The aim of this article is to analyse the perception of Spanish journalists in relation to the gr... more The aim of this article is to analyse the perception of Spanish journalists in relation to the greater or lesser effectiveness of traditional self regulation mechanisms in comparison to new mechanisms that have recently emerged with the arrival of digital technologies. Results from surveys (n=420), in-depth interviews (n=30) and focus groups (n=6) confirm the acceptance of these mechanisms whose greatest impact requires the operation of all of them as a “system”, because considered individually, none are as effective in securing more ethical behavior in the company which decides to use them. The instrument that receives the highest score (7.5) is the public pressure through social networks. The concept of a seal of ethical quality has been valued in line with the existing mechanisms. In any case, it seems that neither the seal nor the rest of the analyzed instruments may ever replace the personal ethics of the journalist that appears as the bedrock of the strata that determines ethi...
On January 7, 2015, Said and Cherif Kouachi assaulted the offices of the French satirical weekly ... more On January 7, 2015, Said and Cherif Kouachi assaulted the offices of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo , leaving twelve people dead, including the magazine’s editor Stephane Charbonnier and other well-known French cartoonists. The publication, which had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad, had already been threatened on several occasions since 2006 when it first reprinted cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that had originally been published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-posten . Worldwide news coverage described the 2015 attack as “among the deadliest in postwar France” ( New York Times , January 7, 2015). Expressions of public outrage and large rallies supporting Charlie Hebdo took place in Paris and other cities around the world. Under the slogan Je Suis Charlie (“I am Charlie”), two million people marched in Paris’s Place de la Republique on January 11, bringing together sentiments of solidarity with the victims and freedom of expression. The slogan became a symbol of the spirit of French unity amidst what was considered a national trauma. However, this unifying rallying cry rapidly turned into a complex and, to some extent, exclusionary label. The slogan did not appeal to those who, under the opposite slogan of Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie (“I am not Charlie”), utterly condemned the attack but refused to show their support for the magazine’s editorial (Badouard 2016).
This chapter explores and compares public narratives on migrant-rights advocates operating along ... more This chapter explores and compares public narratives on migrant-rights advocates operating along Europe’s southern border. Its empirical investigation demonstrates how the acts of selected activists have been a potential trigger for the process of solidarity formation. Their stories transcend national boundaries, generating public and media interest across Europe and the globe. The chapter shows how the narrative on Moroccan journalist and human right advocate Chakib Al Khayari stands out from the others. Al Khayari has performed civil solidarity more successfully than the others because he managed to embody deep ideals of justice, humanity, and inclusion, as well as foreground scripts based on authenticity and courage, before an international public. He has done so in such a way that he set in motion a process of deep civil repair, changing migration laws and politics within the Moroccan public sphere.
Research on civil society, social movements, and civil rights protests through the media in Latin... more Research on civil society, social movements, and civil rights protests through the media in Latin America – and, in general, in new democracies beyond the West – has shown the way in which populism deepens polarization, making civil society and its media outlets an arena of ideological divides and opposing interests. By bringing Jeffrey Alexander’s civil sphere theory to the analysis of #NotOneLess movement in Argentina, this study examines the performative power of the media in creating and spreading a unified civil discourse even in the context of a highly polarized society. The article explores the media discourse on the femicide crisis in Argentina in June 2015 constructed in international and national news outlets and analyses interviews with journalists and activists. In the years prior to the emergence of the #NotOneLess movement, discourse on human rights in Argentina had become polarized owing to Kirchnerism’s monopolization and instrumentalization of it, which caused it to...
Democratic Culture, Professional Codes, Digital Future
INTRODUCTION In May 2012, Advance Publications, the Newhouse family publisher of the New Orleans-... more INTRODUCTION In May 2012, Advance Publications, the Newhouse family publisher of the New Orleans-based The Times-Picayune, announced a drastic contraction of the newspaper's print edition and the extraordinary expansion of its Website, which was to become a platform for 24-hour online news. Controversial staff cuts followed the announcement. Yet another American newspaper faced severe reductions in staff and the looming prospect that the merger of print and digital operations would undermine the independence of the traditional newsroom. Remarkably, there was an immediate public outcry – locally, nationally, and even globally – that strongly polluted the imminent changes as anti-democratic. “A symbol of the courageous resistance of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, has bowed to the market pressures of modern press,” read the opening sentence of an article in The New York Times on May 25, 2012. The civil significance of impending changes in The Times-Picayune was confirmed by mobilizations across urban social networks in New Orleans, public demonstrations on behalf of the newspaper, and a statement signed by the newly formed “Times-Picayune Citizens Group” of influential citizens. In national and local news reports, columns, feature stories, and blogs, the emerging crisis was narrated as a conflict between civil and anti-civil social forces. Advance executives were depicted as constructing the new digital platform so new production could be reoriented to maximize profit and prurient titillation. Yet, this very coding pushed not only local but national social forces to find ways to defend the sacred ethical community of journalism and its vital relation to the “polis” of New Orleans. Many reporters were rehired, editors made fervent public declarations about maintaining professional standards of investigative reporting and independence, and a “cowboy” version of the paper soon became distributed on its digital-only days. Forced digital transitions, downsizings, and closures have been the familiar storyline of contemporary newspapers in America (Downie and Schudson 2009; Chyi, Lewis & Zheng 2012) and the Western world since 2008 (OECD 2010; Pew Research Center 2013); but not all have generated the responses that The Times-Picayune stirred. When two large US dailies, the Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, collapsed in early 2009 in quick succession, and gloomy predictions on the future of newspapers (Starr 2009) began to appear, there was no public outcry in Denver and Seattle (Carlson 2011) in contrast to New Orleans in 2012.
Drawing from 420 surveys addressed to news media practitioners, 30 in-depth interviews with media... more Drawing from 420 surveys addressed to news media practitioners, 30 in-depth interviews with media executives and 6 focus groups, this article focuses on the institutional dimensions of ethics in journalism and explores the way in which ethical standards are perceived by journalists and other representative groups involved in Spanish news media. The data show that participants ascribe moral obligations to journalistic institutions. Interviewees emphasise the predominance of market-driven interests over ethical values as one of the main threats to journalism. However, differences between the perceptions of journalists and media executives reveal that the latter believe that journalistic ethics pertain to individual journalists.
By examining journalistic discourses on the drastic changes in the New Orleans daily The Times-Pi... more By examining journalistic discourses on the drastic changes in the New Orleans daily The Times-Picayune and the Spanish newspaper El País, this article examines the so-called “crisis of journalism” from a cultural-sociological and civil sphere perspective. The literature review in the first section briefly brings the cultural dimension to the forefront of current anxieties in the journalistic profession—anxieties that have been discussed mainly from a techno-economic view. The empirical section of the article demonstrates how the social meanings of what is considered as independent journalism have been present and operative in the understanding of economic changes caused by the digital shift.
The aim of this article is to analyse the perception of Spanish journalists in relation to the gr... more The aim of this article is to analyse the perception of Spanish journalists in relation to the greater or lesser effectiveness of traditional self regulation mechanisms in comparison to new mechanisms that have recently emerged with the arrival of digital technologies. Results from surveys (n=420), in-depth interviews (n=30) and focus groups (n=6) confirm the acceptance of these mechanisms whose greatest impact requires the operation of all of them as a “system”, because considered individually, none are as effective in securing more ethical behavior in the company which decides to use them. The instrument that receives the highest score (7.5) is the public pressure through social networks. The concept of a seal of ethical quality has been valued in line with the existing mechanisms. In any case, it seems that neither the seal nor the rest of the analyzed instruments may ever replace the personal ethics of the journalist that appears as the bedrock of the strata that determines ethi...
On January 7, 2015, Said and Cherif Kouachi assaulted the offices of the French satirical weekly ... more On January 7, 2015, Said and Cherif Kouachi assaulted the offices of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo , leaving twelve people dead, including the magazine’s editor Stephane Charbonnier and other well-known French cartoonists. The publication, which had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad, had already been threatened on several occasions since 2006 when it first reprinted cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that had originally been published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-posten . Worldwide news coverage described the 2015 attack as “among the deadliest in postwar France” ( New York Times , January 7, 2015). Expressions of public outrage and large rallies supporting Charlie Hebdo took place in Paris and other cities around the world. Under the slogan Je Suis Charlie (“I am Charlie”), two million people marched in Paris’s Place de la Republique on January 11, bringing together sentiments of solidarity with the victims and freedom of expression. The slogan became a symbol of the spirit of French unity amidst what was considered a national trauma. However, this unifying rallying cry rapidly turned into a complex and, to some extent, exclusionary label. The slogan did not appeal to those who, under the opposite slogan of Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie (“I am not Charlie”), utterly condemned the attack but refused to show their support for the magazine’s editorial (Badouard 2016).
This chapter explores and compares public narratives on migrant-rights advocates operating along ... more This chapter explores and compares public narratives on migrant-rights advocates operating along Europe’s southern border. Its empirical investigation demonstrates how the acts of selected activists have been a potential trigger for the process of solidarity formation. Their stories transcend national boundaries, generating public and media interest across Europe and the globe. The chapter shows how the narrative on Moroccan journalist and human right advocate Chakib Al Khayari stands out from the others. Al Khayari has performed civil solidarity more successfully than the others because he managed to embody deep ideals of justice, humanity, and inclusion, as well as foreground scripts based on authenticity and courage, before an international public. He has done so in such a way that he set in motion a process of deep civil repair, changing migration laws and politics within the Moroccan public sphere.
Research on civil society, social movements, and civil rights protests through the media in Latin... more Research on civil society, social movements, and civil rights protests through the media in Latin America – and, in general, in new democracies beyond the West – has shown the way in which populism deepens polarization, making civil society and its media outlets an arena of ideological divides and opposing interests. By bringing Jeffrey Alexander’s civil sphere theory to the analysis of #NotOneLess movement in Argentina, this study examines the performative power of the media in creating and spreading a unified civil discourse even in the context of a highly polarized society. The article explores the media discourse on the femicide crisis in Argentina in June 2015 constructed in international and national news outlets and analyses interviews with journalists and activists. In the years prior to the emergence of the #NotOneLess movement, discourse on human rights in Argentina had become polarized owing to Kirchnerism’s monopolization and instrumentalization of it, which caused it to...
Democratic Culture, Professional Codes, Digital Future
INTRODUCTION In May 2012, Advance Publications, the Newhouse family publisher of the New Orleans-... more INTRODUCTION In May 2012, Advance Publications, the Newhouse family publisher of the New Orleans-based The Times-Picayune, announced a drastic contraction of the newspaper's print edition and the extraordinary expansion of its Website, which was to become a platform for 24-hour online news. Controversial staff cuts followed the announcement. Yet another American newspaper faced severe reductions in staff and the looming prospect that the merger of print and digital operations would undermine the independence of the traditional newsroom. Remarkably, there was an immediate public outcry – locally, nationally, and even globally – that strongly polluted the imminent changes as anti-democratic. “A symbol of the courageous resistance of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, has bowed to the market pressures of modern press,” read the opening sentence of an article in The New York Times on May 25, 2012. The civil significance of impending changes in The Times-Picayune was confirmed by mobilizations across urban social networks in New Orleans, public demonstrations on behalf of the newspaper, and a statement signed by the newly formed “Times-Picayune Citizens Group” of influential citizens. In national and local news reports, columns, feature stories, and blogs, the emerging crisis was narrated as a conflict between civil and anti-civil social forces. Advance executives were depicted as constructing the new digital platform so new production could be reoriented to maximize profit and prurient titillation. Yet, this very coding pushed not only local but national social forces to find ways to defend the sacred ethical community of journalism and its vital relation to the “polis” of New Orleans. Many reporters were rehired, editors made fervent public declarations about maintaining professional standards of investigative reporting and independence, and a “cowboy” version of the paper soon became distributed on its digital-only days. Forced digital transitions, downsizings, and closures have been the familiar storyline of contemporary newspapers in America (Downie and Schudson 2009; Chyi, Lewis & Zheng 2012) and the Western world since 2008 (OECD 2010; Pew Research Center 2013); but not all have generated the responses that The Times-Picayune stirred. When two large US dailies, the Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, collapsed in early 2009 in quick succession, and gloomy predictions on the future of newspapers (Starr 2009) began to appear, there was no public outcry in Denver and Seattle (Carlson 2011) in contrast to New Orleans in 2012.
Drawing from 420 surveys addressed to news media practitioners, 30 in-depth interviews with media... more Drawing from 420 surveys addressed to news media practitioners, 30 in-depth interviews with media executives and 6 focus groups, this article focuses on the institutional dimensions of ethics in journalism and explores the way in which ethical standards are perceived by journalists and other representative groups involved in Spanish news media. The data show that participants ascribe moral obligations to journalistic institutions. Interviewees emphasise the predominance of market-driven interests over ethical values as one of the main threats to journalism. However, differences between the perceptions of journalists and media executives reveal that the latter believe that journalistic ethics pertain to individual journalists.
By examining journalistic discourses on the drastic changes in the New Orleans daily The Times-Pi... more By examining journalistic discourses on the drastic changes in the New Orleans daily The Times-Picayune and the Spanish newspaper El País, this article examines the so-called “crisis of journalism” from a cultural-sociological and civil sphere perspective. The literature review in the first section briefly brings the cultural dimension to the forefront of current anxieties in the journalistic profession—anxieties that have been discussed mainly from a techno-economic view. The empirical section of the article demonstrates how the social meanings of what is considered as independent journalism have been present and operative in the understanding of economic changes caused by the digital shift.
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