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Preserving Journalism
- Central European University Press
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Preserving Journalism Auksė Balčytienė and Halliki Harro-Loit Introduction Theorists agree that critical and transparent communication is essential for any modern state. To a great extent this role (of a watchdog or a fourth estate) has been delegated to journalism. But in these neoliberal times, media systems are dominated by private capital. Media convergence and homogenization of journalism is taking place all over the world, posing a threat to democratic communication. In our networked world, distinctions between journalism and other forms of communication (such as advertising, promotional and marketing communication, and news management) are disappearing, and the traditional idea of journalist as an autonomous gatekeeper is vanishing, thus challenging the function of meaningful agenda-setting and serving the public. Still, in this rapidly changing situation, in spite of all the challenges that journalism is facing, professional journalistic culture may be able to withstand economic and political pressures and to fulfill the role of “critical independent analyst.” Therefore, the chief argument of this paper is that in a democracy it remains of crucial importance for journalists to (a) define and (b) preserve journalistic discourse so that citizens can recognize certain characteristics of professional journalism and distinguish them from other texts. Thus the standards of a journalistic discourse are the preconditions for journalism professionalization. For this goal—to answer the question of how to preserve autonomous journalism—a comparative discussion on the main threats to journalistic discourse (distinguishable from other public communication discourses like PR, advertising, and political news management) and possibilities to develop the national journalistic culture are presented. In order to shed light on the challenges currently facing journalism, structural changes in the media of two Baltic states—Lithuania and Estonia —are assessed, and a few cases of changing journalistic discourses are examined. In this respect, the comparative perspective becomes decisive . The universal phenomena reported as taking place in media systems worldwide (news commercialization, infotainment, media instrumentalization , technological and generic shifts) constitute different matrices in 196 Comparative Media Systems different national settings. These matrices are related to political and economic preconditions. In Estonia, the commercial forces seem to be taking over in journalism, while in Lithuania the situation looks more diversified, with indicators of both economic and political media instrumentalization (Balčytienė 2006). In this paper, the degree of “media instrumentalization” means the extent to which journalism is penetrated by external actors and interests (political, economic, religious, or other). In the same way, the concept of “journalistic discourse” is used to refer to the specific information management machinery, based on processing methods and routines, formats and consumption of factual and non-fictional phenomena in the form of mediated messages in different media outlets (Harro 2001, 13). Our understanding of “journalistic culture” includes normative regulation, professional ideology, and conventions that determine what we expect from journalism (Balčytienė 2006). 1. Baltic News Market: Small, Concentrated, and Vulnerable A common understanding in contemporary media studies is that convergence of media systems is becoming a worldwide trend (see, for example, Humphreys 1996, and Hallin and Mancini 2004). A gradual and ongoing process of commodification of news, rapid shifts towards mixed media and entertaining reporting, increasing professionalization in political communication towards news management, strategic communication and market-oriented politics, as well as many other processes which have affected public communication over the past few decades, have contributed to the fact that media systems in contemporary societies are becoming more and more similar. Some scholars have even gone further by warning that economic power is among the strongest factors contributing to media assimilation. The news markets in Estonia and Lithuania are small, and media regulation is very liberal. This creates a dichotomy. On the one hand, liberal media regulation (no laws against media concentration or cross-ownership ) opens new fields and forms for media development. On the other hand, liberal regulation and the virtual absence of state intervention in the matters of mass media encourage the proliferation of market-oriented logic . In addition, in both countries media accountability is weak (HarroLoit and Balčytienė 2005). The Estonian news market is highly concentrated. The mainstream news media is owned by two Scandinavian conglomerates (Schibsted/ [35.175.236.44] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:47 GMT) 1 Compared to a few years ago, the media in Lithuania and Estonia today is already more controlled by foreign multimedia groups (Schibsted from Norway with investments in newspaper, magazine, and free-daily publishing) and local industrialists (who often have political alliances). Eesti Meedia and Bonnier) and one Estonian...