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Diversity of Journalisms. Proceedings of ECREA/CICOM Conference, Pamplona, 4-5 July 2011
Paper panel 8 – Gender and social diversity on journalism
Monday, July 4th 14.00 - 15.30 (Room 4)
Diversity in journalism approaches: Media’s search to take “the man on the
street” into account
de Haan, Yael
Amsterdam School of Communication Research, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Media and journalism across Europe have been subject to higher degree of external
scrutiny. This has been intensified by substantial structural media changes in the past
decades including a fiercer competitive media climate. Media are accused of not
verifying facts, acting like parrots following each other, taking incidents out of context
and creating media hypes. Moreover, they are criticized for failing to see the concerns
within society creating an ever-widening gap with the public. The accusations on
media performance have fed an ongoing debate about the social responsibility of the
media and how they can be held accountable and responsive for serving the public
interest.
This research answers how media are responding to these accusations and growing
demand for accountability and responsive measures to come to terms with the public.
Data was collected through three in-depth case studies of a Dutch newspaper, the
news broadcast of the Dutch PSB, and a Dutch commercial broadcasting news
organization. Spending a total of one year in the field, data was gathered, using
multiple sources of evidence, including document analysis, observations and more
than 100 interviews.
Results show that where there is a growing demand among politicians for media to be
more accountable to the public, this study shows that media are more preoccupied
with amending the gap with the public by providing a diversity of responsive
journalism approaches, including interactive journalism, forms of public journalism
and news forms of research journalism, to tailor to the concerns of “the man on the
street”. However, these new public oriented approaches have created dilemmas for
journalist of how to find a balance between taking the public into account and the
potentially conflicting norms of independence and journalism responsibility.
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