Ph.d.afhandling Hanne Jørndrup - Syddansk Universitet

tempts at identifying regulating principles and rules of formation of the journalistic practise.Moreover, the 1250 articles amounting to the empirical case are all understood as statements in asingle journalistic discourse rather than as separate and independent entities chosen with referenceto the individual publishing house or journalist.In its methodological work the thesis also draws upon a range of international studies of journalisticrelations to the national state, focusing especially on wartime journalism. It thus gathers its analyticaltools from for instance Daniel C. Hallin’s studies of the American media-coverage of the Vietnamwar and Susan Carruther’s historical analysis of wartime journalism and media-coverage.These tools are appropriated to better investigate the journalistic discourse and its relation to civilsociety discourses on the national. In combining such a wide range of analytical tools the thesisprovides a detailed picture of the variety of ways in which journalistic practise refers to the nationalcontext, both within the separate journalistic fields and in relation to specific news-events.In the analysis it has become transparent that a reference to and a discussion of the Danish participationin the war in Iraq was almost totally absent in the newspaper coverage of the first days of thewar. In the coverage it is in other words almost invisible that Denmark as a nation was in any wayinvolved in the war. However, the thesis does not conclude that the absent reference to the nationalcontext in the news-coverage of the Iraq war should be read as a sign that the journalistic practisehas become an independent organ in its relation to Danish national state interests. On the contrary,the conclusion is that Danish journalistic practise in many respects represents the interests expressedat a national political level. The absent coverage of the national involvement in the Iraq warought to be understood as a sign that the Danish participation in the war could actually have farreachingconsequences for the Danish political system and the idea of a Danish national community,particularly due to the lacking political and public consensus on the topic. But the consequencesare of such a nature that the political system does not want them to be discussed publicly.Accordingly the journalistic practise does not raise the discussion and it thus acts in accordancewith national state interests and not as an independent voice in the public space.308