians 2009). Here, the fundamental concern is the expectation that in return for freedom of the press,

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journalists and news organisations should act responsibly to ensure freedom of speech and freedom of information in the public interest (Steel 2012). Some scholars note the difference between values and principles as another way to think about the two different sides—macro and micro—of journalism ethics (Slattery 2014). Values are beliefs about how journalism should be (macro ethics) whereas principles are guidelines for the behaviour underpinned by values (micro ethics). In this sense, abstract normative debates feed into journalistic practices via the founding values of the principles set out in journalistic codes of ethics. Conceptualising ethics in relation to the role and responsibility of journalism in society adds a contentious element to attempts to understand how ethics work as an influence on news because opinions on these big questions vary. As Ward states, “What one regards as a question of journalism ethics depends, ultimately, on one’s conception of the primary functions of journalism and the principles that promote those aims. Consequently, there is room for disagreement on the level of practice, in applying norms, and on the level of theory and principle” (Ward 2009: 296).

Philosophy and Ethics From a philosophical perspective, how one responds to questions of journalism ethics is driven by theories of normative ethics. Here we need to take a brief dip into the branch of moral philosophy which considers questions that arise from thinking about how one ought to act, sets standards for how people ought to behave, and justifies why they ought to behave this way. While nobody is suggesting that journalists consciously adopt specific theoretical ethical positions and apply them in news decisions, or that they adopt one position to the exclusion of others, normative theories play a significant role in culturally shaping journalistic practice because they underpin journalists’ ethical orientations. Journalists are “in constant engagement with ethics theory as they move through the continuous cascade of decisions that compromise the messy, complicated and often compromising production of news” (Plaisance et  al. 2012: 641). Two theories of normative ethics are commonly invoked in relation to ethical decisions in journalism. Taking what is called a ‘deontological’ stance would mean behaving according to certain standards because of a moral obligation to do so regardless of the outcome and independently of the consequences—journalists might take a certain course of action even though it may have some harmful effects because it is the ‘right’ thing to do, e.g. invade someone’s privacy in the public interest. Utilitarian (consequential) ethics asserts that actions should be judged right or wrong on the basis of their consequences with less regard for the morality of the motivation. Journalists aligning with John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian perspective would assess whether an action was ethical on the principle of utility—that of being of the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people.

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The Law and Ethics At this point it is important to clarify the difference between ethics and law, and to recognise that journalists’ actions are shaped by both. Ethics are about how we should act as responsible and good members of society, whereas laws set the boundaries of what is and isn’t permissible. Laws, as a set of systematic and universally accepted rules, act as legal regulations that restrict the news media. Laws such as defamation and copyright act as restraints and sanctions to discourage journalists from acting in a way that may do harm to others and are enforceable through penalties that result from legal action. Ethics, on the other hand, reflect the values and principles of the society in which journalists operate, providing guidance on ethical standards and how to maintain them. Ethics are not enshrined in law and are usually imposed through voluntary self-­ regulation. Self-regulation is a collective process of the standardisation of values and practices, “including the establishment of ethical rules and guidelines, mechanisms to ensure compliance with those standards and the arbitration of conflicts, all occurring at a varied level of autonomy from state intervention” (Miranda and Camponez 2019: 18). Ethical decisions are therefore necessary in a range of complex and subjective situations that, whilst they may not be illegal, may be considered by some as unethical or immoral. There are many ways that the news media’s actions can be judged as unethical that do not necessarily go beyond the law: “inaccuracy, lies, distortions, bias, propaganda, favouritism, sensationalism, trivialisation, lapses of taste, vulgarity, sleaze, sexism, racism, homophobia, personal attacks, smear, character assassination, cheque-book journalism, deception, betrayal of confidences and invasions of privacy” (Belsey and Chadwick 1992: 8).

Ethical Judgements: What Are They and When Are They Necessary? After this broad introduction to the landscape of ideas and values surrounding any serious contemplation of ethical factors, an example may be useful. Looking at the Code of Practice of the UK National Union of Journalists as an example is a good way to start thinking about the areas of news making where ethical judgements come into play in the production of news. Such codes of practice set ethical standards, which we can define as a set of principles established by the founders of an organisation to communicate its underlying moral values. Do note, however, that this is just one example, and, as we shall see, codes vary within and between countries, and are regularly revised to take account of changing values in society. From the NUJ—A journalist: 1. At all times upholds and defends the principle of media freedom, the right of freedom of expression and the right of the public to be informed. 2. Strives to ensure that information disseminated is honestly conveyed, accurate and fair.

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3. Does her/his utmost to correct harmful inaccuracies. 4. Differentiates between fact and opinion. 5. Obtains material by honest, straightforward and open means, with the exception of investigations that are both overwhelmingly in the public interest and which involve evidence that cannot be obtained by straightforward means. 6. Does nothing to intrude into anybody’s private life, grief or distress unless justified by overriding consideration of the public interest. 7. Protects the identity of sources who supply information in confidence and material gathered in the course of her/his work. 8. Resists threats or any other inducements to influence, distort or suppress information and takes no unfair personal advantage of information gained in the course of her/his duties before the information is public knowledge. 9. Produces no material likely to lead to hatred or discrimination on the grounds of a person’s age, gender, race, colour, creed, legal status, disability, marital status, or sexual orientation. 10. Does not by way of statement, voice or appearance endorse by advertisement any commercial product or service save for the promotion of her/his own work or of the medium by which she/he is employed. 11. A journalist shall normally seek the consent of an appropriate adult when interviewing or photographing a child for a story about her/ his welfare. 12. Avoids plagiarism (NUJ 2018).

The Public Interest—Tension between the Right to Privacy and the Right to Know In making an ethical judgment there is often a play-off between different values and principles that may clash with each other. Many ethical decisions relate to potential conflicts of interest, where journalists must make complex judgements when serving one interest could work against another. One example of such a play-off that will help us to understand the complexity of journalism ethics in theory and in practice is the tension between the right to privacy and the right to know. Judgements in balancing these competing priorities raise the question of what is in the public interest, a concept that is central to debates about journalism ethics because it is used to justify what might otherwise be deemed unethical practices. The public interest features in many legal and ethical codes as a concept that can be applied to decisions where there is a need to balance the freedom of the news media to investigate, report and expose in order to share information that the public has a right to know on the one hand, with the rights of private individuals, organisations and state institutions to protection of their privacy, confidentiality, and security on the other. The question of how the public interest is understood and interpreted in such judgements is therefore key. Indeed, the different interpretations of the public

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interest used to justify unethical (and in some cases illegal) practices by the editors of national newspapers was the source of many of the concerns of the UK inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press led by Lord Leveson (Leveson 2012). Though the public interest features prominently as an abstract notion in normative theories about the role of the news media, it remains a highly contested and ill-defined concept. In practice, notions of the public interest are fluid, interpreted in a multitude of ways, and often only at the point when it is used as a justification for journalistic actions. For example, in the UK the NUJ’s code constructs the principle via examples of the types of issues that might be in the public interest rather than via definition: 1. The public interest includes: Detecting or exposing crime or a serious misdemeanour; Protecting public health and safety; Preventing the public from being misled by some statement or action of an individual or organisation; Exposing misuse of public funds or other forms of corruption by public bodies; Revealing potential conflicts of interest by those in positions of power and influence; Exposing corporate greed; Exposing hypocritical behaviour by those holding high office. 2. There is a public interest in the freedom of expression itself. 3. In cases involving children, journalists must demonstrate an exceptional public interest to over-ride the normally paramount interests of the child.

Public Interest Considerations in News Decisions We can now pursue this issue of the ethical tensions and dilemmas faced by journalists a little further by referring to examples from the three key stages of news production identified in Chaps. 3 and 4: selection, sourcing, and writing. As I have noted, decisions about the inclusion and exclusion of stories at the selection stage often involve balancing judgements about the competing values of running a story that, on the one hand may cause the subject harm and/or invade their privacy, whilst on the other, is deemed to be in the public interest. The exposure of the UK Health Secretary, Matt Hancock’s, extra marital affair in 2021 is an example of a story where invasion of privacy was widely viewed as justified due to the implications of his private actions for the public. Hancock’s case raised questions about the attention he was paying to dealing with the crisis caused by the global pandemic while conducting an affair on government premises with another government employee, and her appointment to a government-funded position was seen as a conflict of interest. The use of anonymous sources is an example from the sourcing stage where the play-off is between providing the audience with the information needed to judge the trustworthiness of the information provided and the need to guarantee anonymity to a source in order for journalists to gain access to information that they would not otherwise have, and that will enable them to report on matters of public interest to fulfil their role as watchdogs. Decisions about the

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presentation of news may also involve consideration of the public interest. For example, the decision to broadcast graphic and distressing mobile phone footage showing the killers of British soldier Lee Rigby in 2013, hands covered in blood, clutching a knife and a machete, speaking directly to camera, was justified by the broadcast regulator Ofcom as being in the public interest. The public interest in reporting the terrorist incident was judged to outweigh concerns about the footage being insensitive and disrespectful to the victim, giving an unwarranted voice to the terrorists, and the potential harmful effect on children watching.1 The public interest is, however, only one of many ethical principles applied in the myriad areas that require ethical decisions. These include “questions of accuracy and verification, independence and allegiances (too close to a source or in a conflict of interest), deception and fabrication (when is it OK to use hidden cameras/a fake identity to get a story), graphic images (gruesome images—causing harm or offence) and image manipulation, sources and confidentiality (protection of sources)” (Ward 2009: 296).

Ethics and Change Importantly, we should recognise that because they reflect developments in society the main ethical issues of the day change constantly. While I was writing this book, new (or in the case of hate speech, resurgent) ethical dilemmas arose including those about how to report on hate speech, cover transgender issues, and ensure that ethics are taken into consideration in the application of new technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, in the production of news. In some of my own research I witnessed first-hand how journalists from across Europe perceive the demands of digital first publishing for more and faster reporting to be compromising ethical practices. Interviewing journalists, they described how fewer editorial resources to fact check are reducing their capacity for accuracy, cutting out time needed to give subjects the right to reply, reducing the opportunity to consult multiple sources, and increasing the risk of making mistakes (Firmstone et  al. 2022). The drive to tackle the problem of racism in society heightened by the Black Lives Matter movement in recent years has highlighted ethical questions about how subjects and sources of stories are portrayed. The ubiquitous concern with misinformation and disinformation pushes the ethical commitment to accuracy up the agenda. This and many other debates about ethics and standards in journalism increasingly transcend national borders (Fengler et al. 2015), raising a question we address later about whether journalists practice according to a universal set of ethics. To summarise, our thinking about journalism ethics is under constant development due to globalisation, concerns about the dominance of Westernised ideas of ethics, and the arrival of new ethical dilemmas posed by the different values of new forms of digital media (Ward 2009: 301; Díaz-Campo and Segado-Boj 1  https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/collegeofjournalism/entries/83a74b96-21f4-3272-bee9f74f1c770d4b

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2015). Indeed, Ward refers to ethics as “the never-completed project of inventing, applying, and critiquing the principles that guide human interaction, define social roles and justify institutional structures” (Ward 2009: 296).

How Do Ethics Work in Practice as an Influence on News Production? In asking how professional ethics may shape news production practices, we need to establish how journalists position themselves normatively in relation to ethics in order to do the work that they do. This requires an appreciation of the common values and principles that drive ethical approaches, the variations that exist and an understanding of the factors that determine similarities and differences. We now look at ethical codes of conduct as an indication of the ethical values and principles that shape news decisions. We also look to research that measures journalists’ ethical role orientations to see what it reveals about the extent to which journalists agree on ethical standards and the values that underpin them.

Ethical Orientations: Codes, Principles, and Values The ethics of journalism as a profession are most commonly expressed and defined in formal written codes of conduct published by news organisations, regulatory bodies like press councils, or trade unions. Such ethical codes are essentially statements of beliefs and aims that are intended to act (I say intended because it is not clear that they do act in the intended way) as formal guiding mechanisms for journalists, news organisations and the wider journalistic field (Fox et al. 2023). Codes “ostensibly state the professional credos of journalists and the media personnel, stipulating permissible and forbidden behaviour as well as obligations to society” (Himelboim and Limor 2008: 255). In the case of the codes of regulatory bodies such as press councils, they are also used to decide cases of malpractice when complaints have been made. Codes are the main way that journalism ethics are articulated in written form and therefore understanding what kinds of ethical behaviours codes prescribe can reveal a lot about how ethics may influence the production of news. In addition, codes are regularly updated in response to societal changes and changing values, making them a particularly useful source of information about how ethics may influence news. Even though we see later that the role of codes in news production practices is not as explicit as we might expect, codes of ethics are attributed an influential role in journalistic culture. For example, “Professional codes regarding speed, exclusivity and objectivity or appeals to the public interest, the public’s right to know or freedom of expression all form part of the craft lore which is especially influential in journalism practice” (Sanders 2003: 31). Although the establishment of press councils with their own codes of ethics is a relatively new development, journalist associations began codifying ethics

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at the beginning of the twentieth century (for history see: Black et al. 1999; Ward 2009; Laitila 1995). Codes have emerged at different times and for differing reasons in countries around the world, with many codes established in response to the rise of television in the 1960s, and concerns about newspaper quality in the 1970s and 1980s, with the majority of European countries adopting codes by the 1990s (Laitila 1995). Particularly in the case of the press, the industry has adopted voluntary codes as a defensive reaction in response to the threat of regulation, to convince governments that tighter regulation is unnecessary (Laitila 1995; Sanders 2003; Himelboim and Limor 2008).

What Key Ethical Principles and Values Are Stated in Codes? A consideration of comparative analyses, looking across diverse settings, can help us in engaging with the ethical contexts within which journalists work. Comparative analyses of codes have tended to focus on describing commonalities in the journalistic values shared by codes across the world or on evaluating how codes treat specific values such as freedom of the press. These studies, which usually include codes produced by a range of media organisations, journalist’s unions, professional organisations, and press regulators, provide valuable evidence of the central tenets of ethics that are shared within and across cultures. Studies demonstrate that a set of common principles are shared worldwide while a range of other principles are unique to specific countries. Comparisons of codes find common principles coalesce around the recurrent themes of truthfulness, responsibility and accountability, freedom of expression and equality. Although slightly different categorisations are used in each of these analyses, they demonstrate a set of shared values of journalism worldwide (Jones 1980; Laitila 1995; Cooper 1990; Fielden 2012; Slattery 2014; Fox et al. 2023). In the European context, Laitila’s analysis of 31 codes from 29 countries recorded a total of 61 different ethical principles and found that 10 of these principles were present in 75% or more of codes. The 10 common principles were: truthfulness, honesty, and accuracy of information; correction of errors; discrimination on the basis of race/ethnicity/religion; respect for privacy; prohibition of accepting bribes or other benefits; fair means of gathering information; prohibition of outside influence on journalistic work; prohibition on the basis of sex/social class etc.; freedom of expression, speech, comment, criticism; and professional secrecy (Laitila 1995: 538). These themes remain dominant, at least in the USA, where an analysis of the codes of three large journalism associations—the National Press Photographers association, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Radio Television Digital News association—found that at least two thirds of the codes revolved around duties of truth-telling, loyalty to the public, and avoiding harm to others (Slattery 2014).

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Aside from these core principles, comparative analyses of codes also show that codes vary in relation to the types of principles featured and in their expression. For example, while Laitila found 10 principles were common to more than three quarters of the codes, she found 51 other ethical principles that were not widely shared. Expressions of the principle of truthfulness in some codes included ideas about objectivity, diversity, and plurality of information, whereas these concepts were mentioned separately in other codes (Laitila 1995). Similarly, Cooper concluded that “codes within a single country or even different professional branches of a single media industry may be contradictory, differ in emphasis, or even differ in direction as to the ethical behaviour of communicators or even the moral purpose of communication” (Cooper 1990: 11). One of the largest studies was of 241 codes of ethics in 94 countries and also found differences within countries in the ways values are expressed in codes published by different organisations (Himelboim and Limor 2008). The study focused on what accounted for differences in the way that specific concepts such as freedom of the press, journalistic social roles and moonlighting were covered. Analysing differences between types of organisations where the code originated as well as country level differences, the findings showed that the kind of organisation a code is written by and who it is written for is a more important indicator of the values it espouses than the country of origin (and its related political/media system). Others have made a similar point, that codes of ethics differ on the basis of whose sets of rights they seek to protect—the owner of the media company, journalists, or the citizen (Herrscher 2002; Fox et al. 2023). These variations, which reflect national contexts, journalistic culture, and organisational differences, are one of the reasons underlying the contention around whether a universal journalism ethics exists or indeed could exist.

What Ethical Orientations Do Journalists Identify With? We now need to consider the question about the existence of a shared set of journalism ethics from a different angle, by examining what studies show about the ethical orientations of journalists as individuals. To do this we shall explore in selective detail studies that measure attitudes in order to see whether journalists are in agreement about ethical standards. Scholars do this in research projects which look at the values that underpin the moral reasoning of journalists (their ethical orientation). Understanding journalists’ ethical orientations is important because they “both reflect and shape normative professional guidelines and arguably govern work practices on a daily basis” (Plaisance et  al. 2012: 642). Much of what we know about journalists’ approaches to ethical issues is based on cross nationally comparative surveys. Studies measuring journalists’ attitudes towards various reporting practices tend to find that some central tenets of ethics are shared across cultures, but they also reveal important

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variations. A study of journalists from countries across all continents measured the extent to which they approved of various reporting methods. It showed that, with the exception of the practice of source confidentiality, which is almost universally agreed upon, significant differences exist in the degrees to which journalists in different countries approve of practices such as paying for information, undercover reporting, and using government documents without permission (Weaver and Willnat 2012). In terms of these practices, “strong national differences override any universal professional norms or values of journalism around the world” (Weaver and Willnat 2012: 540). In the context of countries where the professionalisation of journalism is under development— mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong—there is a high degree of variance in the ethical attitudes and perceived practices of journalists (Lo et al. 2005). In specific relation to dimensions of conflicts of interest, mainland Chinese journalists were far more accepting of practices to soften negative coverage of government agencies and advertisers through self-censorship than journalists from Taiwan and Hong Kong. The position of mainland Chinese journalists as outliers in the acceptance of ethically questionable practices is explained by the ‘unique transitional condition’ of the country where the media are operating under state ownership and party control at the same time as responding to the demands of commercialisation. The study also found commonalities, with an overall consensus that journalists should not accept cash from sources, and a fairly prevalent acceptance of other questionable practices such as accepting freebies from sources and moonlighting (Lo et al. 2005). In their conclusion, Lo and colleagues make a strong claim about the conditions under which ethical journalism can be expected to develop: “It is not enough to codify ethics in texts, a democratic context, commitment from newsroom leadership, discussion of ethical standards within the profession, and ethics in journalism education are also required” (Lo et al. 2005: 169). The Worlds of Journalism study surveyed journalists in 18 countries and included a set of questions designed to situate journalists’ ethical attitudes within a typology of ethical ideologies (Plaisance et al. 2012; Hanitzsch et al. 2011). Plaisance and colleagues measured the moral philosophy underpinning journalists’ ethical attitudes (their ethical orientation) and looked at the degree of ideological consensus within journalistic cultures on the acceptable approaches and responses to ethical dilemmas. They were interested in the extent to which the professional ethics of journalists vary across news organisations and countries, and what factors explain such variations. These ideologies are based on Forsyth’s (1980) two basic ethical dimensions of relativism and idealism which we can interpret as measurements of the extent to which journalists’ moral philosophies are orientated towards the normative ethical positions introduced earlier: deontological and utilitarian. Rather than positioning journalists as taking one approach or the other, the survey rated their orientation in terms of the degree of relativism or idealism suggested by their responses to specific ethical contexts. The more relativist a journalist, the more they align with a utilitarian perspective that ethical decisions are dependent on situational

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context rather than moral absolutes, with less relativist journalists considering that “ethics is universal and should rely on moral absolutes regardless of context” (Hanitzsch et  al. 2011: 285). The less idealistic a journalist, the more they agree that harm may sometimes be necessary to produce a greater public good, adopting a broadly utilitarian orientation (Hanitzsch et al. 2011: 285). Journalists from all countries agreed on the importance of (unspecified) universal principles, regardless of situation and context (agreeing with the statement “There are ethical principles which are so important that they should be followed by all journalists regardless of situation and context”), and that questionable methods of reporting should be avoided even if this means not getting the story. Aside from consensus in these underlying principles, this and other studies find differences in ethical orientations and conclude that “diverse cultural and ideological contexts, not universally internalized values, often drive journalists’ ethical orientations” (Plaisance et al. 2012: 656). For example, in terms of differences in relativism, Chinese and Russian journalists are more supportive of the idea that journalists should be able to set their own ethical standards than Western journalists (Hanitzsch et  al. 2011). Idealist orientations are particularly different among Western journalists and those from developmental and transitional environments. Western journalists are less likely to approve of questionable methods of reporting such as revealing confidential sources or paying for information, but more willing to accept that harm is sometimes justifiable.

A Universal Ethics? To summarise, journalists’ ethical orientations, and therefore the way that ethics operate as an influence on news decisions, are dependent on a range of national contextual factors including levels of press freedom, professionalisation of journalism, and democratic structures. Given that these factors vary according to national circumstances and that, beyond some common principles, codes of ethics are also nationally dependent, it is unsurprising that there is much debate about the assumption that something like a ‘global’ journalist exists or that there are, or can be, a set of universal ethics. Studies of global ethics such as those above—where global relates to describing how ethics work in countries across the globe rather than global in a unifying sense—are not aimed at establishing the existence of universal ethics. Nevertheless, their findings about ethics in different geographical and cultural contexts lead naturally to a discussion about the viability and existence of a universal journalism ethics, including what values a universal ethics should enshrine (Christians 2010). Universal ethics is a philosophically grounded discussion about the essential characteristics of human life and discussion of whether ethics is and can be uniform across cultures. While we should be careful not to digress into what is an extensive area of philosophical theorising, it is important to acknowledge that ethics, and thinking about the nature and purpose of journalism ethics, particularly their universality, is subject to some fundamental disagreements

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(for more see the work of (Christians 2019)). Key contentions in relation to journalism debates are whether there should be a universal ethics and whether there could be a universal ethics. Put simply, there is disagreement about whether a universal code of ethics is desirable or even possible (Cooper 1990; Herrscher 2002). The variations in ethics across the world pointed to by the comparative studies referred to above imply that even if there was agreement about the desirability of a set of universal ethics in journalism, the variations that exist make achieving the concept unlikely.

Ethics in Practice It is now time to explore what is the most important question raised in this chapter: how do journalists interpret and negotiate ethics in practice? Here we draw on a relatively small body of research because empirical investigations into the relationship between journalism ethics and news making are rare, as are ethnographic studies of news production that explicitly examine the role of ethics. Overall, academic debates about how we expect journalism ethics to shape news have remained rather theoretical and normative. Nevertheless, research that has tried to capture ethics in practice illustrates usefully that the way that ethics are observed, enacted, and adhered to in practice is contingent on a range of contextual factors that constrain and enable journalists’ ethical behaviour. We will explore four themes that emerge from this research.

Codes of Ethics in Practice Research suggests that although we can look to codes of ethics as a good indicator of the values and principles that may shape news production practices, it is not always possible to trace a direct link between codes and day-to-day ethical decision making. While we might imagine codes in their various forms as a set of rules that journalists consult on a regular basis, the role of codes within news making is far more nuanced and determined by the context of the news organisation. As we will see, in addition to codes, a range of factors feed into ethical decision making, including organisational factors, individual ethical orientation, how journalists are socialised into the practices of their news organisation and the degree of autonomy journalists have to make decisions. Indeed, the role and value of professional codes of ethics within journalism has long been contested and debated by those who have studied the content of codes, including Laitila (1995), Hafez (2002), and Himelboim and Limor (2008). As a starting point, we can look to the field of media accountability for indications of how codes of ethics impact journalists’ work. Scholars of media accountability see ethics, represented by professional and organisational codes, as part of a suite of ‘accountability mechanisms’ that have evolved in response to the need to balance the expectation of free expression in liberal democracies via a free press with the obligation of the press to act responsibly (preventing or limiting harm to individuals and to society) that comes with such freedoms.

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Media accountability is defined as “all the voluntary or involuntary processes by which the media answer directly or indirectly to their society for the quality and or consequences of publication, with particular reference to matters of the general public good” (McQuail 2000:180). As such, theories of media accountability attribute an important role to journalism ethics in contributing to the quality of news content (McQuail 2000; Bardoel and D’Haenens 2004; Bertrand 2003). Media accountability refers to the various formal and informal mechanisms by which the media and its work is held to account and is compelled to account for its performance. The level of compulsion varies (voluntary, contracted, legal), as do the sanctions for noncompliance. In most media accountability literature, the presumed accountability effect of ethics, their influential role in ensuring that news organisations and journalists act in a responsible way, is implicit rather than empirically proven. One exception that provides valuable insights is a comparative survey measuring journalists’ perceptions of the impact of traditional media accountability instruments (seen as forms of media self-regulation) on standards in journalism (Fengler et al. 2015). Journalists surveyed from 12 European countries perceived that company codes and laws regulating the media—both forms of media accountability that have direct consequences when breached—are more influential on practice than instruments that do not necessarily have direct consequences for the journalists who breach them, such as professional codes of ethics, press councils, media criticism, regulatory authorities, ombudsmen and trade journals. The study also found national variations suggesting that in places where press councils are well established, such as the UK, Germany, Finland, Austria, and Switzerland, journalists ascribe a higher impact to professional codes than to company codes. In countries without press councils which are described as having a less developed profession, such as France, Italy, Poland and Romania, journalists see company codes as more impactful. The perceived impact of codes therefore varies according to national culture and the type of code. Despite these variations, the research demonstrates that codes of ethics, whether published by companies, professional organisations, or press councils, are perceived to have at least a medium impact on standards in journalism, and therefore warrant further consideration.

Individual Ethics vs. Socialisation and Professional Values A key issue in research about how ethics work in practice concerns the relationship between the ethics of journalists as individuals versus the ethics learnt through professional values and socialisation in the newsroom (Plaisance 2016). Journalists’ ethics are a combination of their own personal ethics acquired while growing up through cultural, political, religious, family or other influences, ethical principles learnt through socialisation into the profession of journalism, and the ethical policies of their news organisation. The degree of

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emphasis that should be given to each of these three sources of influence in how journalists’ practices can be understood is not clear, and a variety of views exist. Based on survey research in the USA, “about three-fourths of journalists credited newsroom socialization or their family upbringings with influencing their ethical standards. Half or more said that fellow journalists or college professors had influenced them” (Weaver and Wilhoit 1991: 135). In another US survey, journalists perceived their ethics to be shaped by organisational directives, the relevant law, and their own individual moral reasoning, with the newsroom being the most important (Voakes 1997: 34). According to Singer, “the ethics of the professional journalist actually are both personal and social, given their place within an occupational group with a public commitment to the responsible pursuit of the truth” (Singer 2007: 86). Does this mean that individual traits such as personal beliefs, gender, and age shape journalists’ ethical practices? The answer is not straightforward, and the evidence is contradictory. On the one hand, surveys find no significant gender differences in values and ethical norms (Weaver 2007) or in professional role conceptions (Hanitzsch and Hanusch 2012), suggesting that women’s and men’s ethical decisions are unlikely to differ because they are informed by the same values. On the other hand, we know much less about the influence of individual ethics on how ethics are put into practice. There is some evidence that this may vary by gender. For example, women perceive their behaviour to be shaped by company editorial guidelines, professional codes of ethics, press councils, laws and other media accountability instruments to a greater extent than men (Mauri I De Los Ríos et al. 2018). This brings us to the widely accepted concept that socialisation into the profession of journalism and into the newsroom exerts a strong influence on journalists’ orientations (see Chap. 7 for more on socialisation), and to the debate about the relative strength of individual influences versus organisational and professional influences. The dominant claim is that even if there are differences in the ethical orientations of individual journalists based on gender or other personal characteristics, these differences are moderated by the stronger influences of professional values, newsroom socialisation, and/or organisational factors. Further, it is argued that individual ethics can only be effectively deployed in a newsroom environment that is supportive of such decisions.

The News Organisation Unsurprisingly, research consistently demonstrates that journalists’ experiences of ethical codes are heavily dependent on organisational conditions. Surveys investigating media accountability show that in some countries journalists perceive organisational factors such as the editorial guidelines of their news organisation to exert a stronger influence on their behaviour than external influences such as regulatory authorities and professional codes of ethics (Mauri I De Los Ríos et al. 2018; Fengler et al. 2015). Newsroom management plays a considerable role, with journalists who work in newsrooms where ethical behaviour is

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rewarded or sanctioned considering that media accountability instruments such as codes have a greater impact on their work than journalists from newsrooms where such a culture is absent (Fengler et al. 2015: 260). Several studies provide a rich, qualitatively-based understanding of the role and value of codes in the context of newsroom environments which corroborates the importance of newsroom and organisational culture, leadership, and journalistic identity. Their findings help us to understand how journalists make ethical decisions and what roles codes play in those decisions. Most recently, the importance of organisational culture and socialisation into the newsroom was borne out by my experiences talking to journalists as part of a cross-­ nationally comparative study that explored how professional ethics informs the practices of journalists in six European countries (Steel et al. 2018; Firmstone et al. 2022). Interviewing journalists from Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway, and the UK, who worked at a range of different types of newspapers, we established that codes of ethics operate in the background, guiding journalistic practice implicitly. Ethical practices are not based on regular recourse to press council or professional codes, or even newspapers’ own codes (where they exist). Rather ethical values and principles are internalised, derived from training/education at journalism school, an individual’s own internal moral compass, and on an everyday basis are learnt on the job from participation in editorial meetings, informal newsroom discussions about stories, and in some cases learnt from more senior journalists through informal mentorship mechanisms. When describing practices for dealing with difficult ethical decisions, journalists revealed the primacy of considering organisational rules and the internal ethos of the organisation above consulting codes. Here we can see that socialisation into the newsroom through a culture of discussion and sharing of experiences among journalists plays a significant role in shaping ethical decision making. At this point we should note that many of the ethical judgements encountered daily in news work are not perceived by journalists to involve difficult ethical decisions. Common issues of protecting privacy, particularly children, giving people the right to reply/getting both sides of a story, protecting sources and various conflicts of interest were described by journalists in our study as ‘to be expected’ and ‘easy’ to deal with by drawing on well-established ethical principles that they were abundantly aware of. Codes therefore tend only to be referred to when required, either to validate journalistic ethical authority, or to actively guide journalists when they have difficulty arriving at judgements. Such a background role is only possible because journalists consider they already know how the relevant codes require them to act. Notwithstanding the place of codes as a ‘background influence’ and despite the inconspicuous presence of codes in practice, journalists also signalled that codes are highly valued in terms of guiding their decisions and enhancing their brand. Codes are valued because they prescribe journalistic values, providing sustenance to the notion of a shared professional identity among journalists and establishing the credibility of their work as journalists as distinct from others purporting to be ‘news’ providers. To quote a Danish

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journalist from our study: “it gives an understanding that there is profession, a peer community that has some rules that we need to uphold, that we know”. These descriptions of the role of codes are echoed by research in the USA and Asia which highlight the importance of the newsroom culture specific to an individual news organisation in supporting ethical practice. A study of three newspapers in the USA found differing organisational contexts resulted in codes contributing to three different modes of ethical decision making. At one paper, codes were effectively non-existent and ethical decisions were seen as an individual responsibility undertaken with very little consultation; at another, a commitment to ethical standards was seen as a responsibility of the organisation rather than individuals; and at a third, codes were part of a participatory form of decision making in newsroom discussions and debates (Boeyink 1994). Overall, although codes were rarely invoked, they were a part of the larger ethical culture of the newsroom at two of the three papers. Boeyink concluded that, “without a culture in which ethics is seen to matter, few ethical standards can be expected to be effective” (Boeyink 1994: 901). Lo and colleagues’ study of Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese newsrooms also points to the importance of a commitment to ethics from leaders in news organisations. Noting Boeyink’s findings, they also suggest that without “ethical discussion within the newsroom and a culture of ethical sensitivity in journalism, ethical guidelines or codes are unlikely to be a factor in newsroom decisions” (Lo et al. 2005: 170).

Organisational Culture and Ethos Initial comparisons of the perceptions of journalists producing different genres of newspaper journalism in each of the six countries in our study (national beat journalists at quality newspapers, investigative journalists, local journalists, and digital born journalists) illustrated that the identity of the news organisation shapes ethical decision making (Firmstone et al. 2022). This adds to existing evidence that the culture of the newsroom and the news organisation is at least as (and possibly more) important as formal codes of ethics in influencing ethical practices (Lo et al. 2005; Firmstone et al. 2022). All journalists commonly described consulting upwards within their organisation when unsure about the ethical implications of a story (which was relatively rare), describing the specific ethical rules of their organisation, the organisation’s identity and the ethical ethos as key to guiding their practice. Focusing on the work of journalists working for local newspapers, the cross-­ national comparison showed that distinctions between ethical approaches are more obvious between journalists working for different types of newspaper than between different countries. Local journalists are more similar to other local journalists in other countries than to journalists working in other specialisms in their own country. Local level ethical practices are strongly driven by a co-dependency between journalists’ perceptions of what they need to do to gain and maintain high

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levels of audience trust in their news organisation and how they perceive their responsibility to the community. The shared value of championing and protecting the locality shapes newsroom culture and drives news values. For example, when asked if they have their own code of ethics, the UK local journalist explained that, no, they use the codes of the voluntary press council (IPSO), but that they also have an unwritten ethical approach that guides their work. They try to avoid negative stories or to at least balance negative stories with positive stories so that they present a good image of the city: “But then we do try and be positive about the place we represent. So that’s not a written thing, but I would hope that if you stopped reporters they kind of get that, and, as I say, what we’re doing for Xtown, we are trying to fight for Xtown” (Local Journalist, UK) (Firmstone et al. 2022). We also looked specifically at digital-­ born journalists and their legacy counterparts. Though the digital environment provides more opportunities for journalists to be transparent about sources, there was no marked distinction between digital-born and legacy journalists in terms of broader journalism ethics in this regard. However, respondents from digital-born ventures often sought to stress their normative credentials as having greater value than their legacy counterparts, signalling a strong sense of purpose which was in part emphasised by their disassociation from the legacy sector and as digital-born enterprises (Firmstone et al. 2022; Steel et al. 2018). We should note that there is some evidence from surveys to dispute the widely held idea that socialisation into the profession of journalism exerts the strongest influence on journalists’ orientations (see Chap. 7 for more on socialisation). Research comparing the influence of personal factors (gender, years of education), professional socialisation factors (professional experience, journalism education, professional membership), and the social context (Country of practice) on American and Israeli journalists’ decisions about ethical scenarios found that the social or national context of news-making may be most important in shaping decisions (Berkowitz et al. 2004). The importance of country context, particularly the historical and cultural factors, is further highlighted by the case of the USA.  The ethics of individual journalists are given greater emphasis in the American context where the constitutional right to freedom of speech prohibits any regulation of the press. Ethical decisions are therefore thought to be taken on a far more individual basis since there is no recourse to self-regulation (Plaisance and Deppa 2009).

The Public Interest Role vs. a Commercial Profit-Making Imperative The importance of the newsroom and organisational culture leads us to a final, important way in which scholars have imagined the organisational context in which journalists produce news: the challenge posed to ethical values by the potential clash in purposes between commercially orientated news making and the responsibility attributed to the news media to act in the interests of the

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public (see Chap. 2). That news organisations are businesses concerned primarily with making a profit is perhaps the most comprehensive constraint on the role of ethics in the production of news, at least in a Western democratic context where there is a relatively free press. As noted earlier, journalists’ ethical orientations and ethics as represented in codes are orientated around the normative ideals of a journalism that serves the public interest. Critical scholars argue that at times these values contradict the values of a commercially-­ oriented media. Journalists producing news in commercial environments are far from autonomous moral agents. Commercial constraints channelled through management often override journalists’ individual ethical concerns and may act as a constraint on a journalist’s autonomy to act in accordance with ethical codes. Political economists have long warned that an increased concentration of ownership of news organisations results in a lowering of ethical standards (McChesney 2003). For example, the realities of the tension between producing news as a public versus a consumer good in the context of the highly commercialised British press has been highlighted. Bromley noted the overriding role of managerial objectives in the 1980s and 1990s, and describes how the workplace, and the hierarchies within it, shape ethical decisions: “the defence of journalistic standards and values thus becomes dependent on, rather than coterminous with, the material situation in which journalists work” (Bromley 2000: 117). Phillips and colleagues’ interviews with journalists in the British mass newspaper market found evidence of management bullying tactics alongside a more general sense that journalists need to please editors who may not always want a balanced representation, especially if they are operating at the more sensationalist end of the spectrum in order to attract readers in a competitive environment. Their research illustrates that “the autonomy and authority of individual journalists has very little pull in comparison with the requirements of economic capital” (Phillips et  al. 2010: 59). More recently concerns about the constraining function of commercialisation have been compounded by fears about the impact of digital journalism on ethical practices. As we explore in more depth in Chap. 7, variations exist at the level of the news organisation, both in the extent to which journalists operate autonomously and the extent to which they are subject to managerial pressures and control.

Conclusion Through the examples produced by research, we have explored the ways in which ethics are perceived and negotiated by journalists. This exploration has demonstrated the importance of taking journalism ethics into consideration as an influencing factor in the production of news. That multiple factors shape ethical orientations and judgements does, however, make the role of ethics difficult to isolate. Ethical decisions can be determined by a whole host of conditions that we can imagine as overlapping sections of a Venn diagram, including

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informal personal values, informal, unwritten values of journalism as a profession, ethical cultures and policies of news organisations, and formalised codes of ethics that are in some cases the basis for regulation of the news media. Of course, we must also acknowledge that journalism is ‘subject to compromise’ in many ways depending on national contexts, including limits on press freedom and the dynamics of national media systems. Leaving aside the complex question of the effectiveness of codes as a media accountability instrument in ensuring responsible journalism, the relatively modest role of codes in shaping news practices is less surprising when we remember the range of objectives that codes of ethics have evolved to serve in addition to that of informing the practice of individual journalists (Fox et al. 2023). Taking the multiple, and in some cases contradictory, objectives codes seek to achieve into consideration provides some context for variations in the perceived impact of codes. For example, “Codes seek to achieve several objectives, including enhancing the dignity, influence and reliability of the relevant profession in the eyes of the public, serving as a kind of shield for professionals and preventing the imposition of external supervision and limitations on the field and its practitioners” (Himelboim and Limor 2008: 240). Finally, research strongly supports the idea that journalistic standards and ethics are collective practices that operate in the context of news organisations which have their own ground rules and ethical cultures. While our recent study provides valuable new evidence (Firmstone et al. 2022), the focus of the field of media ethics on theorising and on the moral reasoning of individuals has resulted in a lack of empirical evidence about the role of ethics in journalists’ day-to-day decision making and news production practices. With respect to the role of codes of ethics, the fact that even where codes of ethics exist they are not necessarily consulted highlights the difficulties of trying to understand how codes, and ethics more broadly, work in practice through surveys, or via assessments of their content (Boeyink 1994; Plaisance 2016). It is necessary to move beyond journalists’ responses to pre-existing categories of ethical orientations in surveys if we want to gain a deeper understanding of the role of ethics in news making. Until more research establishes how ethics are applied in practice using more nuanced methods, our understanding of how organisational characteristics and climates influence journalists’ ethical decision making will continue to be limited (Plaisance 2016; Wilkins 2014).

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Plaisance, P. L., Skewes, E. A. & Hanitzsch, T. 2012. Ethical orientations of journalists around the globe: implications from a cross-national survey. Communication Research, 39, 641–661. Sanders, K. 2003. Ethics and Journalism, London, Sage. Singer, J. B. 2007. Contested autonomy: professional and popular claims on journalistic norms. Journalism Studies, 8, 79–95. Slattery, K.  L. 2014. Ethics and Journalism Standards: An Examination of the Relationship Between Journalism Codes of Ethics and Dentological Moral Theory. In: Wyatt, W.  N. (ed.) The Ethics of Journalism: Individual, Institutional and Cultural Influences. London, I.B. Tauris. Steel, J. 2012. Journalism and Free Speech, London, Routledge. Steel, J., Firmstone, J., Conboy, M., Elliott-Harvey, C., Fox, C., Mulderrig, J., Saunders, J. & Wragg, P. 2018. DFoP: Scope and Parameters of the Project. Working Paper. Defining Freedom of the Press: A Cross National Examination of Press Ethics and Regulation. https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/138587/. Voakes, P. S. 1997. Public perceptions of journalists’ ethical motivations. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 74, 23–38. Ward, S. 2009. Journalism Ethics. In: Wahl-Jorgensen, K. & Hanitzsch, T. (eds.) The Handbook of Journalism Studies (pp. 395–309). New York, Routledge. Weaver, D. H. 2007. The American Journalist in the 21st Century: U.S. News People at the Dawn of a New Millennium, Mahwah, N.J, Lawrence Erlbaum. Weaver, D. H. & Wilhoit, G. C. 1991. The American Journalist: A Portrait of U.S. News People and Their Work, Bloomington, Indiana University Press. Weaver, D. H. & Willnat, L. 2012. The Global Journalist in the 21st Century, New York; Abingdon, Oxon, Routledge. Wilkins, L. 2014. My Newsroom Made Me Do It: The Impact of Organisational Climate on Ethical Decision-Making. In: Wyatt, W. N. (ed.) The Ethics of Journalism: Individual, Institutional and Cultural Influences. London, I.B. Tauris.

CHAPTER 7

The News Organisation

Introduction Just the single currency again in general, is an issue that most papers have a policy towards. I could virtually go through the card with you now in that us [Express], and the Mirror are broadly in favour, as are the Guardian. The Independent, are very in favour, the FT are extremely in favour and then you’ve got the Times pragmatically against and the Sun, the Mail and the Telegraph are very, very against. (Political Editor, The Express)1

Explaining the difference in the positions that British national newspapers were taking towards the UK’s proposed membership of the Euro back in the early 2000s, this journalist’s summary illustrates the central argument of this chapter: that news is produced in a specific organisational context which exerts a strong influence on the work of journalists and type of news produced (Cottle 2003; Örnebring 2016; Shoemaker and Reese 2014; Cowling 2017; Westlund and Ekström 2019). The specific characteristics and organisational culture of a news organisation shape the way that its news production is organised and practised, which in turn shapes the content it produces. Indeed, we have seen in other chapters that the implementation of a host of journalistic practices and professional values, from transparency to modes of audience participation, are enabled and constrained by the specific circumstances of the news organisation within which a journalist is embedded. It is widely agreed that these circumstances are determined by the owners and managers of news organisations, whose most common primary objective is to make a profit, with some also pursuing political or ideological goals, or some combination thereof. Yet, of all the spheres of influence examined in this book, the sphere of the news organisation is perhaps the most underexplored and under-theorised (Cottle 2003; 1

 Interview with author 2003.

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Hanitzsch et al. 2019). Though owners in the form of companies, conglomerates, and—increasingly rarely—individual or family-run businesses have the ultimate power over news production, how the aims, objectives and values of a news organisation are manifest in the way that news production is organised and achieved is less well understood. In one sense, this is because the boundaries of what to include and exclude when analysing a news organisation are difficult to define. As the site of news production, news organisations are the domain where myriad features, internal and external to an organisation, coalesce to provide the context for news production—the professional norms, values, and ethics of journalists, the routines and practices of news production, contributions from news sources, considerations of audiences, the place of the organisation in the media system, and the political, economic, cultural, and social context. In this chapter, we explore a range of perspectives to demonstrate the various ways in which the particular context of a news organisation and its objectives can be understood and evaluated as an explanatory variable for variations in practices and content.

How Has the Influence of the News Organisation Been Conceptualised? A range of approaches has conceptualised the influence of the news organisation. At the risk of oversimplification, we can group these into two broad perspectives: macro and meso (Cottle 2003; Shoemaker and Reese 2014). From a macro perspective, studies in the fields of political economy and political communication focus on ownership models, the structure of media markets and the broader media system within which an organisation operates. Different ownership models and the pressures that come from their differing organisational priorities—generating profit, providing a public service, support for political parties/government, promotion of the owner’s ideological or economic interests—affect the type of news produced. In the first part of the chapter, we see that these macro approaches provide ‘the big picture’ and look at patterns in the ways that the macro structure of news organisations and the systems they operate in shapes content. Macro approaches emphasise evaluating the consequences of developments in news media markets and the characteristics of media systems for news quality. They do not intend to ‘lift the lid’ on the internal workings of individual news organisations. For this, we turn to approaches that help us to understand the ways in which the aims, objectives and values of a news organisation are prioritised and form the specific context internal to individual news organisations—the meso perspective. Here, I identify ways in which the internal structure and organisational culture of a news organisation reflect and promote these objectives. I introduce the theoretical concepts of autonomy and socialisation, which journalism scholars have proposed as ways of understanding how news organisations exercise power. As central theories about the way organisational contexts shape news, we explore the news

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organisation as a place where autonomy is negotiated, enabled, and constrained, determining the level of discretion and independence experienced by journalists. Next, I use a case study from my research about editorial journalism to illustrate the shaping role of distinctive organisational contexts on practices and content. We finish by looking at an example of change, considering the introduction of audience analytics into news production as an example of the way in which autonomy is mediated by specific organisational contexts.

Why and How Does the Macro Context of the News Organisation Matter? The Media System and Market Structures The individual context of a news organisation is determined by a combination of the political and economic interests of the organisation and the conditions of the media system that establishes the market structure within which a news organisation exists. The structure and output of the mass media is also dependent on the norms and organisation of the social and political system within which the media operates. Most famously, Hallin and Mancini identified four dimensions that determine the conditions of this relationship: “(1) the development of media markets, with particular emphasis on the strong or weak development of a mass circulation press; (2) political parallelism; that is, the degree and nature of the links between the media and political parties or, more broadly, the extent to which the media system reflects the major political divisions in society; (3) the development of journalistic professionalism; and (4) the degree and nature of state intervention in the media system” (Hallin and Mancini 2004: 21). Though it is not necessary (or possible) for us to delve into the historical development of news markets and media systems, I do want to take a moment to emphasise that their structure and the degree to which they are commercialised is not accidental as they are chiefly shaped by regulatory policies and laws enacted by governments. This includes laws and policies related to infrastructure such as public service broadcasting systems like the BBC, laws regulating ownership of media companies, subsidies and licensing as well as policies relating to content such as freedom of expression laws and regulation of content. Media markets across the world have become more concentrated, with governments pursuing neo-liberal policies to deregulate rules governing media ownership, and encouraging mergers and acquisitions (Baker 2007), a trend that continues to dictate the shape of the digital news market (Pickard 2018). Consolidating companies is intended to have strategic benefits through increased market share, financial efficiency, cost control, and reducing competition, and the impact of these strategies on news quality is highly controversial (Hollifield 2011). Globally, policies are being formulated to deal with regulatory concerns about the impact of native advertising, Internet monopolies, the ownership and control of digital infrastructures and corporate and state

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surveillance (Pickard 2018). State intervention to regulate content, at least in the Western context, tends towards preserving freedom of expression, with a reliance on laws to prevent hate speech, defamation, etc. and most European countries operate a system of self-regulation. Taking the UK media market as an example, ownership models of newspapers have shifted away from individual and family ownership to a concentration of ownership by a handful of large media groups (MRC 2021). We have seen a change in the balance of public service and commercial broadcasting organisations because of policies introduced during the 1980s and 1990s designed to deregulate the media industry by opening the market to commercial companies and the global industry, which has led to an increase in foreign ownership of news organisations, increasing ownership by conglomerates and allowing previously banned cross-ownership e.g. allowing the same company to own newspapers and broadcast news (Curran and Seaton 2018). Aside from law, regulation in the UK operates under two parallel systems. Broadcasting (television and radio) is subject to external statutory regulation as a condition of being granted a licence, one of the obligations of which is to provide impartial news in the public interest. In contrast, newspaper ownership has never been licenced and apart from the requirement to adhere to UK law, the press has no obligation to the public, though most are signed up to a system of voluntary regulation with a Code of Conduct (see Chap. 6). Content on the Internet does not yet fall under the remit of a statutory regulator, and there is much debate about the impact of a proposed Online Harms Bill on journalism (Tobitt 2022). These country-specific conditions are a reminder that journalism takes place within different national contexts around the world. But what do patterns in markets and media systems mean in relation to the question of how the structural characteristics of a news organisation shape the news it produces? Political economists argue there is a strong link between the external market structures within which various ownership models are embedded and the qualities of news (McChesney 2015; Pickard 2018). Patterns of concentration and consolidation, where ownership of news outlets is distributed among fewer owners and trends towards corporate ownership, mean that such companies dominate the cultural landscape, placing power in the hands of a few and, arguably, shaping news production according to their interests. This pattern continues in the age of digital journalism, with many digital start-ups selling large shareholdings or selling out completely to established media conglomerates (Pickard 2018).

The Shaping Role of Ownership Thinking about the power of owners in terms of what motivates owners in their attempts to shape news content is a helpful way of imagining how ownership might shape practices and content. Individual media owners have long been suspected of promoting their preferred ideology, political views or economic interests through their news publications with the perceived power of so-called ‘media moguls’ such as Rupert Murdoch being much scrutinised

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(Archer and Clinton 2018; Tunstall and Palmer 1991; Hanretty 2014). More recently, the unorthodox practices and content of alternative and hyper partisan news media in positioning themselves as correctives to the mainstream media have attracted attention (Holt et al. 2019; Cushion et al. 2021; Roberts and Wahl-Jorgensen 2021). Conglomerate ownership raises concerns relating to the focus of media corporations on finding economic synergies of performance at the expense of some measures of news quality (Noam 2018). Benson and colleagues group ownership motivations into four modes of power, each of which drive news decisions: political instrumentalism—owners use news outlets in an attempt to influence politics, attack politicians or promote specific issues; economic instrumentalism—highlighting or deliberately omitting events or issues related to the owner’s business concerns to gain a competitive advantage; audience adjustment—content is altered specifically to maximise reach to a target audience and is motivated by a desire to increase profits; and public service orientation—involving a commitment to investing in news that “serves normative ideals of accountability, diversity, public participation, and comprehensiveness” despite these having no clear economic advantages (Benson et al. 2018: 389). Though it is not always possible to identify sources and motivations for ownership power so neatly in practice (Hollifield 2011; Shoemaker and Reese 2014), these categories help us to imagine how the individual context of a news organisation can shape the news it produces.

Ownership Models and Commercialisation: What Is Commercialisation? Commercialisation is one of the most important ways that market structures in the Western world have been conceptualised as exerting a shaping force on journalism, news production and news content. We can contrast the remit and priorities of publicly-funded media with the objectives of commercial media. Owned by private or corporate companies, commercial media prioritise profit generation and have a responsibility to act in the economic interests of their owners and shareholders, most commonly by creating profit, whereas publicly-­ funded media are bound by an obligation to deliver a public service as part of the terms underpinning their existence. In order to maximise profits, it is argued that commercial news organisations prioritise the production of news that has the highest appeal to audiences thereby attracting advertising or subscription revenue, as well as producing news in the most efficient way (to minimise costs), and to protect their commercial and business interests for the greater good of the organisation (McManus 2009). Consequently, working within a commercial organisation, journalists must balance the competing demands of the organisation’s profit-oriented and/or political priorities with the objectives and the values associated with the professional culture of journalism. As we will see later, depending on how independent they are and the level of autonomy they have in an organisation, journalists learn through the process

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of socialisation to tailor their practices to fit with the aims of a news organisation (Breed 1955). As summarised in Chap. 2, the impacts of commercialisation, including the drive to address falling profit margins, are serious, wide-ranging and, alongside digital technology, commercialisation has been the key driver of changes in news production practices in recent decades. In this sense, the macro level organisational context impacts on the meso level internal structures of an organisation. Indeed, we consider several effects of commercialisation in other chapters, particularly in relation to the squeeze on resources for sourcing and gathering news (Chap. 9) and the increase in news produced in response to audience analytics rather than journalistic news judgements (Chaps. 4 and 8). We also see that commercial pressures can result in a decrease in original reporting and an increase in the power of sources who can afford to professionalise their communication. This includes public relations professionals and political communicators who aim to control how they are reported (Chap. 9). Overall, such ‘market-driven’ journalism, where profit rather than public service is the principal aim, and where there is increased competition for audiences and advertising revenue, has important outcomes for the production of news that are of concern in relation to the democratic role of journalism (McManus 2009; Baker 2002; McChesney 2012). Concerns point to the tension between the norm of fulfilling the democratic function to inform and the commercial imperative to entertain audiences based on assumptions about what they prefer (Blassnig and Esser 2022). These concerns relate to commercial pressures to emphasise news forms that increase audience attention such as tabloid formats, ‘clickbait’, and to focus on topics that increase audiences and generate traffic such as soft news or crime at the expense of ‘high quality’ journalism. As an example of the impact of commercialisation, UK local newspapers illustrate how a combination of a deepening concentration of ownership in the market and cost-cutting due to losses in readerships and advertising revenue has resulted in diminished opportunities for readers to access news about local democracy (Firmstone 2016a). Many local newspapers have closed, while many of those remaining produce shared content across titles that is not truly local. In the competition for clicks, content perceived to have less potential for online popularity such as public interest oriented stories about local politics, health and education, is given much less space, while ‘popular’ soft and breaking news is amplified (Firmstone and Whittington 2021). There are of course some who argue that commercialisation can also have positive consequences, with more news than ever available to the public and content produced in more accessible forms likely to engage a wider audience (McNair 2000; Temple 2006), though this assumes that exposure to some news of questionable quality is better than exposure to none and that the market also sustains the provision of ‘high quality’ news for those who want it.

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What Is the Relationship between Ownership Models and Content? But what affect do ownership models have on content? Single country and cross-nationally comparative content analyses clearly demonstrate the existence of a strong relationship between ownership models, market orientation, and the quality of political news. Here we should remember that, as discussed in Chap. 2, news quality is a hard concept to pin down. Despite consensus that the provision of quality information is central to democracy, ideas about how to define and conceptualise quality are diverse and contested (Van Aelst et al. 2017; Zaller 1992; Strömbäck 2005; Fürst 2020), but narrowing our focus to political news provides a useful lens. With the aim of establishing the implications of ownership models for the quality of information available in the public sphere, political communication researchers evaluate news content against clear normative benchmarks relating to the health of the ‘the political information environment’ (Strömbäck 2017), such as the quantity, type (hard/soft), tone and diversity of news. Taking a very selective dip into this vast body of research, we get a good idea of the consequences of ownership structures for political news coverage. Analyses evaluating news quality in relation to ownership models find publicly owned media provide greater opportunities for audiences to access informative news than commercially run media (Humprecht and Esser 2018; Cushion 2012; Strömbäck 2017), and evidence that public service broadcasting systems sustain higher levels of public knowledge than commercial/market oriented systems (Strömbäck 2017; Aalberg and Curran 2013). This pattern has continued in digital news, with public digital media performing best on normative measures of diversity across six countries (Humprecht and Esser 2018). Other analyses measure hard and soft news, a categorisation that is interpreted in many different ways (cf: Reinemann et al. 2012), but often pitches hard news as about ‘important’ issues such as politics and current affairs and soft news as covering celebrities, human interest, or entertainment. Commercial television emphasises ‘soft’ news, with public service television news agendas featuring more ‘hard’ news (Curran et al. 2010). Increased concentration of ownership (resulting in chain ownership) and ownership by multi-national conglomerates can have negative consequences for news quality. In the USA, news produced by newspaper titles owned by the same parent company was shown to be homogenous and lacking in diversity (Baum and Zhukov 2019; Baker 2007), and they were significantly more likely to produce stories during political campaigns with a negative overall tone (Dunaway 2013). Analyses also find evidence of news agendas that protect the economic interests of corporations and bias resulting from practices of the cross promotion of products (Bailard 2016). Such bias runs counter to the professional norms of balance and objectivity, and, when adopted by multiple outlets, restricts the audience’s access to a diversity of views. Other studies have found clear evidence for the influence of owners on content by showing a

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correlation between changes in the ownership of newspapers and changes in the quantity of political news (Archer and Clinton 2018).

How Useful Are Ownership Models for Explaining Variations in News Content? Although ownership models are clearly a useful predictor of patterns in the types and quality of news output, there is a risk in placing too much emphasis on their explanatory value. Studying content assumes rather than shows that different models translate into different editorial priorities which in turn result in different news qualities. As categories intended to distinguish the priorities of news organisations, they are perhaps too blunt and there are certainly indications that the binary of commercial versus publicly-owned is relatively crude, overlooking nuances within ownership types (Hollifield 2011). Cultural differences in the level of importance public service oriented news organisations place on investigative reporting, public affairs-focused news and the plurality of sources also exist (Benson et al. 2018). There is also evidence that priorities are not necessarily fixed by ownership type or model, with national cultures of media production and socialisation within national journalism cultures and news organisations producing differences that highlight the context dependency of news production and the need for more cross national comparative accounts (Humprecht and Esser 2018; Örnebring et al. 2016). These limitations bring us to the argument made at the beginning of the chapter: we need to know more about the circumstances of individual news organisations to get a fuller picture of the role of a news organisation in shaping news production practices and the resultant content.

The Meso Level of the News Organisation: Internal Structures and Organisational Cultures We now turn inward to look at some aspects of a news organisation that cannot be seen from the outside. We look to the internal characteristics and organisational culture of a news organisation as a place where an organisation’s aims, objectives, and values are visible, and where we can see the authority and power of owners being exercised. Here we seek to understand how macro aspects of ownership, such as ownership models and market orientation, are manifest in aspects of an organisation’s internal structure, which reflects and sustains its aims, objectives, and values, which in turn, shapes its news production practices and content. Later, we explore a case study to illustrate the role of the meso level in shaping the production of content, but first we consider how to conceptualise the meso level of an organisation as an object of study.

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Studying Internal Organisational Influences As explained in Chap. 3, early sociological studies told a valuable story about the way in which news production was organised, which saw news production as being guided by routines and the professional norms and values shared by journalists. These studies highlighted occupational similarities, identifying routines that were thought to be common across all news organisations, and emphasising the role of shared professional norms and values in shaping news work. The shared nature of these routines and norms seemed to explain why news output at the time was fairly standardised across outlets. Emphasising the explanatory value of routines that were seen to be active universally also gave rise to the idea that if you change the individual journalist, the news produced would not vary (Golding and Elliot 1979). Yet times have changed, and this approach overlooks the now vastly expanded range of news mediums that are produced by a multitude of news organisations. A fuller understanding of the characteristics that distinguish news organisations is increasingly necessary to account for the greater differentiation in news outputs that characterises the contemporary news ecology. How can we categorise the internal dynamics of an organisation into identifiable factors for analysis? The organisational level in Shoemaker and Reese’s hierarchical model of influences includes the roles performed, the way an organisation is structured, an organisation’s policies, and the methods used to enforce policies (Shoemaker and Reese 2014: 163). To identify specific factors, I build on these categories and draw on organisational theory, which separates internal organisational structures into formal and informal structures. It also introduces us to the idea of organisational culture (Hollifield 2011; Stalph 2020; Schein 2003), a valuable concept that is rather undertheorised in relation to the study of news organisations.

Formal and Informal Structures and Organisational Culture Formal structures are visible and tangible structures relating to physical resources and hierarchical lines of authority (Hollifield 2011) and reflect managerial decisions about how to allocate resources and successfully organise the production of news (Shoemaker and Reese 2014). Physical resources include the (human) roles and resources allocated to news production such as the number of journalists employed, allocation of journalists to cover specific beats and topics, resourcing for investigative and foreign reporting, and material resources such as investment in technology, equipment, and physical workspace. Hierarchical lines of authority provide a map of the roles and responsibilities of staff, the lines of leadership, and authority for making decisions. We can view organisational policies as both formal and informal, depending on whether they are explicitly or implicitly communicated, with both forming an important part of the structure of an organisation by providing rules and

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guidelines for behaviour. Discussions of organisational policies most often refer to news policies that guide the selection of news or editorial guidelines and codes of conduct that serve as a guide for ethical journalistic practice. As we have seen in the discussion of news values in Chap. 4, news selection policies are rarely written and learning what is newsworthy to an organisation is something that journalists learn on the job. Similarly, in Chap. 6, we saw that ethical guidelines are often not explicitly stated and are learnt through socialisation into the news organisation. In the specific case of newspapers, editorial policy (a specific type of organisational policy) guides the opinions that newspapers express in editorial articles on significant political issues such as their support for a political party (partisanship) (Firmstone 2019a). Whether communicated and established formally or informally, policies and the ways in which organisations impose policies flow from the formal hierarchical structure of an organisation. Informal structures, such as unpublished policies, are somewhat more difficult to define and observe given their mostly tacit nature and crossover with the concept of organisational culture. Informal structures include “managers’ leadership styles, the organisational culture, the strength of the professional cultures within the organisation and the relationship to the organisational culture, communication networks within and between work groups, and the distribution of power among individuals and work groups based on such things as expertise, charisma, perceived importance to the organisation, and personal connections” (Hollifield 2011: 201). In this sense, informal structures are the dynamics of how formal structures play out in practice. Organisational culture is “the learned, taken for granted, shared beliefs and values of a given group or occupation” (Schein 2003: 171). Not to be confused with the narrower and perhaps even less well-defined term ‘newsroom culture’, much journalism research refers to organisational culture without any qualification, and without going into much depth, making it difficult to operationalise as an explanatory variable. Despite this conceptual fuzziness, the interaction between organisational culture and the professional culture of journalism is seen as critically important in shaping news content, with conflict inherent in their differing priorities and questions about which takes precedence in shaping news production being a key question in journalism research. Before considering these priorities further, it is important that we are clear on what we mean by organisational culture so that we can consider how it is manifest. An organisation’s culture develops and emerges “from the influence of the national and regional cultures surrounding an organisation, the formal and informal structures established by the organisation’s founder and those of its current leadership, the staff of the organisation, and the market and industry environment in which the organisation operates” (Ott 1989 cited in Hollifield 2011: 204). In the same way that we think of organisations as embedded in macro contexts, the culture that develops within an organisation is shaped by the macro cultures surrounding it and the microcultures within it (Schein

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2010). Organisational culture is manifest in the informal and formal structures of an organisation, with organisational structures both creating and sustaining an organisation’s culture. Macro cultures include professions and occupations that transcend organisations. In the case of news organisations, professional journalism culture therefore overlaps with and shapes organisational culture (Cowling 2017; Schein 2003). Within a news organisation, its leaders promote certain objectives and, in addition, collective beliefs about the aims and objectives of an organisation also shape organisational behaviour. Furthermore, groups of individuals working on specialist or innovative types of journalism may emerge as an organisational subculture, for instance data journalists (Stalph 2020) or editorial journalists (Firmstone 2019a).

Socialisation and Autonomy The concepts of socialisation and autonomy are key ways of explaining how power is exercised, how are policies are enforced, and how journalists become embedded in an organisational culture. Early studies observed social interactions in the newsroom to understand how journalists learn norms, values and routines. They concluded that news policies are abstract concepts which are rarely discussed or made explicit to employees, and are therefore learned through the highly diffuse and extremely informal process of socialisation (Sigelman 1973; Soloski 1989; Breed 1955). Tacit knowledge and understanding of the expectations of the organisation are learnt from editors and management through the routinised practices of newsroom and editorial meetings where ideas are pitched, accepted or rejected, and where unspoken ethical policies come to the surface (Firmstone 2009; Duffy 2021; Gravengaard and Rimestad 2012; Firmstone et al. 2022). Journalists pick up other clues for what is acceptable (or not) by observing formal organisational structures such as who is hired (and fired), who gets promotion, and who gets assigned prestigious beats and stories. Organisational objectives are expressed through informal coercion and “persuasive processes rather than forced compliance” (Donsbach 2004: 143). It is also observed that journalists employ a form of self-censorship where they may internalise the values and goals of an organisation, even if they do not agree with them, in order to avoid open conflict and negative consequences (Skovsgaard 2013). From a critical perspective, internalising and responding to values and norms that may contradict their own, or those of the profession, limits journalistic autonomy (Sjøvaag 2013). The concept of autonomy is central to understanding the way in which ownership and internal structures such as hierarchies shape the production of news. Autonomy is a way of expressing who has control and power over journalistic agency, describing the level of freedom, independence and discretion journalists have over important decisions in news making, including the selection of stories, how to report news, and which sources to use. Autonomy also describes the level of protection journalists have from attempts to manipulate or interfere with their work. External autonomy relates to the protection of journalism as

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a profession and news organisations from interference from external ‘coercive forces’ including government, political parties, censorship, legislation, regulations (Reich and Hanitzsch 2013: 135), and the market (Nygren et al. 2015). Internal autonomy relates to the autonomy of individual journalists to make independent decisions free from pressures that come from within news organisations such as from owners, management and commercial factors (Nygren et  al. 2015). Although pressures on autonomy come from multiple sources both inside and outside organisations, ultimately journalists negotiate and exercise autonomy in daily practices that take place within the constraints of a news organisation (Sjøvaag 2013; Skovsgaard 2013; Örnebring et al. 2016). We now consider a case study to illustrate how the aims, objectives and values of a news organisation are embedded in its structures, highlighting how authority is exercised and demonstrating the concepts of socialisation and autonomy in practice.

Editorial Journalism: Illustrating the Influence of Internal Organisational Structures on Production Practices and Content We now look at a case study which draws on selected findings from my research into the production of editorial articles at British national newspapers to explore a central question of the chapter: how can the internal structural characteristics of individual news organisations explain the similarities and differences in practices and content across a range of news providers? In what follows I explain the connection between the distinctive characteristics of an organisation’s formal and informal structures, its production practices, and the quantity, direction and framing of the editorial articles produced.

Editorial Policy as an Explanatory Variable— Accounting for Differences in Content Editorial articles, sometimes called ‘leaders’ or ‘leading articles’, are a distinctive format. They are the only place in a newspaper where the collective opinion of a newspaper as an organisation is explicitly published (Firmstone 2019b). Newspapers have editorial policies that guide the production of these articles and which reflect the specific opinion-leading aims and goals of the organisation. By empirically analysing the determinants of editorial policies about EU politics and the UK’s relationship with the EU at a range of newspapers, the case study shows how a variety of factors specific to individual newspapers shaped their production of editorials and how these factors can explain variations in content between newspapers (Firmstone 2008, 2009, 2019a, 2019b). Table 7.1 below shows the results of a content analysis of editorial articles published in ten British newspapers during 2002. It shows that there were significant differences in the amount of attention newspapers chose to give to

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Table 7.1  Results of content analysis of editorials in British national newspapers Market orientation

Newspaper

Tabloid

The Sun The Mirror The Daily Mail The Express The Times The Telegraph The Guardian The Independent The Financial Times The Scotsman

Mid-market Broadsheet

Regional

Number of editorial articles published about the Euro in 2002

Editorial position for/against UK membership of the Euro

19 12 7 3 7 7 6 6

Against In favour Against In favour Against Against Ambivalent In favour

7

Ambivalent

10

Against

opinion leading (quantity of editorials published). The newspapers also differed in the positions they took in the contentious debate that was taking place at the time about Britain’s proposed membership of the single currency, the Euro. What can explain the variations in levels of attention paid and positions taken? These differences cannot simply be accounted for by the opinions of owners, partisanship, or market orientation (tabloid/midmarket/broadsheet). Instead, examples drawn from interviews conducted with journalists at each of the publications illustrate that editorial opinions are shaped by a combination of internal structural characteristics specific to each news organisation (for interview details see: Firmstone 2008). The interviews established that newspapers organise the production of editorial articles according to a common routine (Firmstone 2008). This editorial production process is illustrated in Fig. 7.1, which shows four stages: a set of editorial values motivate the selection of issues for comment; the line and content are decided on; the editorial is written by a leader writer; and it is submitted for approval. We now consider how decisions made at each stage of this routine were determined by the specific characteristics of the formal and informal structure at each paper.

Formal Structures: Journalistic Roles as Resources The formal structure of routines for producing editorials varied between newspapers in terms of the resources allocated to opinion leading. Hierarchical structures played an important role in determining each paper’s editorial position towards the issue. As part of the formal structure, the level of resources allocated to producing content on a specific topic reflect the importance of an issue to an organisation. Variations in resources were reflected in variations in the quantity of editorials published. The number and type of leader writers that

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Editorial Values (Motivations for selection) 1) News values 2) Editorial importance 3) Readership interest 4) Wider media debate

Stage 1

Issue selection

Stage 2

Content and editorial line decided

Stage 3

Written by leader writer

Stage 4

Submitted for approval

National Daily Paper Editorial article published Opinion, opinion, opinion Opinion, opinion, opinion Opinion, opinion, opinion

Fig. 7.1  The editorial production process

newspapers had for producing editorials on Europe varied from one to ten and differed according to newspaper format (tabloids had fewer than broadsheets). Apart from two of the ten papers (The Sun and The Telegraph), newspapers with a greater number of journalists in the leader writing team, more access to specialised knowledge on the topic, and access to an EU correspondent/s produced a higher quantity of editorials on Europe than papers without such resources. In addition, better-resourced papers produced articles on a greater range of topics and a more in-depth style of opinion leading than those with fewer resources.

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Informal Structures and Selection Practices: Organisational Policy The topics selected for comment and quantity of editorials written varied at each paper. At the selection stage of the editorial production process, the selection of an issue for comment was motivated by a set of editorial values. These editorial values were determined by the following four factors, with the first three determined by newspaper-specific circumstances: 1) an assessment of news value; 2) the editorial importance of the issue; 3) perceptions of readership interest; and 4) an assessment of opinion leading in other papers/the wider media debate (see Fig. 7.1). Judgements about the news value of an issue or event were mainly made about issues that had already been selected for inclusion in a paper’s news agenda, so were dependent on what issues had already been decided to be of relevance to the paper. We can think of editorial importance as representative of the organisational editorial culture of a paper. Editorial importance was determined by newspaper-specific circumstances including the collective interest of journalists in the leader writing group, the interests of individual journalists within the group, the interests of the editor, and the importance of the issue to the newspaper as an organisation. This latter judgement was often a function of a paper’s marketing strategy and/or campaigning policy. Opinion leading on the EU was of editorial importance due to the pro-European marketing strategy of three newspapers (Financial Times, Independent, Mirror) and the campaigning policy of four newspapers (Independent, Daily Mail, Mirror, Sun). Conversely, refraining from commenting on Europe was seen as important part of the Express’s marketing policy due to a perceived lack of interest among its readership, and was reflected in the unusually low number of editorials published. Though a campaigning policy did not always influence the quantity of European editorials, campaign policies were apparent in the range of issues commented on. The following two examples demonstrate the extent to which the level of editorial importance was determined by a unique combination of several informal elements of organisational structures specific to each organisation. All four elements of editorial importance combined to produce a high level of interest in pursuing an anti-European opinion leading strategy at the Daily Mail. There was a longstanding consensus in the personal opinions of key political staff against the EU; individual journalists held passionate anti-EU opinions; the Mail had been under the editorship of a strong and imposing editor, Paul Dacre, who was well known for his fervent views against Europe since 1993 (Hagerty 2002); and the paper had a long history of running editorial campaigns against Britain’s involvement in the EU.  Overall, the importance of promoting anti-European opinion was part of the newspaper’s identity and organisational culture: “In a sense it’s in the bloodstream of the paper… It’s what makes the editor tick, it makes that whole kind of entity of the Mail tick” (Chief Leader Writer, Daily Mail). On the opposite side of the debate, campaigning on the issue was also important to the organisational culture of the

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Mirror, where, under the editorship of a pro-European editor for nine years, a relatively small group of key political journalists shared a positive view of the EU, and the paper’s longstanding chief leader writer was responsible for the Mirror’s policy to pursue a pro-Euro campaign.

Where Do Organisational Policies, Aims, and Values Come From? Owners and Editors Changes at the macro level of an organisation’s structure such as ownership can impact on meso level structures, and in turn, on content. Journalists were asked to name the two most important factors that had brought about change or ensured stability in their newspapers’ editorial line over the last decade. Interviewees perceived that editors and, ultimately, owners were the primary force in establishing and maintaining norms in the direction and framing of editorial policy, with changes in editors and/or owners the most likely catalysts for changes in position, and long-serving editors/proprietors providing continuity in a paper’s policy on Europe. Editorial policy also shifted in response to external/macro level factors such as changes to the political project of European integration. For example, continuous ownership by proprietors with vociferous opinions was an influential factor in the overall maintenance of the Eurosceptic line of the Telegraph, Times, and Sun. At papers without dominant figureheads (the Mirror, Financial Times, and Guardian) proprietors were less important in the maintenance of the papers’ pro-European/pro-Euro lines, with editors and individual leader writers perceived as more influential. For example: It changes every time our proprietor changes. No, that isn’t quite true. The last proprietor was pro-Euro, the current proprietor is pro-Euro, and the previous one wasn’t. So yes, it’s changed. Does it come from the proprietor? I think it does. It isn’t so much a question of the proprietor coming and saying, we will be pro-Euro, but I think with all newspapers really, there are some kind of core issues, on which the paper probably wouldn’t conflict with the proprietor. I mean this is why people buy newspapers in the end, to get their views on things across. (Comments Editor, Express)

More recently, the divergent positions towards the referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU adopted by two sister papers with the same owner—The Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday—could be attributed to the opposing views of the editors (Firmstone 2016b).

Communicating Editorial Policies: Socialisation and Autonomy Informal structures and specific aspects of organisational culture such as editorial policy and institutional memory have an impact on practices and content. Aside from decisions about the overall partisanship of a newspaper, there is little evidence that proprietors directly influence the day-to-day selection of

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issues for comment, the range of issues commented on, and the ways in which issues are framed (Firmstone 2019a). Instead, journalists develop a tacit understanding of the objectives of their organisation through socialisation into the organisational culture which ensures that policies and positions are ‘fairly well-­ known’. The following quote reveals the nuances of autonomy, uncovering its conditional nature. Ultimately, the decision on content is always the editor’s; he’s the last call for recourse. But content depends on the man who is writing the damn thing, which is me! … And I may not write what the boss wants and then there’ll be a great big almighty row at the end of the day, so bits might be put in, other bits might be taken out. But to a large extent in the Mail given that the view is fairly well known [on European issues], it’s me that decides how to express it. (Chief Leader Writer, Daily Mail)

Though the ultimate decision on content rests with the editor, as senior journalists in the day-to-day production of opinion, individual journalists have greater opportunities to directly shape newspapers’ opinions than was attributed to individuals by early news production studies that saw shared routines as dominant over the role of individual journalists (Golding and Elliot 1979). The significance of hierarchy was shown by early ethnographies which found that workplace hierarchies determine levels of autonomy, with more experienced and ‘star’ status journalists able to transgress organisational policies most easily (Gans 1979; Soloski 1989), a finding that is confirmed by contemporary surveys (Örnebring et al. 2016; Sjøvaag 2013).

Audience Analytics: Eroding or Transforming Autonomy? In this final part of the chapter, we see that the conditions of autonomy are continually under threat from changes within organisations and the industry. We should not therefore imagine autonomy as an end goal that can be acquired or as “a stable entity” but as an ongoing process that is continually negotiated and varies due to changes in the context of journalism (Sjøvaag 2013: 160). Autonomy is also a social phenomenon that “is essentially a social construct that exists in relativistic terms” (Reich and Hanitzsch 2013: 136). While previous concerns about threats to autonomy have focused on internal pressures arising from the implications of commercialisation and market driven news— cost-cutting, profit maximising, and the bargaining power of advertisers (McManus 2009)—discussions are increasingly pointing to the impact of new technologies, particularly those related to the use of audience analytics. We now look at the introduction of analytics to illustrate the way in which autonomy and practices are mediated by specific organisational contexts. The traditional divide, metaphorically referred to as a ‘wall’, separating the business side of news organisations (advertising, sales, and marketing) from the

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editorial side (journalists and news production), was intended to ensure that news decisions are made independently and autonomously from commercial considerations. Although rarely formalised in codes or organisational policies, this norm of separation was until recently a central tenet of journalistic autonomy (Cornia et al. 2020). The wall was, of course, never impermeable. Outside of public service media, editorial independence is far from guaranteed since advertiser interests must be taken into consideration through attempts to appeal to target audiences and this can lead to self-censorship (Petre 2021). For the most part, the influence of advertisers is thought to be indirect, but direct pressure to alter or cut articles that might negatively reflect on advertisers is not uncommon (Firmstone et al. 2022; Colistra 2018). Now that there is the capability to tailor content according to click-driven audience preferences in digital news, the wall is breaking down and concerns about the influence of the commercial priorities of news organisations have spread beyond concerns about the undue influence of advertisers. Research into how organisational control and power is exercised and responded to through the use of analytics finds new practices involving increased cooperation and integration between advertising and editorial departments (Örnebring 2016; Christin and Petre 2020; Petre 2021). With journalists increasingly accepting such cooperation, it is even claimed that the norm of separation has been replaced by a new norm of integration (Cornia et al. 2020). Based on traditional normative expectations of professional journalistic autonomy, click-driven journalism is perceived to erode autonomy in decision making because editorial judgements are ceded to the advertising and marketing department where decisions are based on commercially oriented values rather than professional norms (Örnebring 2016; Anderson 2011). In this view, the relationship is inversely proportional: as the influence of metrics and algorithms in decision making increases, autonomy decreases (Petre 2021). Yet, while scepticism and suspicion were standard responses to the introduction of analytics at their inception, now that their use is widespread, research finds significant organisational variations in resistance and acceptance (Petre 2021; Christin and Petre 2020; Bunce 2019). Petre’s ethnography of two US organisations, Gawker and the New York Times, exemplifies both positions. Journalists at the NY Times approached their autonomy traditionally, seeing metrics as an imposition on their freedom to follow personal and organisational rules to guide news selection and writing. In contrast, despite being heavily monitored by analytics, Gawker journalists felt more in control and preferred to be managed by metrics than by what they saw as outdated top-down editorial oversight (Petre 2021). We may ask why journalists accept these challenges to their autonomy? Here we return to the conditional nature of autonomy and the argument that some degree of organisational control is an inevitable trade-off in return for being employed by a news organisation (Örnebring 2016). Editors increasingly see working with the business department not as a threat to autonomy, but as a

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way of ensuring journalistic autonomy in the long-term by jointly ensuring commercial sustainability (Cornia et al. 2020). Constraints on autonomy from innovations in news production practices are therefore dependent on the way change is implemented through an organisation’s internal structure. Such structures include the hiring and promotion of journalists who respond positively to the introduction of new practices, which further illustrates a point made in the case study about the important role of individual journalists. What other strategies do news organisations employ in attempts to reconcile the tension between commercial motivations and the professional norm of independence? Some do not need to adopt any strategy due to self-censorship and implicit control, with journalists altering their behaviour because they know they are being monitored and observed via metrics (Bunce 2019). Others strategies include justifying metrics as a form of organisational subsidy that can be used to fund more ambitious or normatively ‘valuable’ journalism (Christin and Petre 2020). Another set of strategies attempt to de-emphasise the link between metrics and market pressures by highlighting some metrics as ‘good’ (e.g. measurements of time engaged with), developing analytics in-house to incorporate the editorial brand of the organisation, and reframing metrics in normative terms as a sign of relevance in the public sphere (Christin and Petre 2020: 148). In addition to eroding the role of journalistic values in news selection, as we saw in Chap. 4 and will see in more depth in Chap. 8, the use of analytics has potentially negative consequences for the range and diversity of news available to audiences.

Conclusion We have explored the question of how the structural characteristics of individual news organisations can explain similarities and differences in practices and content across a range of news providers. Research linking structure with content demonstrates that variations at the macro level of the news organisation results in differences in the type of news produced. It tells a valuable ‘causal story’ that underpins the importance of the news organisation as an explanatory variable. Analysing ownership models in isolation however, without consideration of the meso level organisational contexts that they create, cannot explain how a news organisation operates as a day-to-day influence on news production practices and does not reveal much about the way that different ownership structures create and sustain distinct organisational cultures. Moreover, specific ownership models do not guarantee high quality news (Picard and Van Weezel 2008). Other factors such as organisational priorities are more likely to account for differences in content and performance than ownership structures on their own (Hollifield 2011). Experiences of autonomy vary according to organisational context, illustrating the role of a news organisation in creating or restricting journalists’ perceptions of autonomy and once again pointing to a conflict between the

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market-driven values of commercial news and professional values. Journalists working in public service media perceive they have greater autonomy than those in commercial news organisations (Sjøvaag 2013), and comparative analyses find lower levels of autonomy are associated with countries where commercial and corporate influences are stronger than a public service ethos (Örnebring et al. 2016; Hanitzsch 2011). Experiences also vary among individuals because journalists vary in the capacity they have to act independently, with some research demonstrating the important role that individuals can play in the maintenance or transformation of organisational culture, policies and implementation of new practices (Bunce 2019: 901; Firmstone 2009). This highlights the important point that in thinking about how journalists work is constrained and enabled by organisational settings we should not view journalists as a homogenous group. It suggests that future explanatory approaches should move away from functionalist views of news making since these tend to emphasise a social system perspective and thereby reduce the role played by individuals (Cottle 2003). Instead, a perspective is required which, while taking full account of the shaping factors established by the broader social frame, gives closer attention to the shaping role of individual experience and practice. As a final note, the following description of organisational culture reminds us that the way that a news organisation shapes the production of news is subject to constant change: “We might view the culture of an organisation as a set of values and behavioural expectations that exert a powerful influence over those who work in the organisation and into which new recruits have to be socialized. But we could also view it as something that is in a constant process of reformulation and reassessment, as members of the organisation continually modify it through their practices and through small innovations in how things are done” (Bryman 2012: 6). Such a view requires regular re-evaluations of the ways in which news organisations shape the routines and practices of news production and their implications for content.

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CHAPTER 8

News Audiences

Introduction In this chapter we explore the extent to which audiences are becoming more powerful in shaping news agendas, ask whether the voice and interests of the audience are playing a more prominent role in news production than in the past, and consider the consequences of this shift for the democratic qualities of news. The chapter describes how the arrival of digital journalism has shifted the influence of audiences away from being an imagined and abstract concept with little power or agency in shaping news, to a more visible and potentially more powerful agent in news production practices. We explore the main question: How does the relationship between journalists and audiences shape what becomes news? More specifically, the central aim of the chapter is to establish the extent to which the participatory opportunities afforded by digital media are resulting in a heightened role for audiences in shaping the selection, sourcing, and writing of news. The chapter is divided into three parts. The first considers the different lenses through which audiences and their relationships with news have been conceptualised: as citizens/the public; as consumers; as receivers and recipients; and as participants/co-producers. Each of these conceptualisations has different implications for the way audiences are understood as exercising power and agency. We establish how digital media have fundamentally changed the nature of the relationship between those who have traditionally produced news, information, and critical commentary (journalists) and those who have conventionally been seen as the consumers or receivers of news (audiences). Next, we look at how the relationship between journalists and audiences has evolved over time. Prior to the Internet, the limited technological capabilities of mass linear communication, a lack of competition for audiences, and the established parameters of journalistic role orientations all set the conditions for a distant and disconnected relationship between journalists and their audience. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Firmstone, The Shaping of News, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21963-4_8

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Advances in technology, increased competition for news audiences, changing patterns of news use, and altered audience expectations have driven a change in this relationship towards a far greater level of engagement between each party, resulting in a greater visibility of audiences. In the final and largest part of the chapter, we delve deeper into what is sometimes called the ‘participatory turn’ in journalism (Singer et al. 2011; Borger et al. 2013; Lawrence et al. 2018). I introduce a visualisation that categorises the range of ways in which audiences have the opportunity to participate in news production. The ‘spectrum of audience participation’ begins with passive and unintentional forms of participation (with audiences as consumers and recipients of news), then positions practices of sharing, commenting and giving feedback as a hybrid semi-­intentional form of participation in the middle of the spectrum, and shows active and intentional forms of participation where audiences directly contribute to the production of news as news sources at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Conceptualising Audience Relationships with News: The Turn Towards Participation Before looking in-depth at the ways in which audiences shape news production, we need to clarify what is meant by ‘the audience’. Who or what are audiences? There is no single view or definition of news audiences. Instead, multiple and overlapping conceptualisations of audiences require that the people who watch, read, or listen to news be analysed from a number of perspectives. Much like ‘the public’, ‘the audience’ a priori does not exist; it cannot be physically seen or assembled. Rather, audiences and their importance to news and journalism depend on how they are imagined and the various constructions that arise from this. For the purposes of the ‘Framework for Analysing Influences on the Production of News’ proposed in Chap. 3, the term audience is used in the broadest sense as a blanket term to refer to readers, listeners, viewers, users, and followers across all platforms—television, radio, newspapers, mobile, online, and offline. Audience relationships with news have been conceptualised as fulfilling four roles: as the public/citizens, consumers, receivers and recipients, and participants/co-producers. Although these roles are by no means mutually exclusive, and it is important to actively consider the ways in which they overlap, thinking about the implications of this range of potential relationships brings some clarity to considering the numerous ways audiences shape news and its production. Considering these roles helps to unpack the multiple ways in which audiences are constitutive for journalism (Loosen and Schmidt 2016) and underscores the importance of audiences as an object of study. Put simply, audiences give journalism its existence because without an audience journalism has no function and news serves no purpose. Given this fundamental relationship, it may come as a surprise that questions about the influence of audiences on news have been largely neglected. Audiences have ‘fallen between the cracks’. Until

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the recent ‘audience turn’ that argues for a greater focus on understanding news from the perspective of audiences (Loosen and Schmidt 2016; Costera Meijer 2013), the traditionally media-centric approach of journalism studies focused on the work of journalists, and political communication focused on the product of journalism (news content) (see Chap. 3). There is of course an entire field of audience studies that has interrogated the concept of the audience and continues to make valuable contributions to our understanding of the relationship between audiences and the media, predominantly from the perspective of the audience itself (Bird 2003; Livingstone 1996). Here academic inquiry has focused on questions of reception such as what citizens actually do with news, how they use news, and the million-dollar ‘media effects’ question about how news influences public opinion. While such issues are certainly important in evaluating the contribution of news to the public sphere, they largely fall outside our key focus. Instead, this chapter switches the direction of attention away from audience reception of news (for a review see Madianou 2009) towards considering the roles that audiences and their actions play in shaping news production practices and news content.

Audiences as the Public and Citizens As explored in Chap. 2, normative theories of the democratic role of the news media view audiences as members of the public and attribute to them the role of citizens. Two conditions are necessary for audiences to perform the duties of citizenship: forming public opinion and voting. First, the news media are expected to fulfil the right of citizens to have access to information in the public sphere that aids the collective formation of public opinion and informs decision making. As explored in Chaps. 5 and 6, the idea that journalism as a profession has a responsibility to provide citizens with relevant information and to act in the public interest underpins the normative ethical values of journalism. The second condition attributes responsibility to audiences to perform as ‘good citizens’ by engaging with news and demonstrating a certain level of political knowledge (Putnam 2000; Habermas 1989; Aalberg and Curran 2013). Here, we see why there is so much concern around falling levels of trust because audiences need to be able to trust the news media to provide them with reliable information that will enable them to fulfil their role as citizens.

Audiences as Consumers and as a Commodity As consumers, audiences are constructed not just as users or recipients of news, but as an identifiable commodity. Audiences are shaped into consumer categories in the economic interests of news organisations and are fundamental to the traditional business model of news. As sources of revenue, audiences fund the production of news in two ways. As direct consumers, audiences are customers who pay for a product e.g., by buying or subscribing to a newspaper. As indirect consumers, fictional audiences with specific identities are constructed as a

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commodity to sell to advertisers. For example, viewing figures for ITV News at 10 are used to sell space in the programme’s commercial break as a unique opportunity to reach a mass audience of 2 million viewers. Here, audiences, and the demographics they represent, shift from being consumers of a product to being the product themselves. From this perspective, news is constructed as a product to appeal to specific (constructed) target audiences, meaning that audience preferences influence journalists’ selections of what becomes news. In recent years, audience analytics have transformed how online audiences are sold to advertisers with audience attention being the main commodity.

Audiences as Receivers and Recipients In the pre-Internet era, there was a clear separation between journalists as producers of news and audiences as recipients of a finished product. Theories about the role of audiences as receivers of news initially focused on audiences as passive receivers of information with the potential to be affected by news content. Early research was preoccupied with measuring for the effects of news texts on audiences, framing audiences as passive receivers of news on which effects could be seen (Klapper 1960). In Lasswell’s famous linear transmission model of communication audiences were positioned as something that news does something to and as a homogenous mass that can be influenced by news (Lasswell 1948). Next, theories highlighted the significance of conceptualising audiences as active receivers and of assigning agency to audiences in the communication process. Here, two theories of audiences as active became popular: the uses and gratifications approach (Katz et al. 1973), and Hall’s model of encoding and decoding. Both theories emerged from asking questions about what audiences do with the news they receive and how audiences engage with news (Hall 1980). According to the uses and gratifications approach, audiences are motivated to use news because they stand to gain a range of benefits, or gratifications such as acquiring status through knowledge, gaining a sense of security through a continuous source of information, being entertained by the human interest element of much news, and being able to form rituals and daily routines around regular engagements with news bulletins (Berelson 1949). This change in thinking towards a more functionalist perspective, where audiences were seen as active, goal orientated, engaged and purposeful media users as opposed to passively using media as a pastime, was incredibly important, and paved the way for current conceptualisations of news audiences as active participants.

Audiences as Participants or Producers The once clear distinction between audiences as consumers or receivers of news and journalists as producers of news is now blurred. The boundaries have been collapsed by the interactive affordances of the Internet and social media which allow audiences to actively participate and engage in the construction of news

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in a multitude of ways (Singer et al. 2011; Scott et al. 2015). Audiences can participate as producers of user-generated content (UGC), by engaging with news in comments sections, discussion forums, and as distributors, disseminators, and sharers of news via social media, and in news content as sources (see Chap. 9). A host of terminology is used to describe the new positions afforded to the public in the production of news by digital media. Whether talking about citizen journalism, UGC, co-creators, produsers, networked journalism, or participatory journalism these terms all describe the breaking down of barriers and boundaries between journalists and others and relate to opportunities for audiences as members of the public to influence the production of news. I want to unpack what two of these terms—citizen journalism and UGC— mean for how we think about the relationship between journalists and audiences. As with many other key concepts in the study of journalism, the types of practices and people encompassed by the terminology change over time in tandem with the emergence of new technologies, the rise of new platforms, and new journalistic formats. Yet these definitions have important consequences for the ways in which we conceptualise the influence of audiences on established journalism and news production—are they contributors, competitors, or both? As a constantly shifting concept there are multiple competing definitions of citizen journalism in scholarship (Firmstone and Coleman 2015). Definitions commonly position citizen journalism as different from established journalism in the following ways: a) as produced by someone without professional journalistic training (Wall 2015; Glaser 2009; Singer et al. 2011; Johnson and John 2017) and/or, b) contributing to, but not being responsible for, the final news product produced by a professional journalist (Singer et al. 2011; Hermida and Thurman 2008; Goode 2009); and c) as news content published independently without any interaction with professional journalists or established news institutions (Nip 2006; Prado 2017). Citizen journalism has become synonymous with another equally poorly defined term, UGC (Singer et  al. 2011; Hermida and Thurman 2008). Both originated to describe the very specific increased capacity for ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events such as natural disasters and terrorist attacks to act spontaneously by providing video footage and live eyewitness accounts of breaking news to journalists, thereby contributing to professionally edited output (Allan and Thorsen 2009; Thorsen and Allan 2014). Due to the surge in popularity of social media, the idea of UGC has expanded to include information that is posted by the public on social media such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok. Concurrently, scholars developed other terms to emphasise the active and collaborative role of audiences and to describe the emerging participatory culture of news —participatory journalism (Singer et al. 2011), prod-users (Bruns 2008) and networked journalism.1 1  For an overview see Borger, M., Van Hoof, A., Costera Meijer, I. & Sanders, J. 2013. Constructing participatory journalism as a scholarly object. Digital Journalism, 1, 117–134.

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What all these terms and concepts point to is that news production and audiences no longer only “converge at the point of consumption”; instead it is fruitful to “regard journalism as a structure of public communication enacted in practices that are increasingly open for various actors” (Heikkilä and Ahva 2015: 61). Rather than pursuing a futile task of reconciling the differences between the variety of names given to the ways in which audiences can participate in news, it is more important to recognise that ‘open systems’ of digital news have the potential for the power relationship between the public and journalists to change from one where the creation of news is linear and top-­ down to a more collaborative environment in which journalists share the creation and dissemination of the news with users (Hermida 2011a: 179). Given that our aim is to look at what this ‘opening up’ means for the role of audiences in the production of news at established news organisations, we will put questions about the type of citizen journalism that produces news outside the established arenas of institutionally-produced news to one side i.e., we do not explore the type of citizen journalism as defined by Nip (2006) and Prado (2017). This focus recognises that while independent forms of citizen journalism are common, for instance hyperlocal news sites or the now waning medium of blogs, most forms of citizen produced information and news are reliant on mainstream news outlets to provide a host for the public’s voice (Firmstone and Coleman 2015). Indeed, the current political economy of the Internet means that “there is little evidence that citizen content can be heard in any meaningful way without amplification by larger mainstream outlets” (Usher 2017: 137). Additionally, while these forms of participation imply a deliberate act, we also need to consider that audiences can also be unintentional participants in the construction of news. The line between audiences as conscious and unconscious participants is blurred by unintentional forms of participation that occur because of the datafication of patterns of consumption and audience interactions with online news. For example, online audiences provide unintentional feedback when their interactions and patterns of news consumption are measured by analytics and then taken into consideration by journalists in the selection, placement and evaluation of news stories (Lee and Tandoc 2017). Here, it is useful to return to the distinctions of audiences as active or passive, and to think about the direction of influence being reversed from the traditional notion of passive audiences being influenced by news to news being influenced by active audiences. Instead of seeing audiences as having something ‘done to them’ by way of a media effect we can think of the production of news as affected by the unintentional participation of audiences. While the interaction of audiences with news as users has always been taken into consideration by news producers, in online news the participation of audiences through patterns of consumption is far more direct, measurable, and, as a consequence, potentially influential (see discussion of audience analytics in Chap. 4).

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The Audience-Journalist Relationship: How Do Journalists and News Organisations Understand Their Audience? We now turn to look at how journalists and news organisations understand their audience and consider how the relationship between them has evolved since researchers began looking at it in the 1970s. As we see, the potential for audiences to shape news is mediated by and dependent on the audience-­ journalist relationship. Disinterested and top-down: Journalists and news organisations have always relied on the support of audiences for their survival, meaning that journalists have always had their audiences in mind when evaluating the newsworthiness of an issue or event (see ‘news values’, Chap. 4). However, until the recent arrival of audience analytics, audiences were more imagined than known or understood. A sense of distance characterised the relationship between journalists and audiences. Formative ethnographic studies of news making established that audiences were constructed in journalists’ imaginations as either ‘people like them’ (educated white middle class men), or a homogenous, undifferentiated mass (Fishman 1980; Tuchman 1978; Gans 1979). In addition, journalists often thought more about what fellow journalists or their editor would think of their story than of what audiences might think, and were keen to ‘keep up’ with what rivals are doing—the news media literally ‘look over their shoulders’ at one another (McCombs 2004). Gans concluded that journalists were not interested in understanding their audience and paid them little attention (Gans 1979). Research on professional role perceptions describes an ambivalent top-down relationship where journalists retain control over the news agenda in their role as professional gatekeepers. On the one hand, journalists see audiences as the public that they are dedicated to serving. On the other hand, they want to keep audiences at some distance to protect the status of journalism as a profession based on journalists’ specialised knowledge of what the public needs to know—news judgement. Disconnected: Journalists were largely disconnected from their audiences in the era of mass linear communication. Even if journalists wanted to know more about their audience, opportunities for direct contact with offline audiences (and vice versa) were rare. For journalists, the ‘target audience’ was constructed indirectly by their employer through market research such as polls and surveys. For audiences, opportunities for direct audience feedback were limited to letters, phone calls, and later, emails. In addition to the inevitable time lag, these methods of feedback were rarely public facing, often dismissed by journalists as being from ‘cranks’, and in the case of newspapers, journalists remained gatekeepers over which letters to the editor were published for other readers to see (Wahl-Jorgensen 2002, 2007). Consequently, audiences have lacked agency and voice. For example, the news needs of specific sections of society such as women, ethnic minorities, and lower socio-economic groups are not well

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represented by the predominantly male, white, highly educated demographic of journalists (Ross and Carter 2011; Van Zoonen 1998; Merrill 2021). Difficult to measure: In contrast to journalists’ reluctance to cultivate an empirically informed understanding of their audience, the requirement to attract audiences has long motivated news organisations to invest in commercial market research to help them better understand their target audience. Until online news and streaming services, the one-way, linear transmission models of the press, radio, and television limited the scope for the precise measurements that are now possible with web metrics.

Changing Motivations to Engage with Audiences Engaging with audiences is a response to the many challenges journalists and news providers face in the current climate that is characterised by falling levels of trust, threats to the economic model of journalism from falling circulations and fragmenting audiences, increased competition from a plethora of new sources of news, challenges to the professional authority of journalists, and fundamental changes to the way news is produced, distributed, and consumed. The following four factors are driving a more serious approach to engagement that expands the potential role of audiences in news production practices: 1. Changes in the business model of news: In a highly competitive news environment where audiences can easily go elsewhere, understanding and taking account of audience preferences is no longer perceived as optional in the battle for audience retention. In conjunction, changing business models in response to a ruinous drop in advertising revenue and a shift towards subscriptions mean that some scholars have predicted that charging audiences directly for content is becoming the main source of funding online news (Newman et al. 2018). 2. Datafication of audiences: The arrival of web metrics and data from social media provides almost limitless opportunities for data mining to track consumption preferences and various structures of audience engagement such as patterns of navigation and reading time. Data collected via tweets, comments, shares, and ‘likes’ from offline audiences of broadcast and print news supplement the relatively basic audience measurement tools for analogue consumption. 3. From mass to individual: Although news providers have always shaped content according to perceptions of the demands of target audiences, the possibilities for responding directly to audiences with personalised and customised content are greater than ever because audiences have become far more visible (Loosen 2019). Indeed, the very concept of the mass audience no longer fits the non-linear delivery of news to multiple audiences (Loosen 2019; Nelson 2018) and the highly individualised nature of news use.

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4. Changing audience expectations: It is no longer adequate to treat audiences as a separate entity waiting to consume media products or as passive receivers of information. Instead of communicating to audiences, audiences expect journalists to engage with them in communication that flows two ways and allows participation.

Audiences as Participants: Imagining a Spectrum of Audience Participation In the remainder of the chapter, we explore the opportunities available to audiences to shape news production practices. Figure 8.1 visualises the various types of participatory practices that have been investigated by journalism researchers on a spectrum of participation. Three clusters of audience practices of participation are located at different points along the spectrum to illustrate the contrasting passive and active characteristics of participation, and the overlapping, blurred spaces in between.

Passive

Unintentional • Indirect • Inadvertent Audience practices (post production) = News choices/consumption

Invisible

Hybrid of consumption & production Semi-intentional

Audience practices (post production) = Sharing, commenting, feedback

Visible

Active

Intentional • Direct • Purposeful Audience practices (pre-production) = Producing news/information as a source that is incorporated into news by journalists

Visible

Fig. 8.1  Spectrum of audience participation

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Though consumption is not included in most definitions of participatory journalism, passive audience interactions with news through patterns of consumption such as those measured by audience analytics increasingly shape the selection of news. Unintentional and invisible practices associated with the reception and consumption of news are therefore included at the passive end of the spectrum. These include patterns of news use, news preferences, and news choices. In the centre of the spectrum are other post-production practices that are associated with a hybrid combination of consumption and production. As noted earlier, these practices are characterised by semi-intentional participation such as sharing, commenting, and giving feedback. These semi-intentional practices highlight new forms of audience engagement post-publication that form an additional element of the news production process, signalling a new way in which audiences can influence news. At the right-hand end of the spectrum and representing the most deliberate form of audience participation in news, are practices where audiences intentionally and directly contribute to the creation and production of news published by institutional news providers by acting as a source of news content, for example as co-creators and as providers of UGC. The term institutional news providers is deliberately used here to exclude instances when a member of the audience becomes a news producer in their own right and produces news independently of ‘professional’ journalists and established news organisations. Arguably, in this latter capacity, the person in question ceases to function as a member of the audience who participates in existing news forms and instead becomes an independent news producer. Instances of citizen journalism where individuals set up their own blog, hyperlocal news site or other independent forms of publishing are therefore not intended to be accounted for in the spectrum. In the remainder of the chapter, we consider the influence of audiences as unintentional and semi-intentional participants. The active role of audiences as news sources and providers of news content is discussed in Chap. 9 on News Sources.

Audiences as Passive Participants: Patterns and Practices of Consumption Before we consider how the ways that audiences consume news and journalists’ understandings of audience preferences shape news, I first want to establish some key trends and implications of changes in the ways that audiences consume news.

Changing Patterns of News Use: Trend and Implications Here I give some examples from the UK as an indication of some key changes in audience habits that have implications for how journalists understand audiences in the context of a developed democracy. Since patterns of news use and audience habits shift at a rapid pace, this is only intended as a snapshot. Those interested in the most up to date information should consult the data on the

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popularity of news providers and audience habits that is released regularly, in reports that track news audiences across the world (Reuters Institute Digital News Report), in the USA (Pew Research Center), and in the UK (OFCOM). Commentary on trends is available from the annual reports of news organisations and the trade press (e.g., Press Gazette).Overall, current trends include a move towards online news, a steady high level of engagement with television news, a significant proportion of audiences accessing news through social media platforms, the fragmentation of audiences across a greater range of sources of news, and a shift in patterns of consumption towards consuming less news more frequently and on mobile devices. As illustrated in data from the UK in Table 8.1, when asked which sources they use to access news nowadays, television and online news are the most used at 79% and 73% respectively, although radio and newspapers remain relatively popular. The popularity of online news has risen greatly from 15% in 2002 to 73% in 2021. These figures are even higher for younger audiences with online news the most popular source for the 18–25 year old age group (89%). Social media is the most popular type of online news, used by 49% of UK adults, with 36% citing Facebook and 24% Twitter as their most important source of news (Ofcom 2021). Although the circulation of print newspapers fell by approximately 40% between 2010 and 2018, readership of online editions is now beginning to compensate for the drop (Firmstone 2018). When use of print and online/app versions of newspapers are combined, use of newspapers rises to 49% (32% use print editions). One important pattern to highlight is that despite the focus of much scholarship and public debate on online news, television remains the most popular source of news with BBC 1 cited as the most important individual source by nearly two thirds of UK adults (62%) followed by ITV at 46% (Ofcom 2021). Fragmenting audiences are spending less time-consuming news. Combined time spent reading newspapers in print and online in the UK decreased by 40% between 1999 and 2016 (Thurman and Fletcher 2019) and studies going back over 30 years of data in the USA show that each generation is consuming less and less news (Bennett 2012). Researchers are increasingly interested in the Table 8.1  Longitudinal changes in news use All sources of news used by adults

2002

2014

2019

2021

TV Radio Newspaper (printed version) Newspaper (print and online combined) Internet Data sources

91% 73% 59% n/a

75% 36% 40% n/a

75% 43% 38% 49%

79% 46% 32% 49%

15% Hargreaves and Thomas (2012)

41% Ofcom (2014)

66% Ofcom (2019)

73% Ofcom (2021)

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phenomenon of news avoidance where despite the expansion of sources of news, some audiences are avoiding news due to information overload, wanting to avoid negative emotions and bad news, and news fatigue (Newman and Fletcher 2017). Audiences are fragmenting across a range of different news brands and providers with an average of 8.8 individual sources used for news in 2021 compared to 6.7 in 2018 (Ofcom 2018, 2021). Fragmenting audiences result in the division of once mass audiences into individualised multiple audiences (Nelson 2018) with online journalists facing “an ever more granulated audience” (Loosen 2019) that is increasingly difficult to capture and retain. Use of online news has migrated away from laptops and PCs to mobile devices and social media, which is important when we consider that access through mobile devices is driven by apps that drive changes in the way news is distributed and discovered by audiences, including increased opportunities for the personalisation of news (Welbers and Opgenhaffen 2019). The popularity of social media as a source of news has significant implications. First, news providers have to find audiences rather than vice versa (Pearson and Kosicki 2017). Second, online news is increasingly discovered through the sharing practices of other users rather than directly from the original source, heightening the requirement for journalists to select news according to its shareability. Third, consumption of individual news stories on social media points to the wider issue of consumption of news ‘a la carte’ and to the de-coupling of news from its news brand. In such circumstances news is no longer consumed as part of a bundle collated with other news and packaged by providers in newspapers, websites, television or radio programmes (Cairncross 2019; Robinson 2019). For some online news, journalists and news organisations must therefore consider a distinct audience for every single item that they produce rather than for their news offering as a whole.

New Media, New Concerns? With audiences proving ever-more difficult to attract and retain, journalists and news organisations are compelled to think harder about how best to appeal to audience preferences. The well-established concerns voiced by scholars about the consequences of producing news that prioritises appealing to audiences pre-digital news have been extended to online news, raising a new set of concerns which coalesce around three themes: 1) audience analytics replacing professional news values as a driver of news selection; 2) the potential for audience-led news choices to promote practices of selective exposure, resulting in personalised news feeds and reducing the diversity of information that audiences are exposed to; and 3) the construction of news according to values intended to promote sharing, including the phenomenon of ‘click bait’. Building on the discussion of how taking account of audience consumption preferences via analytics shapes news production presented in Chap. 4, we now contemplate the consequences of passive practices of audience participation associated with consumption and reception by exploring personalisation and

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selective exposure (the passive end of The Spectrum of Audience Participation Fig. 8.1). We then look at the participation in the middle part of the spectrum where news is constructed to maximise its shareability and where audiences can participate in news via comments sections. While the rest of the chapter focuses on audiences in the context of online news this focus does not assume that the consequences of appeals to audiences on other platforms are less important. Rather it acknowledges that the unprecedented opportunities for journalists to respond to, and have their production practices shaped by, data-driven understandings of online audiences heightens the need to understand the influence of audiences in the digital domain.

Passive and Unintentional Audience Participation: Personalisation and Segmentation—Filter Bubbles and Echo Chambers The change in the media environment from one of low choice to the current situation of high choice has brought with it concerns that the news choices of audiences will lead to a narrowing of exposure to issues and opinions. Somewhat ironically, prior to the proliferation of broadcast news channels and advent of online news, scholars were concerned that news provision was concentrated among relatively few sources and resulted in a lack of diversity and homogeneity in the types of news available to mass audiences (Zuiderveen Borgesius et al. 2016). Segmentation refers to the supply side of news and describes the expansion of available news products into offerings aimed at relatively small, clearly defined niche audiences based on specific demographics such as age, political affiliation, geography, or other specifically defined communities. For example, digital net natives such as BuzzFeed and Vice news were launched specifically to appeal to millennials (Stringer 2018) and new television news channels such as GB News and TalkTV were launched in the UK in 2021 and 2022 to appeal to audiences with specific partisan interests.

What Is the Problem with Selective Exposure? Personalisation and segmentation provide opportunities for two different types of selective exposure, a concept that has long raised alarm bells about its effect on political knowledge: 1) active or explicit personalisation, where audiences actively self-select what content they want to see; and 2) passive or implicit personalisation, where news is pre-selected and/or recommended for audiences by algorithms according to patterns of consumption tracked by audience analytics (Zuiderveen Borgesius et al. 2016). The ability of consumers to customise their online news experience by setting preferences for certain types of news and issues was famously predicted by Negroponte in 1995 with his description of the “daily me”. It is assumed that the growing diversity of the media environment across a greatly expanded range of news sources increases

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the selectivity of audiences (narrowing their sources of news), thus leading to audiences being exposed to a decreasing diversity of views and news topics. Scholars warn that a move away from shared media experiences and a lack of diversity in exposure to opinions and viewpoints might lead to a lack of shared news experiences, meaning that the public will lack a common point of reference on political issues that is necessary for a healthy democracy (Bennett and Iyengar 2008; Jamieson and Capella 2009; Katz 1996; Mutz and Young 2011; Sunstein 2007; Habermas 1989). Here, non-specialist or general interest outlets are perceived as beneficial because they expose audiences to information and viewpoints which may challenge their existing opinions and offer them a shared point of reference. Personalised content creates the opposing situation in which audiences are not exposed to a diversity of views or to opinions that differ from their own. Specialist outlets, such as partisan news channels, websites and social media, enable audiences to narrow the range of news they access according to their political preferences and ideologies, and in effect to filter out viewpoints they disagree with, reinforcing existing dispositions (Sunstein 2007; Steppat et al. 2020). In processes of implicit personalisation recommendation, algorithms based on prior consumption patterns can unwittingly reinforce processes of self-selection and reaffirm worldviews (Stroud 2011). The consequences of personalisation and selective exposure are referred to as filter bubbles and echo chambers. An echo chamber is a media space where ideas and opinions are reinforced and amplified, thereby increasing the potential effects of the ideological messages (see for example: Jamieson and Capella 2009; Bennett and Iyengar 2008). New and opposing ideas and values are deliberately excluded. The term filter bubbles is used to describe online spaces where personalised algorithms operated by news providers and search engines filter out information and opposing views without the knowledge of the user (Pariser 2012). Users are not conscious of the algorithms being used to tailor content to their profile or user preferences and are unaware that they will receive different information than another user who might enter the same search term. The concern is that eliminating opposing viewpoints and restricting exposure will reinforce the existing position of audiences and that this may lead to a public polarised in its political positions. A brief dip into the extensive research into audience habits reveals that audiences are not yet actively choosing to limit their exposure to differing types of news and have fairly diverse news consumption patterns (for an overview see: Zuiderveen Borgesius et al. 2016). Although it is clear that audiences gravitate towards news choices that match their ideological opinions overall (Stroud 2011), research suggests that audiences are exposed to a broad range of news sources and do not necessarily eschew media that does not match their partisanship (Weeks et  al. 2016; Zuiderveen Borgesius et  al. 2016; Haim et  al. 2018; Ofcom 2018; Fletcher and Nielsen 2017). A six country cross-national analysis has demonstrated that online audiences are no more fragmented than offline audiences, with most people continuing to self-select or being incidentally exposed to the same news sources used by other citizens (Fletcher and

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Nielsen 2017). There are those who point to potentially positive consequences of segmentation, such as the increased ability of news providers to build stronger bonds with smaller, niche audiences (Nelson 2018) and the benefits of partisan news in encouraging engagement and helping audiences to make sense of politics (Stroud 2011). Given that audience choices send clear signals to news organisations about what audiences want and what will be popular, it is important for research to monitor the effect of patterns of personalisation and segmentation on journalists’ news selection decisions and algorithmically produced news.

Semi-Intentional Participation: Sharing, Commenting, and Feedback We now move to the hybrid space in the middle of the spectrum of participation (Fig. 8.1) where audiences participate in news via news sharing, commenting and feedback. Here participation is more intentional with audiences taking on a more active role as co-creators by becoming distributors of news and adding to the initial news product via comments and feedback functions. This space is described as ‘blurred’ because it is at this point that audiences begin to cross the boundary between a passive role as unintentional participants through their consumption and move towards a more active, yet not always fully intentionally, participatory role, albeit post-production.

Appealing to Audiences with Shareable News Audiences into News Distributors

and Transforming

The interactive capabilities and popularity of social media as a key source of news has created a new role for audiences as distributors and disseminators of news (Singer 2014; Hermida 2011a; Bright 2016; Shirky 2009; Costera Meijer and Groot Kormelink 2015; Welbers et al. 2016). Over the last decade, news providers have encouraged users to take on two roles simultaneously as consumers and disseminators of news by adding social networking functionalities to news apps and websites with the aim of expanding their potential audience. As news sharers, audiences can cross the previously impenetrable boundary between receiving and producing news to become active participants in a crucial extension to the news production process—distribution—and can influence news in two ways: 1. News selection decisions: Through sharing, re-tweeting, recommendation and other forms of audience distribution, audiences serve a gatekeeping and agenda-setting role beyond that of the initial decisions taken by journalists. In contrast to offline and ‘appointment to view’ news where journalists have control over the distribution network and editorial control over what prominence to give stories, audiences can now

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determine what other members of the audience receive and fulfil a role that Singer (2014) calls a “secondary gatekeeper”. 2. Feedback as influence: The social news environment creates a circular relationship where audience behaviours, preferences, and patterns of sharing of news originally created by journalists are forms of feedback that inform journalists’ subsequent news selection judgements. Indeed, we know that ‘shareability’ has become an increasingly common news value (Harcup and O’Neill 2017) and that social media sites and audience analytics provide journalists with information in real time to see what issues are trending and being shared, liked, re-tweeted, and attracting comments (Hermida et al. 2012; Lee and Tandoc 2017; Firmstone and Whittington 2021). As we saw in Chap. 4, depending on the priorities of their news organisation, journalists may be encouraged to select and write stories designed for shareabilty, particularly ‘click bait’ (Blom and Hansen 2015).

Is Audience-Led Distribution Setting News Agendas? What consequences might audience-led agendas have for content? Predicting the extent to which audience-led distribution will lead to a changed news agenda in the long term is difficult for three reasons. First, while we know that people are motivated to share news as a means of enhancing social connections and social status, in contrast to journalists’ news values, we do not yet have a good understanding of what kind of news stories audiences choose to select or reject for further distribution (Kümpel et al. 2015). Early indications show a discrepancy between the news topics that audiences share and the agendas of traditional news organisations, with soft news shared more often than hard news (Boczkowski and Mitchelstein 2013; Ørmen 2019; Trilling et al. 2017; Bright 2016). The tendency of audience news values to prioritise certain types of news and marginalise others does, however, raise concerns about the public knowledge implications of a news diet dependent on socially-shared news exposure (Hermida et  al. 2012; Bright 2016). On the other hand, other research finds that news featuring normatively desirable content is also commonly shared, including content that is deemed interesting, originates from a trusted source, or contains high informational value news factors such as controversy, relevance, or unexpectedness (Kümpel et al. 2015). Second, journalists’ agendas and news values are not necessarily being replaced by a new audience-led agenda because the news that audiences choose to share tends to reflect professional news values. Story importance cues designed by journalists, such as the amount of time a story is on the front page, the positioning of an article, and whether the story was accompanied by an image, are significant drivers of social sharing, meaning that audiences still take cues from journalists about what stories are most important (Bright 2016). Third, although it is argued that audiences are increasingly keen to engage in redistributing content as part of a social experience (Thurman 2011; Purcell et  al. 2010), other

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research suggests that audiences have a limited interest in contributing to news through sharing or recommending stories, and that the sharing of digital social news use is often restrained by considerations of personal reputation (Costera Meijer and Groot Kormelink 2015: 675). Interestingly, concerns about news that effectively elicits widespread sharing differ significantly from the concerns that have dominated debates about news quality in legacy media. Concerns about online shareable news relate to the tendency for audiences to share news that appeals to emotions (Papacharissi and De Fatima Oliveira 2012; Hermida 2015), and/or news that is exaggerated or of dubious credibility to the point of being democratically dysfunctional (Chadwick et al. 2018), or the polarising views found in alternative and hyper-partisan news media (Steppat et al. 2020), rather than concerns about soft news agendas (Kalsnes and Larsson 2018).

Audiences as Participants Via Comments Fields and Feedback Comments sections have replaced letters to the editor as a popular way for audiences to interact with journalists and other readers. Classed as a form of UGC, comments are important because they have the potential to “shape the practice of journalism and impact both the mediated and general public spheres” (Graham and Wright 2015: 318). Comments afford audiences three opportunities to directly or indirectly participate in news production practices. First, the ability to supplement and contribute to the creation of original content with extra information and opinion brings audience voices directly into news content (Hermida 2011b). Even when moderated, journalists exert a lower level of gatekeeping over audience comments than with offline forms of feedback, affording audience voices greater visibility. Second, audience comments can directly influence production practices by providing additional material, sources or story ideas that journalists incorporate into stories. Third, as a form of immediate feedback, comments shorten the sense of distance that has previously typified the journalist audience relationship thereby affording journalists a greater understanding of audience preferences, opinions and attitudes, and, when journalists respond to comments, audiences have the opportunity to directly engage and interact with journalists (Firmstone et al. 2022). A somewhat mixed picture emerges when we ask what consequences these three opportunities have for shaping the selection, sourcing, and content of news. Research casts doubts over whether the increased availability and accessibility of audience feedback has resulted in journalists attributing any greater value to readers’ comments than at the time of Gans’s 1979 study which found that journalists were not very interested in their audiences. In many cases comments fields and message boards are rarely integrated into coverage (Newman et  al. 2012); invite audiences to participate yet segregate their contribution from journalistically produced content (Wahl-Jorgensen 2015); are not utilised as news sources by journalists; and are not perceived as a form of collaboration

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with audiences (Lee-Wright et  al. 2010). As with news sharing, comments fields also hold limited potential as a participatory form due to a lack of interest among audiences in engaging with them (Karlsson et al. 2015; Karlsson et al. 2017; Bergström and Wadbring 2014). On the other hand, there are examples where audiences are being listened to and are shaping news production through comments. At the perhaps atypical UK-based Guardian, journalists described how comments prompted them to “reflect on what they wrote about and how they write, keeping paper trails for every story, and they received new stories and leads from comment fields” (Graham and Wright 2015: 333). Here, using comments as sources of leads and story tips opens up and diversifies sourcing practices away from journalists’ reliance on the ‘usual suspects’ of institutional and official sources that we will see in Chap. 9. Importantly, this type of participation represents an expansion of the original news cycle to an extra stage, post-production. It also extends the primary function of journalists (to provide society with up-to-date, timely information) to include follow-up communication and interaction with audiences (Loosen 2019). Increased opportunities for audiences to hold journalists to account by correcting or criticising news via comments arguably drive up ethical standards (Firmstone et al. 2022). Additionally, some research suggests that the role of comments in the construction of news is significant because, along with the ‘main’ news story, comments attribute agency to audiences alongside that of journalists and may even influence the opinions of other readers (Anderson et al. 2014; Lee and Tandoc 2017). Given these potential roles, journalists, news organisations, and scholars have raised various concerns. Some journalists are just as suspicious of new digital forms of contact from audiences as they were of letters to the editor. Comments are perceived as being posted by an unrepresentative minority, as spreading misinformation (Lee-Wright et al. 2010; Phillips 2010), as unverified sources, of overall low quality (Reich 2011; Bergström and Wadbring 2014), or as the location of uncivil and abusive discourse (Rowe 2015; Prochazka et al. 2018; Meltzer 2015; Wolfgang 2018). Indeed, recognition of these problems, including the tendency for incivility in comments fields (Rowe 2015; Prochazka et al. 2018; Meltzer 2015; Firmstone et al. 2022), perceptions of some commentators as ‘trolls’ (Wolfgang 2018), and concerns about the potential side effect of such comments as weakening the credibility of the news brand (Anderson et al. 2014; Reich 2011) mean that most news organisations have moderation policies and employ audience engagement editors (Nelson 2018; Ferrer-Conill and Tandoc 2018). The commercial logic and benefits of engaging with audiences through comments fields therefore needs to be clear for news organisations to see the value in investing time and resources in encouraging audience participation (Karlsson et  al. 2015). Moreover, given recent evidence of abuse and hostility towards women and minorities (Gardiner 2018), many providers have restricted or closed comments (Goujard 2016; Finley 2016). Given these concerns and current evidence that journalists are engaging in boundary work to regain control,

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comments fields may well be in overall decline (Larsson 2017; Wolfgang 2018; Wright et  al. 2020). It could be that, in comparison to audience-orientated news and the indirect participation of audiences through analytics, participation in comments fields is having a far less profound impact on the journalist-­ audience relationship.

Conclusion Having explored recent changes in the relationship between audiences, journalists, and news it is clear that audiences occupy a significantly different and more multifaceted role in news production practices than they did in the past. The degree to which this new role affords audiences a greater influence or a heightened level of power in news production practices and the resultant content is less obvious. The consequences of the heightened opportunities for audience preferences to shape news agendas and content are significant, especially as there is growing evidence that what audiences want differs from the professional occupational news values that have traditionally shaped news (Boczkowski and Mitchelstein 2013). For example, the news values of younger audiences diverge from traditional news values since they put a comparatively low value on timeliness and proximity (suggesting low demand for breaking news and news that is close to home) and prefer news in entertainment formats such as satire and opinion-laden news (Armstrong et al. 2015). Given the increased possibilities for audiences to make their preferences known either intentionally or unintentionally, and the opportunities for audiences to contribute to the construction of news, the question of authority over what becomes news looks set to be the cause of significant contention for the foreseeable future. Overall, such a turn encroaches on the dominant journalistic value of autonomy; questions what Lewis calls “journalism’s professional logic of control over content” (Lewis 2012: 841); raises questions of jurisdiction and boundary work (Carlson 2017); and certainly challenges the tradition of writing more for other journalists than for audiences (Anderson 2011; McCombs 2004). Yet, in a news environment where audiences can easily go elsewhere, understanding and responding to audience preferences is no longer optional and competition for audiences may well override professional concerns about autonomy and professional authority. Questions about the increased roles of audiences must, however, also be interpreted in the context of audience attitudes and behaviours. Taking actual levels of audience participation into consideration, the traditional balance of power, with journalists in control, seems more than acceptable to audiences. Though most research concentrates on understanding audience participation from the perspective of journalists, those that consider the attitudes of audiences towards participation conclude that audiences are happy to entrust control of news production and distribution to journalists. Despite the increased opportunities, audiences are not clamouring to engage in interactive or participatory practices as much as advocates of participatory journalism might expect

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(Karlsson et  al. 2017; Bergström and Wadbring 2014; Costera Meijer and Groot Kormelink 2015; Heise et al. 2014). Active, intentional participation is the exception, not the norm. Furthermore, opportunities for participation are not equal around the world due to continuing access inequalities caused by the digital divide and by variations in the popularity of online news, such as the continued dominance of the printed press in many countries (Josephi 2016). In the next chapter we explore participation further by looking at the role of audiences as intentional participants in the production of news as sources.

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CHAPTER 9

News Sources

Introduction It is relatively unusual to find a whole chapter dedicated to news sources, which is surprising when we consider that sourcing practices are a fundamental element of news production (Gans 1979; Manning 2001). In this chapter, we explore the relationship between journalists and sources because the dynamics of this relationship has long been argued to have important implications for news content. As described by one of the first studies of sourcing, “News is, after all, not what journalists think, but what their sources say, and is mediated by news organisations, journalistic routines and conventions, which screen out many of the personal predilections of individual journalists” (Sigal 1986: 29). We ask what consequences the power dynamics of source-media relations have for who gets a voice in news and what kinds of issues get covered. News has also been described as “a parasitic institution; its product is the deeds and words of others, and its quality depends at least partly on the quality of the information environment in which it is operating” (Tiffen et al. 2014: 374). Given that this ‘information environment’ is determined by the practices of journalists and sources, I have deliberately chosen to look beyond media-­ centric theories of news sources (Schlesinger and Tumber 1994) to consider the aims and practices of sourcing from the perspective of sources themselves in addition to the more common perspective of journalists’ sourcing practices. To begin, we will clarify what is meant by a ‘source’ and explain the aims of this chapter. Most often we read about ‘official sources’ (such as the government, civil servants, local authorities, the police etc.), but journalists work with many other sources including news agencies, news already published by other news outlets, information produced by public relations professionals (PRPs), and more recently, audiences who, as members of the public, have become important news sources via roles as ‘citizen journalists’, providers of

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user-­generated content (UGC) and contributors to social media. Given that we cannot explore how all these sources shape news in the space of one chapter, I want to focus attention instead on the role of two source actors: PRPs and audiences. Taking these actors as examples allows us to explore two of the most significant ways that news sourcing has evolved (and continues to evolve) since the fundamentals of sourcing were described by classic news sociologists in the mid-twentieth century. First, news sources have become more professionalised; and second, mobile phones, the Internet, social media and digital journalism have dramatically increased the opportunities for members of the public to contribute to the production of news (see Chap. 8). Before looking at these two developments, the chapter begins by establishing how formative studies conceptualised the relationship between journalists and their sources. We familiarise ourselves with two key issues at stake in the study of source-media relations: the power of sources to influence the news agenda; and the tensions at play in the contradictory nature of the journalist source relationship. In the second part of the chapter, we focus on exploring the powerful and potentially contentious relationship between public relations (PR) and journalism which provides us with an understanding of how the increasingly professionalised activities of sources can influence the sourcing, selection, and writing (content) of news. We establish how, over the last few decades, the proliferation of PRPs and the associated practice of ‘churnalism’ (when news is not original because it is produced by recycling existing material) have increased the potential for sources to provide valuable information subsidies to journalists. In the third and final part of the chapter we look at how digital media have provided new ways for journalists to access sources, in particular opening up new opportunities for journalists to engage with members of the public as sources. As was established in Chap. 8, until recently, audiences and the public were theorised as being outside the news production process, with clear boundaries between journalists as the authoritative producers of news and audiences as the recipients of news. In the last part of the chapter, we illustrate how members of the public, journalists and news organisations have responded to new opportunities that have been heralded for the democratising potential they have for audiences to become news sources through UGC, citizen journalism, and social media (including Twitter).

Formative studies: Journalists and sources—an interdependent relationship structured by routines which favour official sources

The relationship between journalists and sources has fascinated journalism scholars for decades and we can learn a lot about the dynamics of the relationship, and its consequences, by looking at the findings of a handful of formative studies. Research in the 1970s and 1980s established that the relationship between journalists and sources is interdependent (Tunstall 1971; Gandy

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1982; Tumber 1999) and it has been described more recently as mutually beneficial and symbiotic (Carlson 2009). Such terminology suggests a relationship where both actors are equally in control and reliant on each other. Yet, as we are about to see, the question of where the balance of power lies—in favour of journalists or sources—is debatable and subject to change. Initial studies of this relationship made three key observations that we now explore. 1. Official sources dominate and have power over news narratives: When imagining the exchange between journalists and sources, we should remind ourselves of a key concept discussed in Chap. 4: journalists develop routines to cope with the exponential task of news gathering. Leon Sigal’s (1973) study of reporters and officials at the New York Times and Washington Post set the scene for our understanding of sourcing routines for decades, and nicely illustrates what subsequent research has consistently shown—journalists’ sourcing routines tend to function in a way that favours elite and official sources, results in limited source diversity, and marginalises the voice of the public. He showed that sources are most commonly accessed through routine channels (58%), followed by enterprise (25%) and informal channels (15%) (Sigal 1973). According to Sigal (1973): • Routine channels include official proceedings such as trials; legislative hearings; press releases; press conferences; and non-spontaneous events such as speeches/ceremonies. • Enterprise channels include interviews reported at the reporter’s initiative; spontaneous events witnessed first-hand; independent research; and reporters’ own conclusions and analysis. • Informal channels include background briefings; leaks; nongovernmental proceedings such as professional association meetings; and reports from other news organisations, reporters and editorials. In answering the simple question, where do journalists get news from, Sigal’s findings, and those of numerous studies that followed, show most journalists favour sources who offer reliable, regular information that makes for a good news story. Indeed, journalists sometimes contact sources with particular ideas about what they want and what questions will best deliver it. This not only includes a provisional plan of the emphases they would like a story to have but also the sources to be included and excluded, and how the sources will contribute to the evaluative framing (e.g. ‘shock’, ‘good’, ’bad’). Coupled with an ever-present squeeze on the time and resources allocated to newsgathering, it is not surprising that journalists become dependent on official sources such as government officials (politicians and bureaucrats), civil servants, local authorities, the judiciary, and the police. 2. Sources have power by providing an ‘information subsidy’: Herbert Gan’s famous quote uses the metaphor of dancing to suggest that sources are more powerful than journalists: “Although it takes two to tango, either sources or journalists can lead, but more often than not, sources do the leading” (Gans

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1979). Why do sources lead? Sources can hold an advantage because journalists and the news media rely on ‘information subsidies’ to provide the raw material needed to fulfil the task of constant news production (Gandy 1982). Here the relationship is seen as an economic arrangement—information from sources works as a ‘subsidy’ by reducing the input cost incurred by journalists when gathering information. In exchange for information, sources receive free publicity and access to news audiences. The subsidy saves time and creates efficiencies for journalists in the production process (Gandy 1982; Tunstall 1971). 3. Sources vary in their value to journalists, resulting in inequitable access to the news: A third theme emerging from classic studies helps us to understand that not all news sources have equal power in the journalist-source relationship. A source’s power depends on their ability to fit with a journalist’s routines and to maximise a journalist’s efficiency. Sources who are regarded as authoritative and trustworthy sources of information, who can provide evidence that is credible in the eyes a journalist’s audience, and who require little verification are likely to favoured. Quoting credible sources enables journalists to demonstrate objectivity and to ensure that they are not providing their own opinion. It follows that to meet these requirements and to be valuable, a source needs enough time and resources to provide information in a way that fits with a journalist’s needs. As we can imagine, this is something that well-resourced official sources have no problem achieving, but which other less resource-rich sources struggle to achieve. The particularly powerful position of official sources was argued by Hall and colleagues in their famous study which demonstrated that “two aspects of news production—the practical pressures of constantly working against the clock and the professional demands of impartiality and objectivity—combine to produce a systematically structured over-accessing to the media of those in powerful and privileged institutional positions” (Hall et  al. 1978: 58). Identifying powerful actors as ‘representatives of major social institutions’ such as government, institutions of the law, MPs, employers and trade unions, Hall and colleagues argued that it is not just important to consider who gets in the news, but also that by being attributed credibility, sources become the ‘primary definers’ of issues. That is, the “primary definition sets the limit for all subsequent discussion by framing what the problem is” (Hall et al. 1978: 59). Their critical approach asserted that the views and interpretations of a narrow group of privileged actors are given legitimacy over less powerful sources, who are signalled by subtle textual devices in news content to be less credible, ‘secondary definers’ of the news. Ultimately, they argued that the news media play a key role in reproducing the definitions of the ruling ideology. Later, other studies were instrumental in drawing attention to inequalities in the power of different types of sources to access the news media (Gitlin 1980; Ericson et al. 1989). Ericson et al. argued that sources with power can mobilize strategically to avoid and make news. Sources without power have less control—the news media is effectively closed to most citizens, and is a powerful force in society, there are a

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limited number of sources who can pry it open and sometimes harness its power to their advantage (Ericson et al. 1989). Moreover, long before we saw evidence of the widespread professionalisation of news sources, Gitlin’s study of anti-­war campaign group activities exposed the difficulties faced by nonofficial and resource-poor organisations in getting the media’s attention because they are not organisationally set up to meet the needs of journalists (Gitlin 1980).

Why Should We Care Who Gets To Be a Source? By highlighting inequalities in who gets to be a source, these scholars drew attention to the significant role sources play in determining how society, people and issues are represented, pointing to the importance of asking, who gets a voice in the news? By briefly considering the findings of content analyses, we can see the implications of these patterns in sourcing for the diversity and plurality of sources in news coverage. The number, diversity, and range of sources in news can be regarded as a proxy for news media quality and allow conclusions to be drawn about the potential of the news media to inform citizens (Tiffen et al. 2014: 376). Content analyses consistently show that official sources dominate in news coverage. The voice of the public, non-elites, women, and people from minority backgrounds are far less likely to be heard in the news than male, white elites (Jia et  al. 2016; Ross et  al. 2018; Darrah and Haddou 2020; Firmstone et al. 2009) (for an excellent overview: Kurpius 2002). Taking just one example makes this disparity clear: an analysis of sources quoted in the front pages of UK national newspapers over a one week period found that out of the 111 people quoted, just 16% were women and only one source was a Black woman (Darrah and Haddou 2020). A further critique of the overreliance of journalists on powerful sources is that because such sources represent specific political positions this results in an emphasis towards support for certain political agendas and ideologies in the news media (Gans 1979; Soloski 1989; Kleemans et al. 2015; Hall et al. 1978). The broad concern here is that if the sources and issues in the news are not diverse enough to accurately represent the diversity of interests among the public then the news media’s ability to contribute to legitimising the social, economic and political structure is undermined (Gans 1979; Soloski 1989; Kleemans et  al. 2015; Karppinen 2018). Other aspects of sourcing routines contribute to a lack of source diversity and potentially amplify the overrepresentation of official sources in news. As mentioned in Chap. 4 when discussing the aggregation and curation of digital news, journalists have always used other news media as a source, reading other publications as part of their sourcing routines (Breed 1955; Gans 1979). Following each other’s leads gives confirmation of their news judgement and reduces the risks of deviating from covering issues from an angle that nobody else has. Although this practice has been discussed more in terms of the way that it results in similar news agendas across outlets through what Schudson

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calls intra and inter-institutional news coherence, it also limits the diversity of sources by replicating the voice of sources across multiple outlets (Schudson 2011).

Looking Beyond the Practices of Journalists: The Professionalisation of Sources Early sociological enquiries tended to study sources narrowly from the perspective of journalists, analysing how journalists use sources in writing and producing news with little consideration of the actions of sources themselves in attempting to get covered. A shift in emphasis by journalism scholars led to a new approach that recognised news as collaboratively crafted as a “product between journalists and their sources” (Ericson et al. 1989: 377). Schlesinger and Tumber called for studies to be less media-centric by taking what they called a source-media approach to analyse the links and power relationships between journalists and their sources (Schlesinger and Tumber 1994). They were critical of the approach typified by Hall et al.’s (1978) primary definer theory that assumed powerful sources automatically get access to the news and that journalists passively receive their information. They argued that a source’s status as ‘trusted and valuable’ is only achieved through a competitive process with other sources and takes constant work to maintain. This competition leads sources to develop professional practices in order to increase their chances of successfully shaping news coverage. Since the move towards researching the actions and strategies of sources in organising themselves in a way that makes them attractive to journalists, researchers have developed a rich understanding of the increasingly professionalised practices of three types of news sources: the public relations profession (Davis 2000, 2013; Jackson and Moloney 2016; Davis 2002), political actors (Davis 2009, 2019; McNair 2004), and NGOs and interest groups (Manning 2001; Carlson 2009; Ericson 1989; Wright 2019). Of all these groups, the public relations profession is widely regarded to have developed expertise in influencing the production of news and, by most accounts, the strength of its influence on journalism continues to grow (Macnamara 2016). While in some ways reflecting on the role of PR in shaping news production is an old debate, the new patterns and news production practices explored in Chap. 4 point to an important change in the replication and recycling of content due to digital aggregation and curation. Digital practices, including SEO (search engine optimization), mean that PR-influenced content reaches an even wider audience, making it highly relevant to continue to question the role of PR in the production of news. For this reason, I have chosen to take a closer look at public relations as an important example of the professionalised practices of sources who seek to influence and manage the news agenda, and as an example of how the balance of power between journalists and sources works in practice.

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Public Relations as a News Source Professionalised PR is practised in all walks of life from government, political parties, and public institutions to NGOs, interest groups, charities, universities, and any organisation that has the resources to promote and protects its own agenda. The PR industry has grown in strength and size and employed progressively professionalised strategies to control journalists’ access to news sources and to appeal to media logic. In this sense, media logic is the idea that there are standardised formats for news production and that journalists require source material to be able to fit into these formats (Altheide and Snow 1979). A recent survey shows the PR and communications industry in the UK continues to grow each year with 99,900 employees in 2021 (up from 86,000  in 2018) (PCRA 2021). In contrast, the political economy of the news media charts an industry whose traditional business model has collapsed, where funding for news production has fallen, the number of journalists and specialist correspondents has declined, and there is a concurrent surge in demand for content due to the demands of digitally-distributed news (McChesney 2012; Davies 2008). In recent years there have been fewer people employed in the journalism industry than in PR, although the balance is now levelling out. The latest NCJT report estimates there are 108,000 journalists in the UK, up from 96,000  in 2020 and a big increase on the 2018 level of 78,000 (Spilsbury 2018, 2022). The political economic factors structuring the relationship between PR and journalism have driven an increasing level of scholarly concern about the consequences of PR in relation to the independence and autonomy of journalism and the news media. The issue is that in the balance of power between journalists and sources, a weakened news media makes for more powerful PR.  But what are these weaknesses and how do they play into the hands of PR? Studies have long exposed the trend of ‘more for less’ where fewer journalists are expected to produce more content (Starkman 2010). More than a decade since investigative journalist Nick Davies’ book drew attention to the problem of churnalism, not only do newsrooms have even fewer journalists in them, but digital practices to maximize clicks/traffic compromise the way in which journalists select stories and angles by encouraging the production of quantity over quality, speed over accuracy, and popular content over news in the public interest (Welbers et  al. 2016; Petre 2015; Firmstone and Whittington 2021). Churnalism is the practice of journalists ‘churning’ out recycled information sourced from press releases, other public relations content, news agency copy, or content already published by other media rather than producing original news content (Van Leuven 2019). Having to produce more material than ever only serves to exacerbate the dependence of journalists on PR as a key supplier of content and heightens the likelihood that journalists will replicate ‘second-­ hand’ content without checking and verifying it.

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PR as an Information Subsidy At this stage it would help to explain how the exchange in the interdependent relationship between PR and journalists works to shape journalists’ sourcing practices. As per Gans’ information subsidy concept, PRPs supply content which reduces the amount of time journalists need to invest in producing a story (including finding and researching it). Source material includes reports, surveys, polls, quotes, press releases, advertorials, and readymade news articles. In exchange, journalists supply PRPs with access to the public, which focuses audience attention on information and messages crafted to the needs of their clients. PR strategies can influence which issues get included in news agendas (agenda setting), how issues are framed and, in some cases, PR sources determine the entire content of a news article including its tone and framing. In some cases, generic press releases are published verbatim. In more sophisticated strategies which put a significant proportion of communicative power into the hands of PR, carefully crafted readymade articles replicate a journalistic style, are customised for individual publications and deliver pre-framed content direct to individual journalists in what Jackson and Moloney (2016) say goes beyond information subsidies to provide ‘editorial subsidies’. Although most research has focused on detecting PR material in newspapers, the undisclosed use of video news releases (VNRs) in television news is also widespread, particularly in the USA, as exposed by the Centre for Media and Democracy (Tewksbury et al. 2011). Here, I want to draw attention to the role of news agencies in this process. As a key supplier of news content to journalists, agencies should be included in debates about churnalism. As was explored in Chap. 4 on Routines and Practices, the simple replication of agency copy devalues news by adding to a lack of content diversity and increasing the homogeneity of news (Nicholls 2019). Additionally, because the sourcing practices of agency journalists are equally as reliant on PR content as other journalists, news agencies are a “de facto distributor of public relations material” (Forde and Johnston 2013: 113). The ‘triumvirate’ of news content production that occurs between PR, journalists and news agencies means that unattributed PR content may indirectly enter news content via agency copy without journalists even realising it (Forde and Johnston 2013), thereby multiplying the opportunities for PR content to get into news coverage (Lewis et al. 2006).

Why Should We Care About the Influence of PR on Journalism? Before we move on, it is pertinent to ask why we should care about the influence of PR on journalism. Concerns about the growing interdependence between journalists and PR and the systematic incorporation of public relations into journalists’ sourcing routines are longstanding, with studies as far back as 1926 showing that US newspapers contained significant quantities of PR

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material (Schudson 1978; Macnamara 2014). Drawing attention to these practices and popularising the term ‘churnalism’ to describe them, Davies invigorated the debate about the negative consequences of a perceived loss of journalistic control to an increasingly professionalised and resource-rich public relations industry (Davies 2008). Providing evidence from a content analysis of UK print and television news by Lewis and colleagues, Davies exposed what was, at the time, the shocking proportion of recycled, repackaged, or ‘prepackaged’ material originating from PR or news agency copy in news reports (Lewis et al. 2008; Davies 2008). The analysis found “at least 41 per cent of press articles and 52 per cent of broadcast news items contain PR materials which play an agenda-­setting role or where PR material makes up the bulk of the story (although broadcast news items are much more likely to involve the former)” (Lewis et al. 2008: 10). Davies and others position the influence of PR on news production as a threat to the ability of the news media to act in the public interest and as a threat to independent journalism and democratic processes (Jackson and Moloney 2016; McChesney 2012; Lewis et  al. 2008; Davies 2008; Greenslade 2012; Davis 2019). We now take a moment to look at how these threats are conceived before moving on to look in more depth at how PR practices shape news production. One concern is that PR material passed off as journalistically-produced news lacks transparency, raising ethical concerns about the ability of audiences to judge the quality of the information they receive. Even media-literate audiences are led to believe that such content is the result of a journalistic process with the accompanying expectations for news to be truthful, fair, balanced and accurate. Returning to the question of who has power over content, replicating PR content limits journalists’ editorial independence in two ways: journalists have limited control over PR content and the content is constructed to prioritise the interests of PR clients instead of the broader interests of the public. The concept of ‘who’ is crucial in helping us to understand the issues at stake: who has power over news content, and who controls journalists’ access to the information and sources they need to produce news? Critiques highlight that because PR and journalism work towards different agendas there is a conflict of interest between the competing aims and objectives of journalists and PRPs. As Franklin’s observation illustrates, the purposes of the two actors are in conflict because PRPs are “not detached observers and reporters of the world, but hired prize fighters, advocates and defenders of whichever sectional interest employs them” (Franklin 1997: 20). In contrast, as explored in Chap. 5, the professional norms and values of journalism position journalists as acting in the public interest, aiming to educate and inform through practices designed to produce accurate, truthful, balanced and fair information. Juxtapose these aims with those of PR which aims to inform in order to advocate in the interests of its clients, who are often government actors, politicians, or corporate organisations, and with PR often accused of unethical practices, including distortion of the truth, and the tensions are clear. PR is fundamentally promotional and designed to generate attention to particular issues in the interests of those the

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issue serves, while normative theory and professional role orientations attribute the news media and journalists a public service orientation. For Lewis and colleagues, “the line between journalism and PR, between factual reporting and partisan narrative, becomes blurred” and this has a detrimental impact on the quality and independence of the British news media (Lewis et al. 2008: 2). Despite these concerns, we should note that PR is just one of many tensions in news production that shapes how the professional norms and ideals of journalism play out in practice. There are also arguments in defence of PR, such as public information models of PR which try to move conceptualisations of the role of PR away from associations with propaganda to “define PR as truthful presentation of information to publics, dialogue, and building and maintaining relationships between organizations and their publics and stakeholders” (Grunig et al. 2006: cited in Macnamara 2016). Referring to the poor reputation of PR, Macnamara argues we need to “recognise and address the ‘split personality’ of PR, part of which is responsible and even socially necessary, while the other ‘side’ requires remedial intervention” (Macnamara 2016:136).

The PR-journalist Relationship as a Source of Influence Although much of what we know about the relationship between journalism and PR is based on studies of news content, analysing news coverage can only ever provide us with a limited indication of the outcome of the broader process of structural and professional change that many have called the ‘PR-isation’ of the news media (Jackson and Moloney 2016; Macnamara 2016). Invisible relationships and interactions between journalists and PRPs play a significant role in shaping news decisions about what topics to cover, who to interview, and what material to include. Just as importantly as getting messages into the news, media relations strategies can also involve subverting issues to prevent them from reaching the public. There is, however, a difficulty with evidencing the impact of PR sourcing practices because by its very nature much PR activity is untraceable and goes undetected (Reich 2010). Despite there being over 200 studies of the relationship since the 1960s, the field of PR practice is poorly understood (Macnamara 2016) and there is “no coherent picture of this complex interaction” (Koch et  al. 2020: 1575). The key question of where the balance of power rests in the relationship between journalists and sources remains only partially answered. As we will now see, in asking one of the most important questions raised in this chapter—how does the PR-journalism relationship shape news?—it is perhaps safest to conclude that the answer is complex.

How Does the PR-journalism Relationship Shape News? We now turn to consider what research tells us about how the PR-journalism relationship shapes news. Findings can be grouped into four conclusions: the relationship is contingent on various contextual determinants; perceptions of

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the extent to which PR influences journalists’ work vary depending on whose perspective is considered (journalists or PRPs); news management strategies can place the balance of power in favour of PR; and significant changes in the media landscape are reconfiguring the relationship. 1. Contextual factors: Evaluating what we know about the visibility of PR in news content suggests that contextual factors result in significant variations in the extent to which PR content shapes or wholly forms news copy, with estimates varying between 25% and 80% (Cameron et al. 1997). Content analyses show variations between countries, beats, and news organisations suggesting that the use of PR content is contingent on a range of factors which determine whether a news organisation is more or less likely to need to take advantage of information subsidies provided by PR and news agencies. These include differences in levels of resources available for newsgathering at different types of news outlets (quality, newspaper, broadcast, digital, public service, commercial), resources allocated to news beats, and the political economic context of journalism. For example, replication of PR content appears to be a significant problem in the UK, USA, and Australia where the economics of news are suffering, but is less so in countries where resources for original reporting have been less affected by changes in the political economy of news organisations. The analysis noted earlier that informed Davies’ critique remains the most comprehensive in the UK (Lewis et al. 2008). Similar research found 55% of newspaper stories driven by PR in Australia (Crikey 2010) and 40-50% of newspaper stories derived from press releases in the USA (McChesney and Nichols 2010). In contrast, there is a smaller prevalence of PR in the Netherlands (10% of newspaper articles and 16% of news wire articles) and Belgium (11.1% of articles) (Boumans 2018; Van Leuven et al. 2014). Regarding the use of PR in digital content, an analysis of the ten most popular news websites in Greece found 21.3% of content used originated from press releases (Saridou et al. 2017). When it comes to the use of news agency copy, there are fewer differences between countries, with research detecting agency copy in higher proportions than PR copy overall. Almost half of the press stories in the UK study appeared to come wholly or mainly from news agency services (Lewis et al. 2008). Other patterns show that the use of PR material is more commonplace in the routines of certain news beats such as health, business, entertainment (Lewis et  al. 2008), soft news (Obermaier et al. 2018) and travel (Hanusch 2012). Research has consistently shown that the least well-resourced news sectors such as local news are perceived to be more susceptible to subsidising news production with PR material (Jackson and Moloney 2016; Lewis et al. 2008). Areas where journalists are most reliant on experts and specialists create specific dependencies, illustrating the imbalance in power referred to earlier; for example, a lack of investment in science journalism has led to the increasing strength of science organisations and university PR in science journalism (Vogler and Schafer 2020). Here there is a clear connection between the prevalence of voices from sectors with ample resources to fund PR activities such as the pharmaceutical industry and those with limited resources such as small NGOs.

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At this point, we should reflect on the limitations of using measurements of the amount of PR in news content as a way of explaining the influence of PR.  Researchers employ a range of different methods to detect and classify non-original content, making it impossible to compare studies. As already noted, analysing content cannot explain the influence of sourcing practices that happen behind the scenes and can only provide a “partial overview of sourcing routines” (Van Hout and Van Leuven 2016:120). For example, many exchanges now take place in the private domain of emails rather than via publicly available press releases (Nicholls 2019). Having said that, content is the only explicit indicator we have so if we accept that content only reveals the tip of the iceberg then we can surmise that even more persuasion and influence is going on behind the scenes. 2. Contrasting perceptions: Surveys with journalists and PRPs tend to find contrasting perceptions of the level and type of influence that PRPs have on journalistic work (Koch et al. 2020; Macnamara 2016; Jackson and Moloney 2016; Davies 2008). Historically the relationship between journalists and PRPs has been antagonistic, with journalists tending to report negative attitudes towards PRPs based on the conflict of interests mentioned earlier, while PRPs perceive a more positive relationship (Neijens and Smit 2006). Despite their interdependence, critics claim that both professions are unwilling to admit that they are now so intertwined that neither could function in its current form without the other (Davis 2013; McNair 2011). In comparison to PRPs, journalists tend to give far lower estimates of the extent to which PR influences their work, engaging in what Macnamara calls a “discourse of denial” (Macnamara 2016: 123). In the UK, journalists perceive fewer of their stories to be influenced by PR (18-25%) than the amount estimated by PRPs (30%) (Davies 2008: 26). Other research suggests that PR may be becoming more influential, with German journalists estimating that about 30% of their own work is influenced by PR and perceiving ‘other’ journalists to be even more reliant on PR content (40%) (Obermaier et al. 2018). Journalists and PRPs also differ in their perceptions of how they work. While PRPs think that they mainly use ‘soft’ power bases such as providing useful information, adapting to journalistic routines and exerting influence through good relationships, journalists think that PRPs mainly use ‘hard’ power to exert pressure to influence coverage or to buy advertising space in return for news coverage (Koch et al. 2020: 1586). Despite structural changes to journalism from commercialisation and the resultant reductions in resources that appear to be working in favour of PR, not all PRPs perceive a shift in the balance of power away from journalism towards PR. Changes “in favour of PR at the macro level do not necessarily filter directly into practitioner experiences at the micro level” because the expansion of the PR industry creates greater competition among PRPs for access to the news (Jackson and Moloney 2016: 775). In other words, not all PRPs are the same and some PRPs are more influential than others. Indeed, Macnamara says more research is necessary in order to create a better understanding of the

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relationship between journalism and PR so as to “inform a rethinking of transparency and contribute to ethics and standards in both fields to help to maintain an effective public sphere” (Macnamara 2016: 136). 3. News management strategies: Increasingly aggressive news management strategies designed to restrict journalists’ direct access to sources weaken the power of journalists. The independence of journalists in accessing newsworthy information and interviewing sources such as public figures is vital for them to hold power to account, so when PR strategies attempt to control and limit this access, journalistic autonomy is under threat (Davis 2013). For example, in the specific domain of local news, the strategy of local councils to filter all contact with elected officials through a press office compromises the ability of journalists to hold local councillors to account (O’Neill and O’Connor 2008; Firmstone and Coleman 2015). 4. Implications of shifts in the media landscape: Now that we have a good understanding of the role of PR as a source, I want to highlight three important ways in which the dynamics of this interdependent relationship are shifting due to changes in the wider media landscape. First, PR may become less reliant on news outlets as a means of accessing audiences. While levels of public trust in social media are far lower than trust in legacy media (Gibson et al. 2022; Newman et  al. 2020), the status of the legacy news media as a prized channel of communication for PR is being undermined by falling levels of trust in the news media and journalism. The rise of social media means that PRPs can bypass the news media and communicate directly with audiences via various platforms that do not require mediation of the message through a journalistic process (Firmstone and Coleman 2015). Direct access to audiences through social media puts sources in a position of greater power because news is no longer the product of negotiation between journalists and sources. For example, “elite sources can obtain more control over public discourse due to Twitter” (Broersma and Graham 2013: 461). Indeed, in addition to PR, other sources including official sources are now enacting strategies to get their messages out into the public sphere without mediation by journalists. A second change is seen in tensions in the relationship between PR and news organisations, with some becoming dysfunctional to the point that political sources deny some news outlets access. For example various politicians, most notoriously Donald Trump, have sought to discredit the mainstream media as a trusted source of news and have instigated new source-media practices to restrict access to press conferences and interviews. In 2020 in the UK, prior to the Covid-19 crisis, members of the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s cabinet boycotted the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme and other established news outlets were denied access to Downing Street briefings (Mason and Sparrow 2020). Finally, thinking more broadly about who has control over the accuracy and quality of news content, journalists or sources, journalistic work to ensure that source material is accurate and verified is being made more difficult by an explosion of sources powered by digital media. Fake news, misinformation and disinformation require journalists to engage new fact checking

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skills. In addition, the proliferation of fake news further detracts from public trust in legacy journalism, devaluing its importance as a channel for PR.

The Move Towards Online Sourcing Practices—An Increasing Voice for Members of the Public as Sources? It is now time for us to consider another significant development in sourcing practices: the rise of social media and its consequences for who gets to be a source. As we have established, prior to social media, journalists’ routines favoured official sources and the presence of the voice of members of the public was limited. Techniques for sourcing news now routinely involve use of online sources and, in theory, this makes it easier for journalists to use a more diverse range of sources to construct a news story. This opportunity has been greeted with optimism about the potential for UGC (user-generated content), citizen journalism, and social media to add to the diversity of voices in the public sphere and end the dominance of official sources in news (Gillmor 2006). UGC could lead to an increase in non-elite voices and a ‘loss of control’ by elites (Hermida and Thurman 2008). Twitter offers a platform for a diversity of voices including people who are traditionally underrepresented in news. In turn the potential for source diversity broadens the opportunities for less common topics and issues to be addressed, thereby increasing content and source diversity (Broersma and Graham 2013; Moon and Hadley 2014). Given these opportunities, we now ask how information produced by individual members of the public shapes sourcing practices and influences what becomes news. To do this we return to the ‘Spectrum of Audience Participation’ that was introduced in Chap. 8. As illustrated by the spectrum (see Fig. 9.1), the public, as members of the audience, occupy multiple roles. Their role as a potential source is represented at the bottom of the spectrum as a visible and active form of participation. A range of digital opportunities has emerged for the public to contribute to the creation and production of news intentionally and directly. The consequences of these new opportunities are commonly interpreted through the lens of ‘participatory journalism’ and are associated with normative assumptions about the potential of such participation to democratise journalism and to empower citizens to engage in civic life to the benefit of society at large (Borger et al. 2013; Lawrence et al. 2018). The reconceptualization of the journalist audience relationship in theories of participatory journalism assumes that the public will have an active influence as ‘partners’, collaborators, and co-creators thereby rebalancing the relationship to one that is more equal and democratic (Goode 2009; Allan and Thorsen 2009). But what do we know about the empirical realities of how journalists, news organisations, and members of the public have responded to these opportunities? We should take a moment to define what we mean by the public. In relation to sourcing, we are interested in the role of non-elite ‘ordinary’ individual members of the public as news sources rather than ‘the public’ as a collective or

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Passive

Unintentional • Indirect • Inadvertent Audience practices (post production) = News choices/consumption

Invisible

Hybrid of consumption & production Semi-intentional

Audience practices (post production) = Sharing, commenting, feedback

Visible

Active

Intentional • Direct • Purposeful Audience practices (pre-production) = Producing news/information as a source that is incorporated into news by journalists

Visible

Fig. 9.1  Spectrum of audience participation

an imagined representation (Coleman and Ross 2010; Ekström and Tolson 2017; Firmstone and Corner 2017). Journalists engage with members of the public as news sources in many ways. For example, as a witness of an event, as a victim of crime, as someone who stands to be affected by the implementation of a new policy, or as a source of information about just about anything that a journalist might be writing a story about. Prior to the Internet, mobile phones and social media, members of the public had limited opportunities to act as news sources. Individuals were either contacted directly by a journalist, approached because they were present at an event or scene of breaking news, or had to contact a journalist directly to offer information they perceived to be newsworthy. Though we know little about how people acted as sources in these ‘offline’, analogue capacities, we know from content analyses that in quantitative terms members of the public feature rarely in the news (Brands et al. 2018; Kurpius 2002; Tiffen et al. 2014; Lecheler and Kruikemeier 2016). Thinking qualitatively, we know that in political news the public are used as

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sources in three ways: as representations of public opinion; to liven up stories, augment authenticity and make news more understandable through examples; and to create audience proximity and identification with the content (Firmstone and Corner 2017; Hopmann and Shehata 2011).

How Do Members of the Public Influence News Production as a Source? If we take it as given that members of the public play a bigger role in the production of news than they did pre-social media, the next logical question to ask is what difference does this make? What do we know about how journalists, news organisations, and the public have responded to these opportunities? Does the potential for the public to provide source material for news change the power balance in the relationship between journalists and the public as a source? Does it allow the public a role in what gets into the news as gatekeepers? Is the voice of the public heard more often in news, thereby contributing to source and content diversity? To explore these questions, we now look to the findings of a vast body of research that has charted these opportunities since the mid 2000s. Studies establish beyond doubt that members of the public now produce news and information that feeds into news about major events across the globe (Thorsen and Allan 2014; Allan and Thorsen 2009). Content produced by the public has become an essential and normalised part of news gathering (Wall 2015; Usher 2017) and news gathering practices have been adapted to include routines for sourcing and filtering such content. Journalists and news organisations have developed new skills, guidelines, and training for using social media, UGC and citizen journalism as a source. This body of research reflects chronological developments in technology, meaning that findings are clustered around a set of initial studies that focused on the main ways that the public contributed to news in the 2000s via UGC and citizen journalism (see discussion of these terms in Chap. 8) followed by a more recent body of work that investigates journalists’ use of social media as a source, particularly the now standard use of tweets instead of verbal quotes. In the remaining part of the chapter, we consider two consistent themes that emerge from this research: 1) that online sources are used as a supplement to rather than a replacement for offline sources; and 2) that selection routines continue to favour elite voices (Lecheler and Kruikemeier 2016; Von Nordheim et al. 2018).

Theme 1: The Continuation of Information Subsidies— Supplementing Not Replacing Research shows that the main role for information produced by members of the public is as a supplement (rather than a replacement) for professionally gathered news in situations where journalists cannot gather information

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themselves. Citizen journalism and UGC established itself as a key source during a handful of crisis events in the mid-2000s. The new technical capabilities of mobile phones at the time to record video and send photos allowed journalists to incorporate blogs by members of the public situated within war zones or other restricted areas, first-hand accounts and perspectives on crisis events or breaking news such as terrorist attacks, bombings, shootings, earthquakes, and other extreme weather events, into news. The ability for people to provide information that journalists simply cannot get access to any other way has led news organisations to invest in and develop strategies and resources to find, receive, verify, and incorporate UGC into everyday news coverage. In the specific realm of crisis reporting, newsrooms and journalists have moved from a position of caution and suspicion in their treatment of ‘amateur’ produced information, to one where contributions from individuals have been normalised by journalists and are accepted by audiences (Allan and Thorsen 2009). More recently, posts from members of the public on social media are valued predominantly in situations where journalists cannot access information by other means. In particular, members of the public can play a vital role in verifying information, fact checking or debunking false information (Zeng 2021). We should note, however, that apart from crises and breaking news situations, UGC is not commonly incorporated into news production (Jönsson and Örnebring 2011; Usher 2017; Williams et al. 2011). Even when citizen journalism is incorporated into a professional news report, this does not afford the public a greater influence over news agendas or change the power dynamic in the audience-journalist relationship. Journalists remain in control over decisions about the news agenda and about the way that content sourced from the public is contextualised and distributed. Because professional journalists turn the raw material provided by the members of the public into the final news product, public contributions subsidise traditional journalistic functions rather than replace them (Shirky 2009). Journalists therefore perceive the public to be a resource that can supplement news creation as a source of news rather than as equal participants in its creation (Carlsson and Nilsson 2015; Williams et al. 2011; Hujanen 2016; Hermida 2011; Singer et al. 2011; Wall 2015).

Theme 2: Social Media—Increasing the Voice of the Public or Replicating the Dominance of Elites? Having provided a very brief historical context of how individuals have become more active sources, we now look more closely at the opportunities afforded by social media such as Twitter. Social media offers journalists a valuable alternative information network with access to a diverse range of non-elite sources. In particular, Twitter “opens up journalism to new voices, topics and publics” (Broersma and Graham 2013: 448). Over the last decade, Twitter has risen from being an important source for stories for more than half of UK journalists in 2011 (Broersma and Graham 2013) to being used by 91% of US journalists

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(Von Nordheim et  al. 2018). Yet research suggests that simply integrating Twitter into news gathering as an additional source has not overcome the issue of the dominance of elite sources and the limited ways in which the voices of ‘ordinary people’ feature in news (Brands et al. 2018; Moon and Hadley 2014; Lecheler and Kruikemeier 2016). Other research shows that though the use of Twitter may increase the quantity of references to members of the public in the news, old patterns of representation remain. For example, the public as sources are most commonly found in crime news, and most often as victims or witnesses, and they have little or no say in political or economic news (Hladík and Štětka 2017). Figures in the Netherlands show a continued dominance of elite voices, with 72% of tweets in political news coming from politicians and only 16% from members of the public (Brands et al. 2018). The use of non-elite sources by journalists in the USA, Germany and UK did not increase over a 12 year period, with elites cited twice as often as non-elites (Von Nordheim et al. 2018). Where the voice of the public is heard, it is mainly featured as vox populi, to give a sense of public responses to the issue being reported (with references to the issue usually giving prominence to elite sources) or as eyewitnesses and rarely sets agendas for news articles (Broersma and Graham 2013; Lecheler and Kruikemeier 2016; Hladík and Štětka 2017; Brands et  al. 2018). Such findings position social media as adding to existing critiques of vox pops as a way of representing voices of members of the public, casting doubt over the role of social media in providing a new way for non-elite voices to be heard. Vox pops have long been criticised as restricting the voice of the public to one of a passive source used to illustrate categories of opinions and identities rather than to position members of the public as agents of expertise or demonstrate their knowledge as engaged citizens (Kleemans et  al. 2015; Ekström and Tolson 2017; Firmstone and Corner 2017). Thinking more broadly about online sources, a review of recent studies concludes that “online sourcing techniques do not lead to a more diverse, public-centred way of reporting the news” (Lecheler and Kruikemeier 2016: 163). In sum, social media sourcing techniques continue to favour official sources and use non-elite tweets to illustrate existing narratives.

Questioning the Value of the Public as a News Source Why then has online sourcing failed to diversify sourcing practices? A combination of factors in the supply of and demand for members of the public as sources limits their influence as active and deliberate sources of news. On the demand side, from the perspective of journalists and new organisations there are problems with UGC and social media that limit how it can be used. These include concerns about the quality, reliability, credibility, and motivations underpinning content produced by members of the public. If we think back and contrast individual members of the public to the other news source that we considered earlier in the chapter—public relations—we find that individual members of the public are rarely perceived as ‘trusted and valuable’ sources.

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Long before Twitter (which launched in 2006), journalists were cautious about using Internet sources due to concerns about accuracy and credibility and problems with verification. Research with journalists consistently finds concerns relating to the potential of public produced information to threaten professional norms and values. The rise in misinformation and disinformation, regularly evidenced by high profile cases of inaccurate tweets, has only served to intensify the need to verify and establish the credentials of tweets from members of the public. Drawing on my experience of studying local news production, journalists point to the need for caution in using material produced by citizens, including information given by individuals on Twitter, due to the perception that individuals are biased and pursue their own agendas rather than agendas in the broader public interest (Firmstone and Coleman 2014). My research echoes other studies which find scepticism about the value of citizen-­ produced content motivates journalists to exercise control over the quality of content and protect professional values and norms through their traditional gatekeeping role (Brants and De Haan 2010; Singer et al. 2011; Hermida and Thurman 2008; Lasorsa et al. 2012; Singer 2010; Heise et al. 2014; Hujanen 2013; Raeymaeckers et al. 2015). Journalists do not want to ‘relinquish control’ (Usher 2017; Witschge 2010) and act to maintain their journalistic authority and boundaries (Carlson 2017; Josephi 2016; Carlson and Lewis 2015). Carlson argues that much of the way that journalistic routines respond to new opportunities presented by digital media are shaped by journalists’ perceptions of them as a threat to the jurisdiction of journalism as a profession. Another explanation of why increased opportunities to be a news source have not resulted in a greater proportion of public voices in the news relates to the supply side. Members of the public must be active in producing content and information for it to be sourced by journalists, and the majority of the public simply does not have such a relationship with news (Borger et al. 2013; Lee-Wright et al. 2010; Nielsen and Schrøder 2014). There are variations in what members of the public want to contribute and limits to how much they value participation (Karlsson et al. 2017). As we have already seen in the discussion of opportunities for audiences to participate in news via comments and sharing in Chap. 8, despite the opportunity, most people still consume news in a one-way relationship and are not motivated to act as sources (Costera Meijer and Groot Kormelink 2015). Indeed, Van Dijck highlights, “Notions of ‘participatory culture’ tend to accentuate the emancipation of the engaged citizen, who unleashes her need for self-expression and creativity onto the digital spaces created expressly for this purpose” (Van Dijck 2009: 54), but in reality this is not what happens. Furthermore, there are reasons to question the potential of social media to even out inequalities in access to the news for sources. We see that although social media significantly amplifies journalists’ capacity to represent the interests of their audience as a means of gathering public opinion, improvements in representation that arrive via digital media are potentially exclusionary as they do not extend to the digitally disenfranchised or inactive (Firmstone 2016). As

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was the case when the only opportunity for individuals to contribute to newspapers was through writing a letter to the editor (Coleman and Ross 2010), those who actively participate in news production are self-selecting, which raises questions of how accurately they represent other members of the public. To summarise, nearly a decade on, the findings of one of the first studies of how UGC was used by journalists remains true: “Overwhelmingly journalists have remained journalists and audiences are still audiences, and truly collaborative relations between the two groups remain rare exceptions” (Williams et al. 2011. p.96).

Conclusion—It’s All About Value By comparing two very different actors in the source-journalist relationship we have seen that patterns identified by early studies of sourcing remain. The less professionalised and well-resourced an actor, the less significant their role in shaping news production because they are less likely to be positioned to provide information that journalists perceive to be valuable. We have seen that the value of a source is structured by two concepts: Gans’s (1979) traditional idea of information subsidies and Carlson’s (2017) concept of boundary maintenance. When less powerful actors such as members of the public are able to provide information that journalists cannot obtain elsewhere, such as in crises, members of the public become valuable sources. In other situations where journalists perceive that information provided by members of the public does not support the production of news according to journalistic norms and values, it is not seen as a valuable subsidy and is viewed as a threat to boundary maintenance. As a result, members of the public as a source are perceived as a double-­edged sword—both as a useful contributor and as a potential threat. Although digital media allow audiences to be more active as sources than in the past, we can conclude that the role of ordinary members of the public continues to be limited and digital media does not lead to significantly greater visibility or a more powerful voice for non-elites in the news. As I indicated earlier, there is some increased diversity ‘at the edges’ and in relation to certain types of content, but so far, the power balance is largely unchanged, with gatekeeping remaining in the hands of journalists. We have also seen how tensions in the potentially contradictory objectives of each actor in the journalist source relationship and inequalities in resources raise concerns, alongside factors discussed in other chapters, for the democratic qualities of news. In the particular case of PR, content that has been prompted, shaped, or in some cases 100% constructed by PR, raises questions about transparency and trust because audiences are misled that content has been produced through a journalistic process. Though professionalised, powerful actors such as public relations professionals clearly play a significant role in shaping the selection, content, and writing of news, there are indications that the proliferation of alternative ways to access audiences mean that news sources have less of a need to communicate through established news organisations. Powerful

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sources that have learnt to appeal to media logic may also learn to harness the power of other media such as social media as ways of accessing audiences. Looking to the future, sources must recognise that media logic is changing, with decisions about the selection of issues and stories increasingly based on measurements of digital traffic and algorithms—from this perspective, might the once important relationship between journalists and PRPs become obsolete? Or, more likely, will powerful political and corporate interest groups revise their PR strategies in an attempt to exert a shaping influence on news to take account of these new selection strategies?

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Raeymaeckers, K., Deprez, A., De Vuyst, S. & De Dobbelaer, R. 2015. The Journalist as the Jack of All Trades. In: Vos, T. P. & Heinderyckx, F. O. (Eds.) Gatekeeping in Transition (pp. 104–120). New York, Routledge. Reich, Z. 2010. Measuring the impact of PR on published news in increasingly fragmented news environments. Journalism Studies, 11, 799–816. Ross, K., Boyle, K., Carter, C. & Ging, D. 2018. Women, men and news: it’s life, jim, but not as we know it. Journalism Studies, 19, 824–845. Saridou, T., Spyridou, L.-P. & Veglis, A. 2017. Churnalism on the rise? Digital Journalism, 5, 1006–1024. Schlesinger, P. & Tumber, H. 1994. Reporting Crime: The Media Politics of Criminal Justice, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Schudson, M. 1978. Discovering The News: A Social History of American Newspapers, New York, Basic Books. Schudson, M. 2011. The Sociology of News, New York, W.W. Norton & Company. Shirky, C. 2009. Not An Upgrade—An Upheaval [Online]. https://www.catounbound.org/2009/07/13/clay-shirky/not-upgrade-upheaval/. [Accessed]. Sigal, L. 1986. Sources Make the News. In: Mannoff, R. K. & Schudson, M. (Eds.) Reading the News. New York, Pantheon Books. Sigal, L. V. 1973. Reporters and Officials, Lexington, Mass, DC Heath. Singer, J. B. 2010. Quality control. Journalism Practice, 4, 127–142. Singer, J.  B., Hermida, A., Domingo, D., Heinonen, A., Paulussen, S., Quandt, T., Reich, Z. & Vujnovic, M. 2011. Participatory Journalism: Guarding Open Gates at Online Newspapers, Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell. Soloski, J. 1989. News reporting and professionalism: some constraints on the reporting of news. Media, Culture & Society, 11, 207–28. Spilsbury, M. 2018. Journalists at Work: Their Views on Training, Recruitment and Conditions. NCTJ, https://www.nctj.com/downloadlibrary/JaW%20Report%20 2018.pdf Spilsbury, M. 2022. Diversity In Journalism. NCTJ, https://Www.Nctj.Com/ Wp-Content/Uploads/2022/05/Diversity-In-Journalism-2022.Pdf. Starkman, D. 2010. The hamster wheel. Columbia Journalism Review 1–9. Tewksbury, D., Jensen, J. & Coe, K. 2011. Video news releases and the public: the impact of source labeling on the perceived credibility of television news. Journal of Communication, 61, 328–348. Thorsen, E. & Allan, S. 2014. Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives. Volume 2, New York, Peter Lang. Tiffen, R., Jones, P.  K., Rowe, D., Aalberg, T., Coen, S., Curran, J., Hayashi, K., Iyengar, S., Mazzoleni, G., Papathanassopoulos, S., Rojas, H. & Soroka, S. 2014. Sources in the news: a comparative study. Journalism Studies, 15, 374–391. Tumber, H. 1999. News: A Reader, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Tunstall, J. 1971. Journalists at Work: Specialist Correspondents: Their News Organisations, News Sources and Competitor-Colleagues, London, Constable. Usher, N. 2017. The appropriation/amplification model of citizen journalism. Journalism Practice, 11, 247–265. Van Dijck, J. 2009. Users like you? Theorizing agency in user-generated content. Media, Culture & Society, 31, 41–58. Van Hout, T. & Van Leuven, S. 2016. Investigating ‘Churnalism’ in Real-Time News. In: Franklin, B. & Eldridge, S. (Eds.) The Routledge Companion to Digital Journalism Studies, London, Routledge.

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CHAPTER 10

Conclusion

In this book, I have attempted to indicate and explore the range of key factors that have an important effect in shaping news production practices and the contexts in which they operate. Exploring these factors in depth, using examples, and considering the changing conditions of news production, the book has signalled how similarities and variations in news can be explained and accounted for. In the first part of this conclusion, I review the explorations and arguments of the book in terms of the principal themes emerging from my critical synthesis of research. In the second half, I point to the most pressing directions for future research to improve our understanding of news and the factors that shape it. Based on my reflections while writing the book, I devote a significant part of the discussion about future directions to proposing that the current lack of diversity in journalism and news content demands that researchers, journalists and news organisations re-evaluate the opportunities for individual journalists to shape news. Finally, I close the chapter by suggesting how to structure and approach future analyses of the factors that shape news.

Key Themes in Explaining and Analysing the Factors that Shape the Production of News Theme 1: Explaining News as the Product of Multiple Spheres of Influence That news is the product of a multiplicity of shaping factors is the premise and overarching theme of the book as well as a central organising concept structuring the order of its chapters. Using a conceptual framework for analysing influences on the production of news as an explanatory tool, the chapters have explored the main question: how can we understand and analyse the factors that influence the production of news and the implications they have in © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Firmstone, The Shaping of News, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21963-4_10

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shaping the democratic qualities of news? Chap. 2 explained why it is important to ask this question in relation to the democratic role of news. Based on a macro level mapping of the most prevalent ways in which scholars have researched and theorised the production of news, Chap. 3 introduced the framework that structured my critical reflections and analyses of influences on news in the rest of the book (see Fig.  10.1). Beginning by considering the established and emerging routines and practices that constitute news production practices (sourcing; selection; writing) in Chap. 4, the next five chapters explored the ways in which those routines and practices are shaped by their relationship and interactions with a range of factors that are visualised as five

Intrinsic spheres

Extrinsic spheres

Journalism norms, values, and role perceptions

News audiences

culture & technology

culture & technology

Journalism ethics News sources

culture & technology

culture & technology

The news organisation culture & technology

News production practices Sourcing — Selection — Writing culture & technology

News content, news content, news content, News content, news content, news content. Fig. 10.1  Framework for analysing influences on the production of news

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spheres of influence in the framework: three spheres are intrinsic to producing news—journalism norms, values, and role perceptions (Chap. 5); journalism ethics (Chap. 6); and the news organisation (Chap. 7)—and two spheres have traditionally been seen as external to news production—news audiences (Chap. 8); and news sources (Chap. 9). Each chapter has engaged with debates, observations and empirical research about news production and journalism to explore the dynamics of how each of the spheres shapes the routines and practices of news production, and the content that results. In addition, the chapters have considered the role of culture and technology as integral to each of the spheres. Theme 2: Explaining News Production Practices as a Complex Interplay between Multiple Influences In addition to considering news as the product of multiple spheres of influence it is important to understand how these influences interact with one another. Although the chapters have explored each sphere of influence as analytically distinct, illustrating the significant shaping role of each sphere in its own right, they have also demonstrated that various sources of influence overlap and operate in conjunction with each other, with news and the practices that produce it being the product of a strong degree of interplay between the contributing factors. While explaining news in this is way is by no means new (Benson 2004; Shoemaker and Reese 1996; Shoemaker and Reese 2014; Cottle 2003; Vliegenthart and Van Zoonen 2011) (see Chap. 3), the book’s critical exploration of empirical research provides an exposition of how these interconnections work in practice, particularly in relation to recent changes in news and journalism (see Chap. 2 for an overview of these changes). Here I have been most interested in understanding the connections between shaping factors and exploring and how research about these interactions helps to explain why news is like it is rather than the impossible task of evaluating the strength of the factors relative to each other. As we return to below, the dynamics within and between each sphere of influence have consequences for the qualities of news, with some of these interactions creating tensions between the competing interests that journalists must balance in their everyday work. Theme 3: Explaining News Production as Context Dependent The book has also demonstrated that variations in the context of each sphere of influence create differences and similarities in the way that news is produced. Examining a broad range of empirical research has highlighted that differing cultural and organisational contexts create significant differences in the ways that the spheres of influence operate to shape news. Here, chapters have noted the significance of differences in the political and economic aims and intentions of commercial news organisations operating in the free market and public service media funded by the public, plus the important differences in the national

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cultural contexts created by political, legal and regulatory systems that shape the ability of media to fulfil certain roles. Much of the background to this context dependency was discussed in Chaps. 5, 6, and 7, showing that journalists’ ability to enact and perform roles is highly dependent on social, organisational, political, and economic contexts, meaning that these contexts must be taken into account in order to explain news production (cf. Hanitzsch and Vos 2017; Hellmueller and Mellado 2015; Humprecht and Esser 2018; Örnebring 2016). Theme 4: Explaining the Role of Technology The examples explored in this book demonstrate that the influence of technology is best understood as contingent on the way it is responded to by journalists, news organisations, audiences, and sources. On its own, technology does not shape news production practices, news content, or guarantee change. Taken in isolation, technology has little explanatory value. Just because a technology creates a capability does not mean that it will be embraced. In particular, the ‘fit’ of technology with an organisation’s aims and objectives plays a key role in determining how innovations and opportunities offered by new technology are integrated into practices. For instance, integrating transparency practices into online news (Chap. 5), the use of audience analytics to guide news selection (Chaps. 4 and 7), and engagement with audiences in comments and as sources (Chaps. 8 and 9). Audience responses to the participatory opportunities offered by social and digital media are shaped by social contexts, e.g. audiences continue to have a mostly one-way relationship with news as consumers and see few reasons to participate in news production, which they see as the responsibility of journalists (Chaps. 8 and 9). Theme 5: Analysing Influences on News in Relation to Democratic Quality The book has gone beyond simply identifying a set of factors that shape news production. It has reflected on the consequences of how these factors operate for the democratic quality of news in relation to both the democratic characteristics of news content and the impact of the structures within which news is produced and the processes they sustain. In analysing how each factor shapes news with reference to key theories and concepts about how the sphere of influence operates, the chapters have highlighted the interplay and contingencies between spheres of influence, identified core tensions in the aims and objectives of news making, and has examined critiques and concerns to assess the outcomes of these dynamics as a shaping pressure on the work of journalists. Taking a normative perspective that questions the values that news should embody for the well-functioning of society (Blumler and Cushion 2013), the chapters have drawn attention to where there may be a divergence between the ideal roles of news and journalism in theory and actual practice.

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Theme 6: Tensions in News Production We have seen multiple ways in which the democratic quality of news is compromised throughout the book, but two core tensions between differing priorities in news production and the competing interests that journalists must balance in their everyday work are common themes: (i) Balancing the economic and political orientated priorities of news organisations with the normatively orientated priorities of the professional culture of journalism While we saw in Chap. 7 that news organisations and their priorities are clearly strong forces in shaping how practices are implemented and the kind of news journalists aim to produce, other influences combine at the site of the organisation, contributing to journalists’ practices and in some cases creating tensions. In particular, the tension between a journalist’s independence and autonomy to prioritise news decisions according to the normatively orientated priorities of the professional culture of journalism and the need to act in the interests of the news organisation creates conflicts of judgement (Breed, 1955). This tension has been a source of interest for journalism scholars for decades, particularly since the rise of commercialisation, with concerns that economic and political pressures from commercial news organisations that focus on market-­driven news and/or are free to be guided by partisan interests will override journalists’ autonomy to prioritise the norms and values of the profession of journalism. It is not always easy to see these pressures as separate since partisanship can be bound up with economic aims, e.g., as a marketing strategy to attract partisan audiences, and/or as an attempt to support parties and governments whose policies favour the media industry. In reality, these competing values are not binaries, and the situation is more complex, with journalists’ judgements comprising a calculated alignment that attempts to balance the various priorities at stake. (ii) The balance between maintaining the authority and jurisdiction of journalists’ professional control over content versus the democratising potential afforded by participatory opportunities One of the biggest shifts in the dynamics of influences on news in recent years is the role played by audiences. The participatory potential of digital journalism creates opportunities to empower audiences and democratise news production to a far greater extent than in linear offline news. Chapter 8 presented a ‘Spectrum of Audience Participation’ which categorises the range of opportunities for audiences to participate in and contribute to news in relation to whether their participation is active or passive and what stage of the news production process audiences participate in (see Fig.  8.1 in Chap. 8). Opportunities range between active participation as sources of news via user-generated

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content (UGC) at one end of the spectrum, semi-intentional participation though engagement with news in comments sections, discussion forums, and as distributors, disseminators, and sharers of news via social media in the middle, to passive participation through the datafication of patterns of reception and consumption at the other end. As we saw in Chaps. 4, 8, and 9, these possibilities present new contexts, many of which challenge traditional ideas about the factors that shape the production of news, especially the balance of power between news producers and audiences in setting news agendas. News production has traditionally been structured around practices designed to demonstrate the authority and credibility of journalists to gain the trust of audiences. This shift is increasingly acknowledged by the ‘audience turn’ in journalism studies and means that it is important for future explanations of news to pay greater attention to the role of audiences. Theme 7: Changes in News Production Practices - An Expansion Over the course of the book, we have seen how values and practices guiding the selection, sourcing, and writing of news are constantly evolving in response to changes in audiences, technological opportunities, the diverse demands of news organisations and the practices of news sources as well as developments in social, cultural, political and economic contexts. Here, I want to draw attention to three themes that illustrate a key finding—that the repertoire of news production practices is expanding. 1. Looking at change has demonstrated that news production varies between news organisations, platforms, publications, formats, and cultural settings and is under constant revision. This confirms that conceptualisations of news production as determined by inflexible routines shared across news organisations are outdated, providing ‘grist to the mill’ to the case made in Chap. 3. It also suggests that continued research is necessary to evaluate the implications of developing news production practices. 2. Changes afforded by social and digital media mean that two post-­ production stages should be added to the existing stages of selection, sourcing, and writing. The first is distribution, with algorithms, audience analytics and practices of audience sharing increasingly shaping how news is distributed, including in ways outside the control of journalists and news organisations. The second is engagement—audiences increasingly expect journalists to engage with them in comments fields or through social media posts post-publication, extending the primary function of journalists (to provide society with up-to-date, timely information) to include follow-up communication and interaction with audiences (Loosen 2019). 3. Several of the changes examined serve predominantly to supplement rather than replace existing news production practices. For example,

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transparency practices supplement rather than replace practices guided by the objectivity norm (Chap. 5), information produced by audiences (UGC and other content) is used as a supplement for information gathered by journalists (Chap. 9), and, so far, algorithmically produced news supplements rather than replaces news produced by journalists (Chap. 4). The implications of new technology for the democratic value of news are dependent on the extent to which practices led by normatively valuable professional values are replaced or supplemented, and the way that new practices evolve in relation to these values.

Future Research Directions and Approaches Talking of change brings us to the next aim of the chapter—to highlight the most significant matters necessitating further research, and to propose ways to approach such investigations. Uncertainty and change in the conditions of news production demand that we continue to ask questions about the consequences of change for the contribution of news and journalism to the well-­ functioning of democracy. Reflecting on the issues explored in the book, I suggest the following four directions are important for future research. Future Research Direction 1: A More Diverse and De-Westernised Understanding of National Cultural Contexts As a significant distinguishing feature in explanations of news making, we need to broaden our understanding to a wider variety of national contexts outside the usual focus on the USA, UK, and other Western liberal contexts. In addition, more cross-nationally comparative research is vital to identify commonalities and variations in the way that spheres of influence operate in a diversity of differing country contexts. Ideally, the development of more qualitative cross-­ national comparisons would complement the quantitively orientated focus of much existing comparative research. Future Research Direction 2: A More Diverse Understanding of Organisational Contexts Within countries, we need to know more about the nuances and specifics of different organisational contexts. As stated in Chap. 7, as the site of news production, the news organisation is the domain where myriad features, internal and external to an organisation, coalesce to provide the organisational context of news production—the professional norms, values, and ethics of journalists, the routines and practices of news production, contributions from news sources, considerations of audiences, the place of the organisation in the media system, and its relationship with the political, economic, cultural, and social context. With much of how we understand the influence of news organisations limited by a research focus on national newspapers (and a Western context) we

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need to gain a better understanding of the vast range of different news outlets now characterising news markets, many of which have niche audiences and bespoke objectives to match. The characteristics of news markets are in flux with the disappearance of many local news providers, an increase in hyperlocal news, a move towards a more politicised news media including the expansion of partisan television news channels outside the USA, especially in the UK (e.g., GB News and TalkTV), and the popularity of new formats such as news podcasts (e.g., The News Agents) just a few of the current shifts. Given the variations in the aims and intentions of news organisations, future explanations should generate a fuller understanding of the characteristics of internal informal and formal organisational structures, including the organisational cultures that distinguish news organisations. Future Research Direction 3: A Better Understanding of Audience Expectations of the Role and Function of News and Journalism Ultimately, the implications of changes in practices for selecting and sourcing news such as aggregation, curation, algorithmically driven news and news driven by audience analytics raise fundamental questions that require further research to understand what audiences expect from news, how they want to engage with it and how they view the democratic responsibilities of journalism. In addition, as I suggest below, understanding news content from the perspective of audiences is an important part of taking a ‘joined up’ approach to evaluating the consequences of news production for the democratic qualities of news. Future Research Direction 4: An Updated and Revised Understanding of the Shaping Role of Individual Journalists, their Attributes and Experiences I now want to address an issue that has become increasingly important in my own reflections while writing the book: can journalists as individuals shape news, and how can the role of individuals be accounted for in explanations of news? These questions have only been dealt with in a small way elsewhere in the book, so here I want to take some time to explain why I think it is important for future research to find a way to give closer attention to the shaping role of individual experience and practice. There are a variety of logical reasons why journalists as individuals and their associated attributes such as age, gender, ethnicity, and class have not featured prominently in sociological explanations of news production. Not least is the difficulty of accounting for the multifarious characteristics of individuality that make it almost impossible to map individual variations at scale in the same way that other patterns of influence can be shown. Until relatively recently, the potential for difference based on individual background was also less marked, with journalism an almost exclusively male, white, upper-class domain. Most importantly, as has been made clear throughout the book, sociological

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explanations of news emphasise the influence of the collective identity of journalists as members of a professional culture in conjunction—and sometimes in conflict—with the aims and motivations of news organisations, suggesting that the strength of these patterns of influence outweigh those of the individual (Golding and Elliot 1979). Put simply, individuals do not (and cannot) make enough of a difference. Yet, as I return to below, we have also discussed examples where individual journalists do play a significant role in shaping news and the organisational context it is produced within, leading to the conclusion in Chap. 7 on The News Organisation that we should not view journalists as a homogenous group. I also proposed that future explanatory approaches should move away from what Cottle (2003) terms functionalist views of news making since these tend to emphasise a social system perspective and thereby reduce the role played by individuals. Paying more attention to journalists as individuals recognises that journalists exercise their own judgments in negotiating their role alongside those associated with the profession, the news organisation and the wider system (Morrison and Tumber 1988). Such an approach is also necessary because contemporary societal conditions compel us to pay more attention to individuals and their attributes in explanations of news. During the writing of this book, the potential for the experiences of individual journalists to make a difference to the quality of news representations has moved to the forefront of debates about the value of equality and diversity in news organisations. The Black Lives Matter Movement and the death of George Floyd prompted questions about the ability of a news media characterised by a lack of diversity to adequately reflect the diversity and plurality of society (Spilsbury 2022; Cherubini et al. 2021; Usher 2021). In the current context, audience expectations of news qualities may well be shifting to place greater value on lived experience and subjectivity, advocacy and emotion in news.

Why Is Diversity Important? Debates about the link between diversity and representation are driven by normative concerns that declining levels of trust are indicative of a growing gap between the public and the mainstream news media that threatens its credibility. According to the normative ideals associated with democratic quality we have discussed in the book it is important that the news media represent and reflect the differing concerns and interests of society (see Chap. 2). If the sources and issues in the news are not diverse enough to accurately represent the diversity of interests among the public then the news media’s ability to contribute to legitimising the social, economic and political structure is undermined, the viability of an inclusive public sphere is threatened, and trust in journalism will be eroded (Gans 1979; Soloski 1989; Kleemans et  al. 2015; Karppinen 2018; WEF 2021). But there is a gap between this ideal and practice because news representations commonly lack diversity. As noted in Chap. 8, the news needs of specific

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sections of society including women, ethnic minorities, and lower socio-economic groups are not well represented by the predominantly white, highlyeducated demographic of journalists (Merrill 2021; GMPP 2020) and the gendered nature of journalism (Ross and Carter 2011; Van Zoonen 1998). The voice of the public, non-elites, women, and people from minority backgrounds are far less likely to be heard in the news than male, white elites (Firmstone et al. 2009; Ross et al. 2018; Darrah and Haddou 2020; GMPP 2020). Patterns of under- and mis-representation exist in coverage of female politicians (Harmer 2021). Problematic representations of ethnic minorities undermine democratic qualities such as accuracy and fairness through mistakes in coverage (Granger 2020), omissions in critical angles and perspectives (WEF 2021), and inaccurate representations (Firmstone et al. 2009).

Can Individuals Make a Difference? One solution commonly proposed to address these problems is based on the hypothesis that increasing the diversity of journalists, particularly in editorial and management positions, will increase the diversity of news content and improve representations. Yet, for this to be plausible individual journalists must be able to bring their experiences and attributes to bear on the news production process—to make a difference. In this context, it is important to ask how individual journalists can shape news production. Throughout the book, evidence in this regard has been mixed. We have seen that individuals are strongly guided by the way they identify with the professional norms and values of journalism, as well as the priorities of their news organisation. But we have also seen that journalists vary in their capacity to act autonomously, with some, usually more senior individuals able to play an influential role in the maintenance or transformation of organisational culture, policies and implementation of new practices (Bunce 2019: 901; Firmstone 2009), more experienced and ‘star’ status journalists most able to transgress organisational policies (Gans 1979; Soloski 1989), and perceptions of autonomy increasing according to seniority (Örnebring et al. 2016; Sjøvaag 2013). When it comes to the role of personal characteristics and traits such as gender (the area where there has been most research), the evidence is ambiguous, even contradictory (Chambers et al. 2004). On the one hand, journalists’ conceptions of the professional values and ethical norms that guide their work do not differ by gender (Weaver 2007; Hanitzsch and Hanusch 2012). On the other hand, research points to the gendered nature of journalism: women differ in what they see as newsworthy, approach stories from different angles (men focus on facts and sensation, women look at backgrounds and effects), women use more diverse sources (men quote men, women quote both genders), and in relation to ethics, female journalists see themselves as more attentive to the needs of their audience than men, and see male journalists as taking a more detached approach, hiding behind the objectivity norm (Van Zoonen 1998).

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These distinctions in the way that women practice journalism continue to translate into differences in content. Women incorporate more female sources (34%) than men (25%) and are more likely to write on topics seen as of interest to women (34% vs 25%) (GMPP 2020: 49–50). Reporting on politics, women have more positive reporting styles, emphasise conflict values less, report on women’s issues more, and use stereotypical views of women less (Kim and Yoon 2009). Yet, increasing the proportion of female journalists in news organisations has little effect on the quantity or tone of coverage of women, even when there is an increase in female leaders (Shor et al. 2019). Overall, patterns in the underrepresentation of women in news content are continuing despite an overall rise in the proportion of stories written by women around the world (GMPP 2020; Darrah and Haddou 2020).

Explaining how Individual Journalists Make a Difference (or Not) There are several explanations for this relationship, all of which point to the dominant roles of organisational culture and the established norms and values of journalism in flattening out the effect of diversity. The socialisation of journalists into these cultures and the way that they limit autonomy constrain the opportunities individuals have to make a difference and shape the experiences of journalists in news organisations, often in a way that leads to discrimination. For instance, stereotyping and ‘pigeon-holing’ restricts the way that journalists’ values and experiences can make meaningful changes to dominant practices, e.g. when women are limited to producing ‘female’ orientated ‘soft’ news (North 2016), and when black journalists are restricted to reporting on issues relating to black communities (Pritchard and Stonbely 2007). Furthermore, female and ethnic minority journalists do not experience the workplace as somewhere where they can apply their identities to news production. Instead, women report needing to make compromises and calculated alignments—to act ‘like one of the boys’—in attempts to ‘fit in’ to masculine newsroom cultures, where professional norms are shaped by masculine values and challenging dominant orthodoxies is unlikely (Van Zoonen 1998; North 2009). Similarly, minority ethnic journalists describe leaving their identity ‘at the door’ in efforts to adapt to the organisations they work for, to ‘act’ like other journalists, and to conform to the normative behaviours of the profession (Awad Cherit 2008).

What Is Needed to Support Diversity in Journalism? These experiences suggest that if, as many have declared, news organisations want to achieve greater diversity through establishing a more diverse workforce, progressive organisational cultures are needed to support individuals to make a difference to practices, representations, and, more importantly, overall

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culture change (Awad Cherit 2008; Cherubini et al. 2021). Recruitment and retainment are key if a news organisation is to reach the ‘critical mass’ required in any profession for the minority to have some effect on the majority (the ‘tipping point’). Retaining journalists from diverse backgrounds and ensuring that they are able to progress to senior roles requires an organisational commitment to dismantling professional barriers such as those experienced by female journalists—abuse, violence and sexual harassment, unequal pay, and working practices that are incompatible with caring responsibilities (Barton and Storm 2018; North 2009).

What Does all of this Mean for how we Understand and Analyse Individuals as an Influence on the Production of News? The flattening of diversity in these ways should not come as a surprise, particularly given the understanding of influences on news we have developed in previous chapters. Why should we expect journalism to differ from other professions where it is considered that individual characteristics do not and should not undercut the core practices and codes of the profession, such as law and medicine? Previous chapters have demonstrated that news is produced in a specific organisational context which exerts a strong influence on the work of journalists and type of news produced (Cottle 2003; Örnebring 2016; Shoemaker and Reese 2014; Cowling 2017; Westlund and Ekström 2019). As noted in Chap. 5, news making is not an individual activity. Rather, the practice of producing news is collective, with other journalists, editors and news workers involved in the production of a news story, meaning that individual aims may be fragmented by the involvement of others (Mellado 2021; Weaver 2015). The role of individuals, including their characteristics and traits, in shaping news can therefore be seen as a secondary rather than a primary influence on news that can only be understood in the context of the news organisation individuals work within. If we want to account for the greater differentiation in news outputs that characterises the contemporary news ecology, future explanations of news should situate the role of individuals as part of a fuller understanding of the characteristics that distinguish news organisations (as suggested above in future research direction 2). Such a focus requires a better understanding of the role of informal and formal organisational structures and organisational cultures (see Chap. 7) in creating the conditions and contexts that determine the ways in which individuals can bring their personal characteristics and traits to the production of news. Here we need to know more about journalists’ experiences of the constraining and enabling roles played by organisational structures and cultures, including generating more nuanced understandings of journalists’ experiences of socialisation and autonomy. Further research should explore the relationship between these experiences, news production practices and news content.

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Structuring Approaches for Future Research In addition to providing a comprehensive way to structure reflections about the shaping role of each sphere of influence and the interconnections between them, the Framework for Analysing Influences on the Production of News (see Fig. 10.1) can be used to structure the design of future analyses and research. It is intended to provide a way to assess the implications of ongoing transformations in news production and consumption and to account for increasing differentiations in news output. As explained in Chap. 3, the framework is also a response to suggestions generated by previous explanations of news. Using the framework has several advantages: it enables an explanatory approach that integrates multiple perspectives (Schudson 2005; Cottle 2003; Ahva 2017), allows for the ‘complementarity’ of different explanatory approaches to be considered (Tuchman 2002), enables multiple influencing factors to be considered simultaneously rather than in isolation (Pan and Mcleod 1991; Benson 2004; Shoemaker and Reese 2014; Vliegenthart and Van Zoonen 2011), provides a clear focus on practices at the ‘moment of production’ (Cottle 2003; Philo 2007), and allows questions about new types of journalism to be approached with an openness to a variety of methods and theories (Anderson 2013). Finally, because it has not been within the research tradition of journalism studies to combine explanations of news making with analyses of content, existing research tells us far more about the dynamics of producing news than about the content and qualities of the news produced. While this book has made a concerted effort to consider the consequences of the factors that shape news production for the democratic qualities of news, I want to end by joining other media sociologists in calling for a combined research approach that explicitly connects practices with news content (Cottle 2003; Philo 2007; Weaver 2015; Waisbord 2014; Vliegenthart and Van Zoonen 2011; Benson 2004). Building an evidence-based case about the impact of certain shaping influences on news (whether normatively ‘good’ or not) requires research that evaluates the consequences of news production practices in conjunction with the content they produce and, in an ideal world, evaluates how that news is understood by audiences. Like others, I acknowledge the challenges of pursuing such an approach because it requires research into multiple sites and the use of multiple methods. Yet, taking a ‘joined up approach’ makes sense if we want to say with any certainty how the context of news production determines how news contributes to democracy.

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Index1

A Active audiences, 166 Aggregation, 6, 20, 29, 64, 71–77, 79, 191, 192, 220 Algorithms, 6, 29, 70–76, 79, 80, 154, 173, 174, 207, 218 Audiences, 1–3, 6–9, 13, 20–22, 24–29, 37–39, 41, 42, 49, 53–55, 58, 63, 65, 68–79, 77n1, 86, 92, 93, 95, 100, 101, 103–105, 107, 113, 118, 130, 138, 141–143, 154, 155, 161–180, 187, 188, 190, 192, 194, 195, 199, 200, 202, 203, 205–207, 215–220, 222, 225 analytics, 6, 8, 28, 29, 63, 64, 71, 72, 77–79, 139, 142, 153–155, 164, 167, 170, 172, 173, 176, 216, 218, 220 engagement, 77, 168, 170, 178 expectations, 9, 162, 169, 220, 221 habits, 24, 170, 171, 174 participation (see Participation) relationships with journalists, 177, 200 Audience-led distribution, 176–177 Automated news, 63, 71, 75, 76, 79 Autonomy, 8, 16, 29, 46, 53, 78, 88–90, 93, 97, 105, 116, 125, 131, 138, 139, 141, 147–148, 152–156, 179, 193, 199, 217, 222–224

B Business models, 24, 25, 163, 168, 169, 193 C Changes in journalism, 2, 70 Change in news use, 171 Churnalism, 9, 73, 188, 193–195 Citizen journalism, 7, 9, 13, 27, 86, 102, 165–167, 170, 188, 200, 202, 203 Clickbait, 21, 142 Codes of ethics, 8, 114, 115, 120, 122, 124–129, 132 Comments fields, 177–179, 218 Commercialisation, 11, 25, 29, 46, 93, 123, 131, 141–142, 153, 198, 217 Competition, 24–29, 71, 139, 142, 161, 162, 168, 179, 192, 198 Crisis of journalism, 103 Cross-national comparison, 47, 129, 219 Cultural approach, 44, 54–56 Curation, 6, 20, 29, 64, 71–74, 76, 191, 192, 220 D Democracy, 2–5, 12, 14–20, 22–24, 88, 90, 125, 142, 143, 170, 174, 219

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

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© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 J. Firmstone, The Shaping of News, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21963-4

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230 

INDEX

Democratic role of news, 1, 2, 5, 11–30, 214 Digital news, 28, 29, 64, 70–72, 103, 104, 139, 143, 154, 166, 191 Disinformation, 3, 11, 28, 29, 86, 102, 119, 199, 205 Diversity, 10, 19–20, 22, 23, 27–29, 39, 46, 49, 75, 76, 89, 122, 141, 143, 155, 172–174, 189, 191, 192, 194, 200, 202, 206, 213, 219, 221–224 E Echo chambers, 9, 29, 173, 174 Editorial journalism, 8, 148 Editorial policy, 146, 148–149, 152–153 Ethical codes, 52, 88, 114, 117, 120, 127, 131 Ethical orientations, 93, 114, 120–125, 127, 131, 132 Ethical principles, 52, 90, 103, 119, 121–122, 124, 126, 128 Ethics, 1, 7, 8, 24, 52, 85, 89, 90, 94, 100, 103, 113–115, 117–132, 138, 199, 219, 222 F Fake news, 3, 7, 28, 29, 76, 86, 87, 100, 199, 200 Filter bubbles, 9, 29, 78, 173, 174 Fourth Estate role, 5, 18 G Gatekeeping, 6, 41, 53, 63, 65–67, 70–72, 74, 77, 79, 175, 177, 205, 206 Gender, 10, 117, 127, 130, 220, 222 I Individual journalists, 12, 48, 50, 57, 65, 66, 85, 95, 97, 100, 114, 127, 130–132, 145, 148, 151, 153, 155, 187, 194, 213, 220–223 Influences on news, 9, 13, 39–43, 48, 50, 57, 58, 63, 66, 67, 69, 70, 106, 214, 216, 217, 224, 225

Information subsidies, 9, 69, 188, 190, 194, 197, 202–203, 206 Informational role, 17, 20, 23, 107 J Journalism and democracy, 12, 15, 22, 23 ethics, 3, 6, 7, 13, 39, 52, 53, 58, 113–132, 215 norms, 3, 6, 7, 13, 20, 39, 52, 53, 58, 85–107, 113, 215 as a profession, 1, 7, 20, 80, 85, 86, 89, 90, 98, 102, 120, 132, 147, 163, 167, 205 studies, 3, 6, 13, 40–42, 54, 55, 63, 66, 85, 90, 93, 95, 123, 163, 218, 225 L Local news, 197, 199, 205, 220 M Market structures, 8, 23, 46, 139–141 Media-centric, 54, 163, 187, 192 Media law, 116, 126, 127, 139, 140 Media systems, 8, 16, 29, 42, 45–48, 88, 89, 93, 122, 132, 138–140, 219 Mediator role, 18 Misinformation, 11, 28, 86, 119, 178, 199, 205 N News audiences, 1–3, 6, 8, 13, 39, 41, 53–54, 58, 76–79, 162, 164, 171, 190, 215 consumption, 22, 166, 174 and democracy, 2–5, 12, 14–17, 19–20, 22, 24, 142, 219, 225 distribution, 29, 72 organisations, 2, 3, 6–9, 12, 13, 20, 21, 24–26, 28, 29, 39–43, 45–54, 58, 64–66, 68–70, 73–75, 77–80, 86, 87, 93, 96, 98, 100, 101, 104–107, 114, 115, 120, 123, 125–132,

 INDEX 

137–142, 144–149, 153–156, 163, 166–168, 170–172, 175, 176, 178, 188, 189, 197, 199, 200, 202, 203, 206, 213, 215–224 and politics, 13–14 quality, 5, 7, 16, 19–22, 74, 77, 78, 138, 139, 141, 143, 144, 177, 221 sharing, 13, 29, 178 sources, 1–3, 6, 9, 13, 20, 26, 29, 39, 42, 43, 53–54, 69, 71, 73, 79, 100, 138, 162, 170, 173, 174, 177, 187–207, 215, 218, 219 use (the audience’s use of news), 63, 162 values, 6, 29, 41, 48, 55, 63, 65, 67–70, 78, 79, 146, 151, 167, 172, 176, 179 Normative perspectives, 37, 78, 216 Normative theories, 4, 14–17, 22, 23, 40, 115, 118, 163, 196 O Objectivity, 7, 18, 21, 22, 48, 49, 85, 86, 90, 95, 97–107, 120, 122, 143, 190, 219, 222 Official sources, 45, 100, 178, 187–191, 199, 200, 204 Online sourcing practices, 200–202 Organisational culture, 8, 9, 98, 128–130, 137, 138, 144–147, 151–153, 155, 156, 220, 222–224 Organisational policy, 145, 146, 151–154, 222 Organisational structures, 8, 9, 50, 145, 147, 148, 151, 220, 224 Ownership, 8, 19, 20, 45, 46, 54, 123, 131, 138–144, 147, 152, 155 P Participation, 9, 16, 100, 128, 137, 141, 162, 163, 167, 169, 170, 172, 173, 175, 178–180, 200, 201, 205, 217, 218 Participatory journalism, 165, 165n1, 170, 179, 200 Passive audiences, 166, 170

231

Personalisation, 9, 22, 29, 78, 172–175 Plurality, 19, 20, 75, 122, 144, 191, 221 Political communication, 6, 13, 15, 18, 22, 37, 40, 42–43, 47, 54, 75, 138, 143, 163 Political economy, 23, 42–46, 50, 56, 69, 79, 93, 131, 138, 140, 166, 193, 197, 219 Political knowledge, 15, 26, 163, 173 Practices, 1–9, 12–14, 20, 24, 25, 29, 30, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43, 46–50, 63–80, 85, 86, 88–93, 96–97, 104–106, 113–115, 120, 125–126, 137–144, 146–148, 151–152, 161–163, 165, 166, 169, 170, 172, 173, 177–179, 187, 188, 192, 213–215, 218–219 Privacy, 14, 115–118, 121, 128 Professional identity, 86, 128 Professional values, 7, 8, 69, 78, 97, 99, 105, 107, 126–127, 137, 156, 205, 219, 222 The public, 1–3, 5, 8, 9, 11–13, 15–19, 21–25, 27, 41–43, 45, 69, 71, 73, 75, 80, 88, 89, 92, 93, 96, 103, 104, 115–121, 130–132, 140, 142, 143, 155, 161, 163–168, 174, 176, 187–189, 191, 192, 194–196, 199–206, 215, 221, 222 Public interest, 16–18, 22, 23, 25, 80, 93, 115, 117–120, 130–131, 140, 142, 163, 193, 195, 205 Public relations (PR), 9, 27, 42, 54, 142, 187, 188, 192–200, 204, 206 Public service media, 21, 25–26, 154, 156, 215 Public sphere, 1, 2, 12, 17, 21, 25, 143, 155, 163, 177, 199, 200, 221 Q Quality in news, 22 R Representative role, 18 Role perceptions and conceptions, 52, 91, 93, 95–98, 106 and orientations, 91

232 

INDEX

Routines, 1, 5–7, 13, 20, 24, 41, 48–54, 57, 63–80, 85, 90, 99, 101, 114, 138, 145, 147, 149, 153, 156, 164, 187–191, 194, 197, 198, 200, 202, 205, 214, 215, 218, 219 S Segmentation, 20, 29, 173, 175 Selective exposure, 9, 172–175 Sharing, 9, 128, 162, 170, 172, 175–177, 205, 218 Socialisation, 8, 68, 98, 126–128, 130, 138, 142, 146–148, 152–153, 223, 224 Social media, 2, 7, 9, 11, 26–29, 42, 53, 70, 72, 74, 86, 102, 105, 165, 166, 168, 171, 172, 174–176, 188, 199–205, 207, 218 Social organisation, 43, 44, 47–50, 52–55, 63 Sociology of news, 40, 43–45 Source-media relations, 9, 54, 187, 188 Sources, 3, 7–9, 13, 13n1, 16, 18–20, 23, 24, 27, 28, 30, 37, 39, 44, 45, 52, 54, 65, 70–76, 78, 87, 90, 91, 99, 100, 102, 103, 113, 117–120, 123, 124, 127, 128, 130, 141, 142, 144, 147, 148, 163, 165, 168, 170–173, 175–178, 180, 187–196, 199–204, 206, 207, 215–217, 221–223 of news, 13, 13n1, 170–172, 175, 199, 203 professionalisation of, 192

Sourcing practices, 9, 54, 74, 105, 178, 187, 194, 196, 198, 200–202, 204 Sourcing routines, 79, 191, 194 T Technology, 2, 4–6, 9, 11, 24, 26–30, 56–58, 64, 70, 76, 79, 104, 105, 119, 142, 145, 153, 162, 165, 202, 215, 216, 219 Transparency, 7, 28, 85, 86, 98, 102–106, 137, 195, 199, 206, 216, 219 Trust, 3, 7, 16, 24, 26, 29–30, 79, 93, 102, 104, 105, 113, 130, 163, 164, 168, 199, 200, 206, 218, 221 U Universal ethics, 124–125 User-Generated Content (UGC), 9, 27, 165, 166, 170, 177, 188, 200, 202–204, 206, 218, 219 V Values, 1–3, 5–8, 11–14, 18–27, 29, 30, 37, 39–41, 43, 45, 48, 51–53, 55, 58, 63–70, 74, 78, 79, 85–107, 113–128, 130–132, 137, 138, 141, 144–149, 151, 152, 154–156, 163, 172, 174, 176–179, 190, 195, 204–207, 215–219, 221–223 W Watchdog role, 95–97, 114 Web metrics, 77, 168