Making News Necessary: How Journalism Resists Alternative Media's Challenge*

Abstract

News coverage following Al Gore and George W. Bush's appearances on the Oprah Winfrey Show during the 2000 presidential campaign shows journalism asserting its authority to manage political discourse despite competition from alternative media. Analysis using Foucault's concepts of knowledge, power, and discipline reveals journalism affirming its continuing relevance and integrates insights from the framing and paradigm repair traditions. Journalists rejected Oprah as political discourse but reframed its elements to meet news criteria established by institutional journalism. Using negative stereotypes of women as political actors, journalists also disciplined Winfrey's “mostly female” audience for failing to adequately enact citizenship. Journalists thus both reasserted authority to manage political discourse and set standards for citizenship that positioned journalism as necessary to democracy.

Communicating Legitimacy

“…Through these acts, the actors responsible for disrupting the social order are disciplined (cf. Edy & Snidow, 2011) and “belief in the social order is reaffirmed by the public demonstration of its capacity to expose and condemn—and perhaps eventually to forgive and pardon—the transgressor” (Thompson, 1998, p. 57). In their narratives, journalists raised a range of moral concerns regarding Bus Uncle.…”

“…Another reporter at the paper criticizes other journalists for violating the objectivity norm of observing the social world without appearing in their own stories (Edy & Snidow, 2011), “The Bus Uncle clip is self-explanatory. Yet, yesterday a group of reporters brought Roger Chan to Elvis Ho’s workplace in an attempt to stage a drama” ( Ta Kung Pao , June 6, 2006).…”

“…Prior research examining the early relationship between traditional media and emergent media suggests that journalists’ narratives of the emergence of alternative media practices are partly founded on an attempt to defend their own legitimacy when facing down the threats presented by those practices (Carlson, 2007; Winch, 1997). Journalists do so by erecting symbolic boundaries or deploying resources to enforce their social, epistemic authority (Carlson & Peifer, 2013; Edy & Snidow, 2011). For example, journalists downplay the legitimacy of bloggers by framing them as mere writers in pajamas (Jones & Himelboim, 2010).…”

“…The Bus Uncle incident is historically valuable as an instance of a paradigm-defining event (Lee, 2009), during and through which the impact and challenges of new media on conventional media are manifested. For news journalists, UGC fuels an emergent and efficient source of human-interest stories (Lee, 2012) yet potentially undermines their privileged social position as a producer and arbiter of public knowledge (Carlson & Peifer, 2013; Edy & Snidow, 2011). Drawing on the concept of legitimacy from institutional theory (Scott, 2001; Suchman, 1995), this study contends that the need and capacity within the social system to negotiate such conundrums—that is, to render the novel practices acceptable and, thereby, legitimate in the eyes of social actors—not only facilitated the rapid, widespread propagation of Bus Uncle but also initiated the institutionalization of UGC in Hong Kong.…”

Profesionalización autogestiva de los periodistas mexicanos organizados.

“…de la profesión (Nixon, 2011;Morieson, 2012;Altmeppen, Arnold & Kösler, 2012;Sjøvaag, 2013); las innovaciones tecnológicas que modifican las exigencias profesionales para los periodistas (Wallace, 2009;Himelboim & McCreery, 2012;Mäenpää, 2014;Revers, 2014); el impacto de la formación universitaria en el grado de autonomía, el status profesional y las condiciones de su reconocimiento (Naït-Bouda, 2010;Das, 2007;Leteinturier, 2010;Ruusunoksa, 2006); la relación de la producción periodística con el sistema político y los asuntos públicos (Mercado, 2015;González, Sierra y Benítez, 2014;Brüggemann, Engesser, Büchel, Humprecht & Castro , 2014;Revers, 2013;Edy & Snidow, 2011); los roles profesionales con relación al género, posición de autoridad, condiciones laborales, entre otras cosas (Mellado, Márquez, Mick et al, 2016;Frisque, 2014;Papa, & Collet, 2013;Anden-Papadopoulus & Pantti, 2013); el estudio de las prácticas especializadas del periodismo (Hanusch, 2011;Boyer, 2006;Diana, 2013; Montérémal & Souanef; 2013) y la satisfacción laboral de los periodistas (Espino, 2016;Leteinturier, 2010;De Bruin, 2000 (Beck, 2006).…”