No. 13 (2021): Representations of Journalism and Journalists
Being often the object of social criticism, journalism is generally recognized as an activity that is essential for the promotion of high quality information, committed to factual truth and the public interest. This idea of its virtues is also associated with a romanticized view of the journalist as a professional at the service of a principle of revelation, discovery and exposure. Hence, journalism is often described as a vocation that requires specific abilities, such as inquisitiveness, critical thinking, accuracy and rigour, integrity, sharpness and tenacity in the task of observing and interpreting current events.
However, the social representation of journalism and journalists has been relatively ambiguous throughout history. For some 18th and 19th century intellectuals, journalism was a kind of subliterature. Balzac, for example, referred to them as “scribblers”, and in Eça de Queirós’s Os Maias, the character João da Ega called them “the scum of society”. With the expansion of the media and the professionalization of journalism, the public scrutiny of journalists became even more exacting. In a text published in 2003 in the journal Hermès, Dominique Wolton considered them as “frail heroes of modernity.”
The way in which we represent journalism is the result of a complex social construction in which journalists, media organizations, society in general, audiences in particular, and social, political cultural and economic institutions are involved. Over the last two decades, there has been a weakening of the pivotal role played by journalism in the mediation of public communication. Today, journalists fight for social recognition in the midst of social contexts and powers that either praise them or seek to be taken for them, to compete with their media power, and sometimes even to destroy them through discredit.
What image do we actually have of journalism and journalists? In a context of global information flows, what is our understanding of the function(s) of journalism? How has the status of journalists been interpreted in legal and social terms? What representations of journalism and journalists are produced or reproduced by other media such as cinema? How do journalists see themselves and how do they represent themselves in social terms? What view does journalism convey of itself and of journalists when the activity and its professionals are the object of the news or of opinion?
