Abstract
The purpose of this book is to present an overview of ‘combinations of change and continuity that characterizes political journalism in Western Europe in the early twenty-first century’ (p. 3). In this respect, it is a useful book because it provided a simple introduction to some of the major trends typical of political journalism in Western Europe today while also paying attention to country specific features and variation. The book does not include a concluding chapter, but in the introduction, the editors suggest that three major trends cut across all the countries covered in this book. The first is the accelerated news cycle creating ‘churnalistic’ tendencies, where pre-produced material substitutes for journalistic reporting. The second trend shows a shift in the balance of power between ‘resource-pressed journalists’ and ‘professionalized political sources’, while the third trend is the move from analogue to digital media.
The strength of comparative book projects is that both similarities as well as differences between the included countries are revealed. One of the conclusions from this book is that despite these similar trends, evident national differences even among neighboring countries appear. The editors, for instance, point to the different culture in France and Germany, which also influences how intimate and personal political journalism becomes.
This book is clearly not the result of an integrated comparative project on journalism in transition. Rather, it is a collection of essays that speaks to the overall topic of political journalism. In this respect it appears a little bit random which countries and topics that are covered. The book is divided in two parts, where the first provides more detailed analysis of five selected countries: France, Italy, Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom. These first five chapters do not, however, provide a systematic analysis that is repeated across the five cases. Rather, the chapters focus on what the respective author considers to be key features in contemporary political journalism in that particular country. To some extent, this may guide the reader to what is truly specific of that country’s political journalism, but I suspect that it just as much reflects the research interests of the various authors. In my opinion, this deliberately heterogeneous approach is a weakness. I believe that the book would have been stronger with a more systematic approach. What we learn from the various case studies appears a bit random. This is not the best starting point when the aim of the book is to provide a comparative analysis of change and continuity, similarities and differences across Western Europe.
The second part of the book is devoted to five chapters on ‘cross-national themes’, including (1) coverage of the European Union, (2) the role of public service media, (3) political journalism in Europe compared to political journalism in the United States, (4) changes in political journalism, and (5) international political journalism. It remains unclear why these particular themes were selected and not others. As always, it is easy, and perhaps a bit unfair, to criticize a book for what it does not include. For the average reader, it would, however, have been useful to learn why these themes were considered most important in order to understand the transition of political journalism in Western Europe.
Four of the cross-national theme chapters provide basic overviews of previous research. For readers who are not familiar with the political communication literature, these chapters provide an easy, accessible, and updated insight into the various topics. For the more experienced readers, these chapters do not really provide a lot of new knowledge. For the more advanced reader, however, there is one chapter that also presents new evidence. Umbricht and Esser’s chapter entitled ‘Changing Political News? Long-Term Trends in American, British, French, Italian, German and Swiss Print Media Reporting’ is an excellent example of what a systematic comparative (and longitudinal) study can offer. This chapter speaks directly to the main purpose of the book when it shows how some central features of political journalism have changed from the 1960s to the 2000s in these six Western democracies. For instance, in a simple and transparent way, the authors demonstrate how ‘opinion-orientation’ has converged in Western press systems and how the level of journalistic objectivity and the standing of individual news sources have increased over time.
Political Journalism in Transition is an important book because it is one of few which take on a comparative and longitudinal approach to political journalism. I hope it can inspire scholars to initiate further studies that combine the comparative and longitudinal design with a more systematic approach.