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stands. The following is a representative example of a more comprehensive
definition of professionalism: Collective control over entry to the group; a code
of altruistic service, supported by scrupulous self-policing; a special set of skills
based on the absorption of a definable body of knowledge and a set of ‘client-
type’ relationships with the public (Smith, 1980: 153). [...]
The idea I wish to pursue – that there is a sacred aspect to all true professions –
is not explicit in those analyses I have come across, but some authors appear to
acknowledge it at least indirectly (Bakewell and Garnham, 1970: 305; Gans, 1980:
293; Parsons, 1968: 537). A main objective here is to clarify the position of
journalism, an occupation with strongly contested claims to professional status.
This will be done with reference to two other occupations with long-established
professional credentials – the clergy and medicine.

The Sacredness of Professions

The mysteriousness of esoteric but supposedly essential knowledge is clearly
manifested in the offices of religious functionaries in historic societies and
among so-called primitive peoples: they possess knowledge which is denied
others and, as this knowledge is thought essential for the well being of individ-
uals and the community at large, these leaders wield significant power over their
1
fellow human beings. We also find among the clergy evidence of another main
source of reverence, that is, the nobility of self-sacrifice: the priestly vocation is
very much defined in terms of sacrificial service to others. [...] I have taken the
priesthood as the point of departure for my argument concerning sacred occu-
pations, not necessarily because the clergy should be considered to be the best
contemporary example of such groups, but rather because through it the essence
of the sacred occupations can easily be recognized. [...]
Has professional power, then, been secularized? Is it more ‘worldly’ than it
used to be? That is not my conclusion; I argue that the sacred aspect of the power
and service of professionalism is present in modern industrialized societies, but
that it has largely been transferred from the clergy to other occupational groups,
one of which – mass communication – I now consider more closely. This view is
inspired by Thomas Luckmann’s argument that ‘religion is present in non-
specific form in all societies and all “normal” (socialized) individuals’ (1967: 78)
and that ‘what are usually taken as symptoms of the decline of traditional
Christianity may be symptoms of a more revolutionary change: the replacement
of the institutional specialization of religion by a new social form of religion’
(Luckmann, 1967: 90–1). [...]

The Sacredness of Journalism

There is nothing original in pointing out the religious aspects of mass communi-
cation. Bakewell and Garnham (1970) named their book on British Television,
The New Priesthood, and Altheide and Snow (1979: 199) write: ‘Since the