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Diversity of Journalisms. Proceedings of ECREA/CICOM Conference, Pamplona, 4-5 July 2011
Spain newspaper El País yes 56
Spain newspaper ABC no 25
Sweden public tv SVT no 46
Sweden newspaper Dagens Nyheter no 146
Sweden newspaper Svenska
Dagbladet
no 148
UK public tv BBC no 67
UK newspaper The Guardian yes 266
UK newspaper The Times no 100
Total 1125
For the sample, only quality newspapers were selected (see Table 1). Tabloid papers
and freesheets were disregarded; likewise, only public service news programmes were
selected and no private-commercial television stations. It is expected that tabloids,
freesheets and commercial television programmes emphasize sensationalism and
personification anyway as this is their main rationale and selling proposition, thus, the
results in our context would hardly have been surprising. The more interesting question
seems to be whether even classical quality newspapers and public service news follow
similar rationales with regard to their news selection and presentation. The two
newspapers selected per country included, where applicable, one newspaper that
officially cooperated with Wikileaks (this was the case with The Guardian, Le Monde
and El Pais), therefore, in Germany, the news magazine Der Spiegel as the German
cooperating medium was included in the study. In Sweden, there was no officially
cooperating newspaper.
It was expected that the cooperating newspapers would report more about the content
of the Wikileaks documents than the others; this however could only significantly be
observed in the case of the British Guardian. The cooperating papers did, however,
take a more positive stance towards the publications as such, while some of the other
media were rather critical of the publications and reiterated the security concerns
raised by the governments.
Wikileaks lent itself as a topic to the study because the organization’s publication of
confidential correspondence between U.S. Embassies and the U.S. Department of
State throughout December 2010 and the subsequent arrest of Wikileaks-founder
Julian Assange (on unrelated charges) made the headlines globally. Since each
country the U.S. has diplomatic relations with was mentioned in the documents, the
topic acquired a global dimension. Thus, an analysis of the handling of the subject in
the news media of different countries could reveal whether there are significant
differences in dealing with a subject like that or whether there are similar trends in
different countries due to similar structural conditions under which journalism operates.
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