THE NEWS JOURNALISTS’ REPRESENTATIONS ON NEWS CONTENT: A PROFESSIONAL VISION OF INFORMATION SELECTION
THE NEWS JOURNALISTS’ REPRESENTATIONS ON NEWS CONTENT: A PROFESSIONAL VISION OF INFORMATION SELECTION

Summary/Abstract: The television news is not “innocent”. TV: has an impact at individual level (for personal needs, environment orientation, social link, catharsis, etc.) as well as at collective one (establishing a public agenda, promoting the social elites, etc.). Since decades, from a normative perspective, its very major role has been correlated with the professionalism of the news production in terms of norms, standards, procedures and the responsibility for the public information. From a critical perspective, there is a lot of place of subjectivism and interpretation during the information production process, especially in the main selection points: the sources choice, the subjects for the daily agenda and the definition of reality. Between the professionalism requirements of “most accurate information possible” for the public and the constructivism assumptions sustaining that reality is only a symbolic construction, there is a “place” for investigation of the “professional space” where the professionalism values, norms and standards meet the individual subjectivity. Related to the information selection process in newsrooms, the contradiction between objectivity and neutrality as main professional values, and constructivism as a subjectivity perspective is obvious. The basic question of the research is: the TV journalists’ representations towards info selection in terms of professionalism values are dogmatic or realistic? The study gives answers about the vision of the news professionals at the level of the information selection (sources, subjects, reality) by building a professional grammar about the valoric background from professional culture perspective. Methodology: qualitative and quantitative (interview, content analysis). Academic background: journalism professionalism, mass communication sociology, constructivism.

• Details
• Contents