Page 30 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

INTRODUCTION 19

their form, content and readerships becomes more pronounced. In the
American context, John M.Phelan (Chapter 3) demonstrates how
marketing logic shapes the strategies of TV journalism, including
public-service and community campaigns, which were heralded as an
effort genuinely to serve the public. In the West German setting, Vincent
Porter and Suzanne Hasselbach (Chapter 4) chart the political and
economic forces which have shaped the regulation of broadcasting and
the consequences for television as a citizen resource.
In the second part, on Politics and Journalism, Todd Gitlin
(Chapter 5) looks at recent developments on US network election
campaign coverage and considers the implications of the increasingly
sophisticated news-management strategies. For Gitlin, the US media are
inviting its audiences to join in a celebration of their powerlessness.
Looking at the Italian situation, Paolo Mancini (Chapter 6) argues that
the media do not empower citizens to participate in the public sphere.
Rather, they provide a mechanism for elites to speak to each other and
conduct their own closed debates about the future of society. In the
profoundly different Polish context, Karol Jakubowicz (Chapter 7)
discusses the rise of two alternative public spheres which came to
challenge the official one dominated by the state and party. One of the
alternatives was dominated by the Church, the other associated with
Solidarity. He focuses on the struggle for legitimacy between the three.
Turning to the audiences, Ann Crigler and Klaus Bruhn Jensen
(Chapter 8) compare how, in the USA and Denmark, the content of the
media itself is responsible for the ways in which citizens actually
constitute the concerns and ideas which make up the public sphere.
They do this by actively imposing thematic structures on the news
stories they encounter.
The third part of the book, Journalistic Practices, begins with an essay
by Michael Gurevitch, Mark R.Levy and Itzhak Roeh on the
internationalization of TV news (Chapter 9). They look at both the
topics covered in different countries as well as the meanings which
national cultures mobilize to frame these topics. As the subtitle of their
essay suggests, both convergence and diversities are at work. Liesbet
van Zoonen’s article (Chapter 10) considers the fact that Dutch TV
news is now predominantly presented by female newscasters. In
assessing the feminist critiques of the public sphere she finds that this
development in Dutch television news does not necessarily constitute a
step beyond the patriarchal order. Ian Connell (Chapter 11) closes the
volume by examining how the popular press and television
entertainment intersect and overlap, constituting a form of mythic image