Professional Competition and Cooperation

Abstract

This article examines the conditions of production of a live television political information service in a context of fierce media competition, dependency on sources, and considerable temporal and spatial constraints. By means of an in-the-field ethnography, outside the newsroom, it focuses on politicians’ visits to the Salon international de l’agriculture, which takes place each year in Paris. Analysis of this institutionalized political ritual provides a fresh perspective, beyond the expected framework, at professional competition and cooperation between television journalists seeking to obtain their own video footage and sound recordings. This case reveals developments in television coverage of political visits both in terms of the explosion of twenty-four-hour news channels and of the strategies deployed by politicians. Finally, it questions the emergence of a model of live journalist-presenter that is becoming ubiquitous throughout the journalistic field.