Page 57 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Americanization, Globalization, and Secularization

the case of Swedish television, for example, Djerff-Pierre (2000) writes:

The journalist culture of 1965–1985 embraced a new ideal of news
journalism, that of critical scrutiny. The dominant approach was
now oriented toward exerting influence, both vis-`a-vis institutions
and the public at large. ... [J]ournalists sought to bridge informa-
tion gaps in society and to equip their audiences for active citi-
zenship and democratic participation. ... Journalists also had the
ambition to scrutinize the actions of policy makers and to influence
both public debate on social and political issues and the policies
made by public institutions (254).

This shift varied in form and extent, but seems to have been quite gen-
eralized across national boundaries. It involved the creation of a jour-
nalistic discourse that was distinct from the discourse of parties and
politicians, and also a conception of the journalist as representative of a
generalized public opinion that cuts across the lines of political parties
and social groups. Critical professional journalists, as Neveu (2002, 31)
puts it, “... spot blunders in strategy, mistakes in governing, from an
in-depth knowledge of issues. They question politicians in the name of
public opinion and its requests – identified ‘objectively’ by the polls – or
in the name of suprapolitical values such as morality, modernity or the
European spirit.”
Why did this change take place? Surely it was to a significant extent
rooted in the broader social and political changes previously discussed.
If, for example, affluence, political stability, and increasing educational
levels led to a general cultural shift toward postmaterialist values of par-
ticipation and free expression, the rise of critical expertise in journalism
might be seen as one effect of this deeper social change. If catch-all par-
ties were already being formed in the 1950s – Kirchheimer noted their
rise in 1966 – the discourse of a general public opinion made up of in-
dividualized voters committed to “suprapolitical” values, which would
be crucial to the perspective of critical professionalism in journalism,
may predate the latter. Even if the rise of critical professionalism in the
media was in part an effect or reflection of other social forces, however, it
seems likely that at some point it began to accelerate and amplify them.
It is also possible that a number of factors internal to the media system
contributed to the shift in the political role of journalism. These include:
(1) Increased educational levels of journalists, leading to more so-
phisticated forms of analysis, in part by the incorporation into

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