The people behind the political headlines

Abstract

Political journalism plays a central role in all democratic societies. But the way political journalists fulfil this role varies from country to country. To better understand the role of political journalists in different democracies, this article explores which features of political journalism are universal and which characteristics vary cross-nationally. Comprehensive surveys among political journalists in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain (N = 425) show that political journalists are more often male and higher educated than the general population of journalists. Their political conviction is however less towards the left. Despite structural homogenization, the role conceptions and feelings of autonomy of political journalists vary between countries with different historical relations between media and political systems and different traditions of journalistic professionalization.

Keywords

autonomy comparative homogenization political journalism role conceptions survey

Introduction

Discussions about the role of journalism in society centre on the democratic functions of the media, like the information-, control- and forum-function (e.g. McNair, 2009; Strömbäck, 2005). These functions are described in constitutions, codes of ethics and mission statements of public service broadcasters or newspapers (Graber, 2003, Sonnenberg, 1997). Journalists refer to their democratic role to justify their conduct and to claim autonomy.

The findings of comprehensive surveys among journalists around the globe are discussed in the light of the democratic functions of the media (Weaver, 1998; Weischenberg et al., 2006 among others). Critics refer to a predominantly left political leaning among journalists to accuse the media of a liberal bias (see D’Alessio and Allen, 2000: 134) or criticize the male dominance among journalists from the viewpoint of pluralism (Klaus, 2009). High levels of education are seen as a sign that journalists belong to the societal elite, which allegedly influences the perspective from which they write (Shoemaker and Reese, 1996). Journalism surveys have provided insight into how journalists across the world define their democratic role. Limitations of journalistic autonomy are described as challenges to democracy (e.g. Roland, 2009: 267).

In such accounts the differences between journalists at the political beat and other journalists are often disregarded. Comprehensive journalism surveys address wide populations of journalists, ranging from sport reporters to life-style journalists. When variation within the journalistic profession is studied, this is mostly done by comparing journalists working for different medium types, rather than in different beats (Weaver, 1998; for an exception see Weischenberg et al., 2006). Because of its central role in the democratic process we need to pay special attention to the particularities of the political beat.

Political journalism can be defined as the ‘specialized practice of reporting on political campaigns, elections, and government functions’ (Mills-Brown, 2011). Due to their position as intermediate between the political elite and the citizens, political journalists have been described as ‘the most sacred part’ of journalism (Neveu, 2002: 23). Normative expectations about the role of journalism in democracy are manifold and ambivalent, but the main expectations of political journalism can be summarized as follows (McNair, 2009; see also Graber, 2003). First, political journalism should provide citizens which the information which allows them to take part in deliberative democracy. Second, journalists should serve as a watchdog and disclose misbehaviour and irregularities. Third, journalists should serve as mediators or representatives of the citizens and make sure that the voice of the people is heard. Fourth, journalists can be participants in the political process and ‘advocate particular political positions’ (McNair, 2009: 239).

On the one hand, the central role in the democratic process makes political journalism one of the most prestigious beats for journalists to work in (Tunstall, 1970: 41, 71). Political journalists are close to the centre of power and in the exclusive position to report on matters of great national importance, like national elections or cabinet decisions. Political news is highly visible, often covered on the front page of newspapers or opening the evening news (McNair, 2000). The rise of the internet, blogs and social media may diminish the information monopoly of the mass media. But the mainstream media remain the main source of political information (Eurobarometer, 2009). As the ‘aristocrats’ of the newsroom political reporters often take over hot stories from journalists with other specializations (Neveu, 2002: 23). Other journalistic beats like foreign correspondents also have great prestige in the newsroom, but these beats have been hit harder by recent budget cuts. Over time both the number of foreign reporters and the amount for foreign news has decreased steadily (see Wu and Hamilton, 2004). The political beat shows a different trend. At the beginning of the 21st century there is more political news available than ever before in history. Since the political beat is a way for media outlets to brand themselves, and since it provides a steady stream of relatively cheap news, the political beat is less affected by downsizing and budget cuts than other beats (Kavanagh, 2011; McNair, 2000).

On the other hand, their place close to the centre of power also makes political journalists one of the most criticized beats. Politicians, media scholars, the general public and other journalists criticize political journalists for not fulfilling their democratic watchdog role and for neglecting, in particular, the mediator role (Cook, 2005: 189). However, characterizations of political journalism and criticism of general trends are often based on particular incidents (like scandals) or particular periods (like elections). When political journalists are characterized on the basis of systematic research, such research is usually conducted in single national contexts, mostly Anglo-American (Tunstall, 1970 for the United Kingdom; Hess, 1981, for the United States; Henningham, 1995 for Australia). Due to differences in media markets (Kelly et al., 2004) and political media systems (Hallin and Mancini, 2004a) it is questionable whether these results can be generalized to countries belonging to the democratic corporatist and polarized pluralist media systems.

Therefore, this article reports the results of comprehensive surveys among political journalists in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain. By comparing political journalists working in four countries the article examines, first, what distinguishes political journalists from other journalists and, second, how the role conceptions and feelings of autonomy of political journalists differ between media systems.

Demographic backgrounds of political journalists

There is reason to expect that the demographic characteristics of journalists vary across journalistic beats, and that political journalists have particular demographic characteristics which are different from those of other reporters. Concerning gender, Van Zoonen (1998) has described how some journalistic domains, like finance, foreign news or sports, harbour more male reporters, while others, like human interest or consumer domains, hold a larger proportion of women. Political news is a prime example of a ‘masculine’ news domain, ‘because of its themes, style, mode of address and the gender divides in its audience’ (Van Zoonen, 1998: 127). This distinction between masculine and feminine domains is based on audience characteristics and styles, but it is likewise reflected in the gender composition of the journalistic workforce. A study of Westminster lobby correspondents published in 1970 found that only two out of 109 lobby correspondents were women (Tunstall, 1970). Over time, the proportion of female journalists has risen significantly (Weaver et al., 2007). Nevertheless, it can be expected that political journalists are still predominantly male and that the gender balance among political reporters is more skewed than among populations of general journalists.

In several countries the similarities in demographic backgrounds (including educational levels) between political reporters and politicians have been mentioned (Schudson, 2003). For example, White House reporters (United States) more closely resemble the political class than they resemble the general American public. They tend to have backgrounds in private schools or prestigious universities (Hess, 1992: 13). Because of the prestige of this beat, news outlets send their best journalists to cover politics. Journalists with a degree in social sciences or economics have the knowledge which is required to cover the sometimes complex and technical process of lawmaking (Hess, 1981: 81–85). Therefore, it can be expected that political journalists are higher educated that the journalistic population at large.

The dominance of male journalists and highly educated journalists are a general feature of prestigious beats (see Wu and Hamilton [2004] for foreign correspondents). But with regard to a third demographic background, political journalists are expected to stand out in comparison to reporters in all other beats: their political leaning. A leftish political leaning of journalists has been linked with a political motivation to work as a journalist. It is argued that left-leaning journalists are driven by a desire to place societal problems on the agenda, to fight injustice and to stand up for the disadvantaged (see Hopmann et al., 2010; Schönbach et al., 1994). Empirical support for a relation between political preference and a social or political motivation to work as a journalist is mixed. In a study among German reporters in the 1990s, Schönbach et al. (1994) did not find such a relation. Hopmann et al. (2010) found a weak relation between a left political leaning and political motivation among Danish journalism students. If left-wing journalists are politically motivated it can be expected that they will be overrepresented in the political beat compared to other beats since this is the place where their work can have an influence on political outcomes. In sum, these considerations lead to the following expectations about the demographic profile of political journalists: In comparison to general populations of journalists, political journalists are more often male (hypothesis 1a), higher educated (hypothesis 1b) and more left-wing in their political leaning (hypothesis 1c).

Role conceptions and autonomy

For the demographic characteristics described above there is no clear expectation why these characteristics should be different across countries. Based on previous research we can however expect cross-national differences in role conceptions and professional autonomy.

Role conceptions

How journalists cope with the, sometimes contradictory, normative demands becomes apparent in their role conceptions. Role conceptions have been studied across a wide range of dimensions (for an overview, see Vos, 2009). The deferential–adversarial and impartial–partisan dimensions are particularly relevant when studying the role conceptions of political journalists. First, these role conceptions assess whether political journalists want to participate or refrain from participating in the political process. These differences in role conceptions can lead to differences in news content and, ultimately, affect political attitudes and policy outcomes. Second, assessing role conceptions of political journalists in different countries along these dimensions taps into the debate about the journalistic homogenization and the international spread of the watchdog model of adversarial and impartial journalism (Josephi, 2005; Mancini, 2000, see below).¹

The first central dimension along which the roles of political journalists are compared cross-nationally is the deferential–adversarial dimension. The approach towards politics may differ according to how critical journalists are. Journalists can take an adversarial approach and sceptically follow developments in politics, or on the other hand passively transmit information from political actors to citizens.² The second dimension (impartial–partisan) assesses whether journalists see it as their role to choose sides in political disputes or not. Journalists can be impartial in their approach to politics and aim to give a balanced account of events or they can have a partisan approach and aim to express the political line of the medium they work for in the content they produce.³

Based on surveys among journalists around the world, Weaver (1998: 479) concludes that journalistic roles are linked to the political system and differ between countries without a democratic tradition and stable democracies. In countries with a strong democratic tradition like Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom, journalists generally follow the watchdog model favouring an impartial, adversarial role towards politicians (Deuze, 2002; Henningham and Delano, 1998; Weaver et al., 2007). In countries with an authoritarian tradition or a shorter democratic tradition such as Spain, the media system and the political system are still more closely integrated (Hallin and Mancini, 2004a). These differences in democratic tradition are expected to be reflected in the role conceptions of the political journalists:

Danish, German and British political journalists have more adversarial role conceptions than Spanish political journalists (hypothesis 2).

Spanish political journalists have more partisan role conceptions than Danish, German and British political journalists (hypothesis 3).

Professional autonomy

The autonomy of a journalist can be defined as the ‘latitude to carry out his or her occupational duties’ (Weaver et al., 2007: 70). Journalists have an autonomous position when ‘control of the work process in journalism is to a significant extent collegial, in the sense that authority over journalists is exercised primarily by fellow journalists’ (Hallin and Mancini, 2004a: 35). Deuze (2002: 5–6) describes autonomy as one of the defining features of a universal journalistic occupational ideology. In practice, the levels of autonomy of journalists vary widely across countries, especially due to political and commercial pressures (Benson, 2004; Hanitzsch and Mellado, 2011).

First, political journalists may feel that their professional autonomy is constrained because of political pressure. They may feel that their work is influenced by actors outside the newsroom who pursue a political agenda (Hallin and Papathanassopoulos, 2002). Such pressures may include direct interference by the owners of media outlets, when journalists or editors get fired for not following the right editorial line. Often such pressures are more subtle and influence the editorial process in ways which are less visible outside the newsroom. A second type of constraint on the autonomy of political journalists from inside the news organization comes from commercial pressure. The need for media organizations to make profit may limit the freedom of journalists to do their work according to their professional ethics. Budget cuts leave journalists with less time and fewer resources to do their work (Neveu, 2002: 35).

Although the autonomy of journalists is a less common topic of comparative research than role conceptions, several studies have compared the influence of political and commercial pressures across countries and found significant differences. Weaver (1998: 462) showed that the percentage of journalists who perceive a great deal of autonomy varies from 6% in Taiwan to over 80% in North America and Finland. Country differences seem to be mainly related to the competitiveness of the media markets (Kelly et al., 2004) and the strength of the journalistic profession (Hallin and Mancini, 2004a).

Denmark and Germany belong to the democratic corporatist media system, where the journalistic profession has developed a more solid position than in the other two media systems through self-regulation and strong unions (Hallin and Mancini, 2004a). As a consequence, political journalism is expected to experience little influence from political and commercial pressures. Compared to the democratic corporatist media system the position of journalists is weaker in the liberal media system to which the United Kingdom belongs. This is due to weaker journalism unions and self-regulatory mechanisms which are not strongly institutionalized (Tunstall, 2004). The press in Britain is highly competitive (Strömbäck and Shehata, 2007), with a strong tabloid segment and a reliance on single copy sales rather than subscriptions. In recent years, several observers have expressed their concerns about increasing profit orientation and budget restraints (see McNair, 2009). Therefore it is expected that British journalists experience more commercial pressure than Danish and German journalists. In Spain, as in other countries belonging to the polarized pluralist media system, owners of print and commercial media from time to time use their influence over media outlets to receive political favours (Hallin and Papathanassopoulos, 2002). At the same time, the government has a stronger influence in public service broadcasting than in other media systems. In the 1980s and 1990s, media policy in countries belonging to the polarized pluralist media system was characterized by ‘savage deregulation’ (Traquina, 1995), leading to a growth of media conglomerates and more focus on pursuing profits. These differences between media systems lead to the following hypotheses about the limits of the professional autonomy of political journalists:

Spanish political journalists feel more political pressure than Danish, German and British political journalists (hypothesis 4).

Spanish and British political journalists feel more commercial pressure than Danish and German political journalists (hypothesis 5).

Political and commercial pressures are not the only relevant limitations to the freedom of journalists. The professionalization of political communication has had a negative influence on the professional autonomy of political journalists. The rise of spin doctors has tightened control over access to information and made politicians better prepared for critical questions (McNair, 2004). This has seriously limited the possibility of political journalists to do investigative reporting or pose challenging questions. When journalists ignore the demands of spin doctors, they can expect aggressive complaints to their editors and might be excluded from press conferences (Esser et al., 2000). The relevance of spin in the different countries is discussed in the Results section. But the main focus in the comparative analysis of journalistic autonomy is on political and commercial pressures because previous research has shown the largest cross-national differences here (Hanitzsch and Mellado, 2011).

Homogenization?

The survey among political journalists in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain will show whether the roles and perceived autonomy of political journalists still vary across countries at the end of the first decennium of the 21st century. Over time, western media systems have become increasingly interconnected and have gone through similar developments (Hallin and Mancini, 2004b). Several scholars have pointed to these homogenizing trends, as an antecedent of increasingly similar views on journalism across media systems. Commercialization (the increased importance for the management of media companies to make a profit rather than to serve the public interest) and the spread of journalism education are mentioned as causes for the adaptation of an impartial, adversarial role conception among journalists in media systems which traditionally do not follow the watchdog model (Donsbach, 2010; Hadenius and Weibull, 1999: 145–146; Mancini, 2000). Furthermore, scholars have argued that across media systems, due to commercialization, political pressures on journalists are being replaced by commercial pressures (Hallin and Mancini, 2004b; Hess, 1981: 136).

Other studies come to the conclusion that the impact of ‘homogenization’ forces on the position of political journalists is far from one-dimensional and that the impact of structural trends like commercialization and rising levels of education among journalists varies across countries (Brants and Van Praag, 2006; Norris, 2000: 159; Schulz and Zeh, 2005). Given these contradictory claims about the impact of the homogenization of media systems, it remains an empirical question how different or similar the roles and constraints on the autonomy of political journalists in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain are.

Method

In the design of the survey which was conducted to test these hypotheses special attention was paid to equivalence of population, method and meaning (Hanitzsch, 2008; Weaver, 2008; Wirth and Kolb, 2004).

Equivalence of population

The population under study consists of parliamentary journalists working in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. The populations are defined as ‘journalists who report, analyze or comment on national politics’ and operationalized as the members of parliamentary press galleries or unions of parliamentary journalists (see Table 1). By focusing on parliamentary journalists rather than general reporters, we have the advantage of functional equivalence, since these journalists all report about similar topics: government and members of parliament. Since the populations under study are rather small, we opted for approaching the population as a whole rather than taking a sample.

Table 1.

Characteristics of surveys among political journalists in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain.

	Denmark	Germany	United Kingdom	Spain
Population	Presseloge (96)	Bundespresse-konferenz (620)	Press Gallery/Register of Journalists Interests (281)	Asociación de Periodistas Parlamentarios (116)
Respondents	71	201	87	66
Response rate^a	74%	32%	31%	57%
Time of survey	November 2007– March 2008	April 2008– July 2008	June 2008– January 2009	October 2008– January 2009
Female	28%	29%	23%	41%
Minimally educated at bachelor level	99%	84%	90%	97%
Degree in journalism	90%	39%	18%	93%
Mean political leaning^b	4.9 (1.43)	4.4 (1.36)	4.5 (1.58)	3.7 (1.27)
Mean political leaning of medium^b	5.8 (1.63)	5.4 (1.37)	5.0 (1.26)	5.4 (1.81)

^aResponse rate1 (AAPOR, 2008).

^bScale from 0 (completely left-leaning) to 10 (completely right-leaning); standard deviations in parentheses.

Equivalence of methods and administration

We conducted our survey in each of the four countries within a period of a little over a year (2008). We contacted the journalists by letter and email, inviting them to complete either a paper-and-pencil or an online version of the survey. Across countries most journalists completed the survey online. We used several strategies to increase the response rate like incentives and multiple follow-up contacts. In Spain and the United Kingdom additional phone calls were made to increase an initially low response.

The response rates range from 31% in the United Kingdom to 74% in Denmark, which is comparable to other journalism surveys (Donsbach and Patterson, 2004; Weaver, 1998). Checks of representativeness showed that the characteristics of the group of respondents are a good match for the characteristics of the entire political journalist population. Not all characteristics were known for the populations of the different countries, so different representative checks were included for each country. For all countries we compared distribution of gender and medium type of the respondents with the whole population. These variables yielded comparable results in Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom. In Spain, print journalists were underrepresented. The country scores are compared for print, public service broadcasting and commercial broadcasting separately, which should limit the influence of this underrepresentation on the results.

Equivalence of meaning

To study role conceptions, two indices were created on the basis of five closed-ended questions.⁴ The deferential–adversarial dimension was measured with a combined scale of three items, all measured on a five-point scale: (1) how much do you agree with the following statement? ‘Journalists should take a proactive approach and investigate claims by politicians’. How important are the following roles? (2) ‘Critically follow developments in economy and politics’ and (3) ‘Investigate statements made by government’. Cronbach’s alpha for this scale is .58, which means the internal consistency is moderate.⁵ The impartial–partisan dimension was measured with a combined scale of the following items (bivariate correlation .42): how much do you agree with the following statements? (1) ‘The medium I work for has a specific political colour which guides me in how to do my work’ and (2) ‘In the news section, my medium keeps a neutral position in partisan or policy disputes’ (reversely coded).

Limitations to the journalistic autonomy were measured with a combination of open and closed questions. An open question asked what they perceive as the biggest limitation to their freedom to work as a journalist. In addition they were asked to indicate the perceived influence on their work of audience figures; shareholders; advertisers; (threat of) budget cuts; competition with other media (scale from 0, no influence to 10, large influence). From these five items a commercial pressure scale was created (Cronbach’s alpha .66). Finally, the journalists were asked to indicate how they perceive the influence of political pressure on their daily work (scale from 0, no influence to 10, large influence).

To make sure that these questions apply well to the situations of the countries under study, native speakers translated and adapted the questions into Danish, German and Spanish. The question wordings were checked by and discussed with scholars in the field of political and communication science who are familiar with political communication in the four countries.

Analysis

To test hypotheses 1a, 1b and 1c, the demographic profiles of political journalists are compared to what is known from the long tradition of comprehensive surveys among journalistic populations (Skovsgaard et al., forthcoming for Denmark; Weischenberg et al., 2006 for Germany; Henningham and Delano, 1998 for the United Kingdom). To test hypotheses 2 to 5, mean scores of the role conceptions and perceived political and economic pressures are compared cross-nationally. As this study did not rely on quota sampling, each country included different proportions of journalists working for print, public service and commercial broadcasting. To rule out these different compositions in the cross-national comparisons, mean scores are compared cross-nationally for each of the three groups. Additional regression analysis was done to see whether individual background characteristics of the journalists, like gender, experience and journalism education, influenced their role conceptions and perceived autonomy.⁶ Controlling for these background factors did not lead to differences in mean country scores for the different outlets.

Results

Demographics

The demographic backgrounds of political journalists in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom are: predominantly male, higher educated than the national population and having a left political leaning, but to differing degrees between the countries (Table 1). More than two-thirds of the Danish, German and British political journalists are male. Spain is the only countries where more than 40% of the political beat are women. This is mainly due to the 30–40 age group, where female reporters in Spain outnumber male reporters. Gender divisions are more equal in the younger age groups than among older generations. Across countries a large majority of political journalists are highly educated: around 90% are minimally educated at a bachelor level. The education of political journalists shows important differences across countries. In Denmark and Spain, a majority of respondents have a degree in journalism education, while this is the case for only a minority of journalists in the United Kingdom and Germany.

Political journalists positioned the political leaning of themselves and the medium they work for on a scale from 0 (completely left-leaning) to 10 (completely right-leaning). The political leaning of journalists who report about politics can best be described as slightly left of centre (for similar results for news journalists, see Patterson and Donsbach, 1996). In Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom, the majority of the political journalists position themselves on or immediately next to the neutral middle position, with a mean score within one point left of the middle position. Only 7% of the political journalists position themselves on one of the three outer-left positions of the 11-point scale. Spanish journalists have a more left political leaning than their colleagues in Northern European countries. In contrast, journalists in each of the four countries position the political leaning of the medium they work for on average right of centre.

Comparing these results to what is known from surveys among general reporters by Henningham and Delano (1998), Weischenberg et al. (2006) and Skovsgaard et al. (forthcoming), we find partial support for the first hypotheses. In Denmark and Germany, the gender balance is indeed more skewed in the political beat⁷ and political journalists are generally higher educated than other journalists, thus supporting hypotheses 1a and 1b.⁸ Contrary to hypothesis 1c, the overrepresentation of a left political leaning is smaller among political journalists than among general reporters. The mean political leaning of political journalists is closer to the neutral middle position than the political leaning of general reporters in Germany (Weischenberg et al., 2006) or in Denmark (Skovsgaard et al., forthcoming).⁹ In sum, the difference between the demographic profile of political journalists and general reporters is a difference of degree rather than of kind.

Roles

Table 2 gives an overview of mean scores of Danish, German, British and Spanish journalists working for different outlets on the deferential–adversarial and impartial–partisan dimensions. Although the scores of all journalists on the deferential–adversarial scale are on the adversarial end of the scale, there are differences across countries. For all medium types, Spanish political journalists are less adversarial towards politicians than their colleagues in Northern Europe, thus supporting hypothesis 2. When comparing within countries, there is hardly any variation in adversarial roles for the different types of media outlets, which shows that the country in which journalists work is more important for this role conception than the type of medium. Journalists working for print and public service media in the democratic corporatist media system score higher on the deferential–adversarial scale than British journalists, which corroborates earlier findings by Donsbach and Patterson (2004) and Köcher (1986).

Table 2.

Role conceptions of Danish, German, British and Spanish political journalists working for different types of outlets.

	Denmark	Germany	United Kingdom	Spain
Deferential–adversarial
Print n	4.46 (0.34) 47	4.59 (0.36) 93	4.15 (0.45) 35	3.67 (0.64) 22
Public service broadcast n	4.36 (0.52) 13	4.64 (0.37) 62	4.04 (0.49) 24	3.82 (0.54) 13
Commercial broadcast n	4.28 (0.44) 6	4.46 (0.35) 27	4.19 (0.59) 18	3.64 (0.56) 12
Impartial–partisan
Print n	1.90 (0.83) 46	2.78 (0.80) 92	2.82 (1.00) 33	3.36 (1.04) 22
Public service broadcast n	1.35 (0.47) 13	1.77 (0.69) 64	1.58 (0.72) 25	2.46 (0.95) 14
Commercial broadcast n	1.58 (0.38) 6	2.29 (0.87) 28	1.83 (0.79) 18	3.39 (1.08) 13

Note: Mean scores on a scale from 1 to 5 with standard deviations within parentheses.

Compared to the deferential–adversarial scale, scores on the impartial–partisan scale are more widely spread around the middle position of the scale. Journalists working for print and broadcast media differ in the level of partisanship. Spanish political journalists working for print media have more partisan role conceptions than Danish, German and British journalists, thus supporting hypothesis 3. For broadcast journalists hypothesis 3 is also supported, as Spanish journalists working for both public service and commercial broadcasting score higher than journalists in Northern Europe. The biggest country variation is not in newspapers, but in commercial broadcasting. This is mostly due to Spanish journalists working for commercial radio stations, who have the most partisan role conceptions of all journalists in the study.

Autonomy

Political journalists were asked to describe the main limitation to their freedom to work as a journalist (Table 3). The most frequently mentioned answers were coded into five categories. Across countries, limitations inherent in routines and news formats (time and space) are seen as the most important limitations (for similar findings, see Hanitzsch et al., 2010). This is the most often mentioned category in Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom and the second most often mentioned in Spain. Apart from this main limitation, ‘limited access to politicians and spin’ is the only category which is in the top four of each country. Almost a quarter of British journalists mention this category as the most important limitation to their freedom. Aside from these limitations, there is considerable variation across countries. Of the four countries, the Danish political press corps sees itself as the most autonomous. Danes hardly report any limitations other than time and editorial space. None of the Danish journalists reported that they experience political pressure, while only two journalists experience commercial pressures. To put this into perspective: nine Danish journalists explicitly mentioned that they do not experience any limitations at all. Although Germany belongs to the same media system as Denmark, German political journalists report more constraints on their autonomy than their Danish colleagues. Compared to Denmark, the German media system is more competitive, with more competition on the television market and more newspapers competing for readers (Kelly et al., 2004). In Germany, commercial pressures are the second most mentioned category, while political pressure comes in fourth position.

Table 3.

Most frequently mentioned limitations of freedom to do journalistic work.

	Denmark (N = 71)	Germany (N = 201)	United Kingdom (N = 87)	Spain (N = 66)
1	Time/space (25)	Time/space (72)	Time/space (21)	Political pressure from within organization (17)
2	Access to politicians and spin (5)	Commercial pressure (21)	Access to politicians and spin (20)	Time/space (11)
3	Commercial pressure (2)	Access to politicians and spin (18)	Libel and privacy laws (6)	Access to politicians and spin (8)
4	–	Political pressure from within organization (7)	Political pressure from within organization (5)	Commercial pressure (1)

Note: Answers to open question. Number of journalists who mentioned each limitation in parentheses.

For British journalists political pressure only comes in fourth place too. Five British journalists report that political pressure limits their journalistic freedom. Although the British media system is generally considered the most competitive of the four countries under study, none of the British journalists in this study mentioned commercial pressures as the most important limitations to their freedom. While in Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom the most often mentioned limitations are related to the routines in the news organization and the format of the news outlet, this is only the second most often mentioned limitation experienced by Spanish journalists. The most mentioned constraint on the autonomy of Spanish political journalists is political pressure, while commercial pressure was mentioned by one journalist.

In line with their answers to the open questions, Danish journalists score low on the political pressure scale. Spanish newspaper journalists and journalists working for commercial media experience more political pressure that journalists in Northern Europe (Table 4). Hypothesis 4 is, however, only partly supported, as Spanish political reporters working for public service media do not stand out compared to their colleagues working in other media systems.

Table 4.

Perceived influence of political and commercial pressures on daily work by Danish, German, British and Spanish political journalists working for different types of outlets.

	Denmark	Germany	United Kingdom	Spain
Political pressure
Print n	0.79 (1.77) 47	1.21 (1.87) 94	2.26 (2.31) 34	4.59 (2.99) 22
Public service broadcast n	1.23 (1.74) 13	2.20 (2.27) 64	2.04 (1.74) 25	2.93 (2.20) 14
Commercial broadcast n	1.00 (1.67) 6	2.30 (1.77) 27	1.67 (1.85) 18	4.86 (3.01) 14
Commercial pressure
Print n	2.67 (1.48) 46	3.07 (1.79) 91	2.78 (1.18) 34	4.26 (1.66) 21
Public service broadcast n	2.95 (1.55) 13	2.66 (1.38) 60	2.78 (.90) 23	2.76 (1.43) 14
Commercial broadcast n	2.50 (.98) 6	4.99 (1.99) 28	3.46 (1.22) 17	5.62 (1.80) 13

Note: Mean scores on a scale from 0 (no influence) to 10 (large influence) with standard deviations in parentheses.

The perceived commercial pressure yields mixed results across the different type of news outlet but no support for hypothesis 5. Of the newspaper journalists, Spanish journalists believe that commercial pressure has most influence on their daily work, but contrary to hypothesis 5, British newspaper journalists do not feel more pressure than journalists in the democratic corporatist media system. Commercial pressure for journalists working for public service broadcast organizations does not differ across countries. The cross-national variation in perceived commercial pressure was larger for commercial broadcast journalists than for public service journalists, but the differences across countries were different than expected on the basis of hypothesis 5. Together with Danish journalists, British journalists working for commercial channels score lowest in their perceived commercial pressure, while this pressure is high for Spanish and German journalists. The high score for German commercial broadcast journalists is in line with the 21 German journalists who mentioned commercial pressure as the most important limitation to the freedom to do their work (Table 3).

Discussion

This article reports a study into the people behind the political headlines from a double comparative perspective. Compared to journalistic populations as whole, journalists in the political beat are more often male and higher educated, while their political preferences are less left-leaning. Across countries there was considerable variation in role conceptions and professional autonomy. This became particularly clear when journalists in Spain were compared to journalists in Northern Europe. The implications and limitations of the findings are discussed as well as the question whether this study showed signs of homogenization in journalistic practice.

Although the female participation in the journalistic profession may be rising (see Weaver et al., 2007 for the United States), this study has shown that the political beat still lags behind. This confirms that the journalistic profession is horizontally segmented between men and women across the different beats. Male dominance in political journalism has been linked to the gendering of journalistic content with regard to the dominance of values like objectivity, focus on power, elite orientation and male politicians (see Klaus, 2009). The causal direction between the gender balance of the journalistic profession and characteristics of the news is, however, hard to establish. Nevertheless, as an equal access of different groups of society to the media is something to strive for from a normative perspective, this should apply especially to political journalism, as the most sacred part of journalism. Like gender, high levels of education and the ‘academization’ of journalism have also been linked to particular journalistic roles and news content characteristics, in particular a patriarchal view on their journalistic role and a tendency to identify with the political and social elite (see Schönbach et al., 1994: 141; Shoemaker and Reese, 1996). As there were hardly any journalists among the respondents without a high level of education, a relation between the level of education of individual journalists and their roles could not be tested in this study.

Contrary to hypothesis 1c, political journalists are less left-leaning than the general population of journalists. This challenges critics who accuse the media of a leftish bias due to the demographic background of their political journalists. First, only a small minority position themselves on the outer-left end of the political scale. Second, in Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom the mean political leaning lies within one point of the middle position and third, in all countries, journalists’ own political leaning slightly left of centre is balanced by the political leaning of the media outlets, which are slightly right of centre.

In the second comparison, the role conceptions and perceived constraints on the autonomy of political journalists in the four countries were contrasted. Studying journalists’ perceptions is valuable for the understanding of news production, because it ‘renders observable social structures that are otherwise invisible to researchers’ (Hanitzsch et al., 2010: 18). The low level of commercial pressure experienced by British journalists is in line with Donsbach and Patterson’s (2004: 262) earlier findings that American journalists likewise score ‘medium’ on the commercialization scale used in their study. This shows that the journalists may experience commercial pressure differently from what might be expected from a structural account of the liberal media system (McNair, 2009; Tunstall, 2004) or from analysis of news content in this media system (Strömbäck and Shehata, 2007). In this way, subjective studies should not be seen as a substitute, but rather as a useful addition to content analyses comparing news in different countries (Benson and Hallin, 2007; Esser, 2008).

Despites claims of homogenization driven by commercialization and journalism education, this article has shown that the roles and professional autonomy of political journalists vary across media systems. Algarra and Gaitano (1997: 486) found that younger generations of Spanish journalists were adopting a more neutral–adversarial role conception. They further found that Spanish journalists chose a position closer to neutral than German journalists did, and were more active than British newspaper journalists. If our results are compared to the results of Algarra and Gaitano’s study the difference between Spain and the rest of Europe seems to have become wider rather than smaller. In this survey Spain is clearly an outlier.

Paradoxically, this divergence of journalistic cultures might be the result of commercialization, which is normally seen as a cause of convergence and homogenization. In the polarized pluralist media system commercialization seems to have led to more partisan reporting and an increase rather than decrease of political pressure. News organizations in Spain and other Mediterranean countries are often incorporated in larger companies, whose owners use the influence of their news outlets to receive political favours from which their company can benefit (De Miguel and Pozas, 2009; Papathanassopoulos, 2001). Competition over market share has, for some Spanish newspapers, led to more partisan reporting rather than a neutral style, as outlets try to appeal to a partisan audience (De Miguel and Pozas, 2009). These findings suggest that similar structural developments of media systems have a different impact on the journalists working in these systems, depending among other things on sociodemographic (political polarization in society) and cultural characteristics of the country (like rational-legal authority and clientelism). This stresses the importance of taking historical and cultural contexts into account when analysing the role of political journalism in a particular country. Although political journalists play a central role in the democratic process in all free democratic societies, this article has shown that the way they perceive this role varies from country to country.

Footnotes

Funding

The research was supported through a grant from the Danish Social Science Research Council.

Notes

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