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Diversity of Journalisms. Proceedings of ECREA/CICOM Conference, Pamplona, 4-5 July 2011
Historical diversities: The covert influence of religious legacies on the
formation of journalistic practices.
MacGregor, Phil
Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, United Kingdom
This paper examines the possibility that journalists' sense of justice may be informed
by legacies of religious influences. As the secularisation of social practices
accelerates in some parts of Europe, it is possible to miss and ignore the long social
traditions that inform the value systems of journalists, and their own selection criteria
of news. It is proposed that some concepts of blame and punishment may be
deduced from the past and the senses of what constitutes wrongdoing. The Puritan
influence on the social production of guilt, of which journalists form a key part, may be
paramount in Northern Europe, but less pronounced in Catholic countries. The paper
would examine the arguments and sample content to help discuss whether such
attitudes can be marked and compared, even in theory. The theoretical underpinning
starts with Max Weber's account of the supposed influence of Puritan spirit on the
development of capitalism, also suggested by Hallin and Mancini (2004). In addition
in the UK there is a pronounced infuence suggested on the formation of the mass
press by Evangelicalism (Goldsworthy), 2006). There may also be differences in the
epistemological underpinning on journalism when comparing journalisms in different
European countries - perhaps with the Protestant countries maintaining a harder
edged version of 'truth', which is perhaps more definite, and less pluralistic and
complicated than that found in countries that did not experience the reformation. If
citizen journalism is breaking free of older journalistic moulds, we might expect some
departure from the norms and values of traditional journalisms in this respect. This will
be considered, although, in such a complex theme as this, no one argument or
method is likely to be decisive. Nevertheless, over-secularisation of the analysis of
journalism may lose us a useful insight on the way media interpret social change.
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