The Jeremiad Over Journalism

―commercial pressures have intensified with deregulation of broadcasting and changes in ownership
patterns that have brought newspapers under the influence of Wall Street. Similar changes are
clearly under way to varying degrees thorough out Europe, most dramatically in the sphere of
broadcasting.‖ 194
Conclusion
This section has defined commercialization as a process where normative and idealistic notions
about custom or culture, in this case the media environment, give way to a ―monetarization of
decision-making and relationships.‖
Consequently, idealistic notions of journalism working as a fourth estate providing citizens the best
possible opportunity to participate in democracy and working in the public‘s interest, yields to the
need to make money when commercialization in its crudest form becomes dominant in news
institutions. Additionally, this section has shown that in media markets with great competition,
increased commercialization does not necessarily lead to neutral news, but rather reinforces the
need to differentiate a specific news outlet by taking an explicit stance on key issues.
The notion of commercialization plays an important part in the subsequent analysis of structural
Americanization as well as the content analysis. The following section will argue that structural
Americanization, at the macro-level impacts individual journalists producing news content through
the intermediary role of news institutions and thus helps to explain how the content analysis focused
on macro-level developments such as commercialization can be argued to also explain changes in
actual news production.
2.4 Journalism as an institution
According to American political scientist Timothy Cook, the news media cannot simply be viewed
as different organizations within individual countries, but rather must be considered institutions
with considerable influence over the eventual news produced by individual journalists. In this sense
Cook‘s writings serve as an important link between the structural economic Americanization
194 It is, however important to note that Danish adherence to the public service tradition and press subsidies, have also
been argued to play an important inhibiting role in relation to commercialization. Jesper Strömbäck, Mark Ørsten, and
Toril Aalberg, Communicating Politics: Political Communication in the Nordic Countries (Nordicom, 2008). Page 19-
21. See also Hallin and Mancini, Comparing Media Systems. Three Models of Media and Politics. Page 250-252 and
284.
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