The foreign media correspondent: Dateline Washington D.C

Amidst the debate over a ‘global journalistic culture’, this study, drawing on Hallin and Mancini’s typology of media systems and Hanitzsch’s deconstruction of journalistic role perception, looks into how foreign correspondents in China perceive their professional roles, and how their role perceptions differ across different media systems. Based on a survey analysis of 101 journalists, the study identifies three role types among China correspondents: detached disseminator, populist watchdog, and facilitative change agent. A majority of respondents perceive their professional role as non-facilitative and non-advocate, disputing the ‘hostile foreign forces’ allegation China usually employs to discredit foreign correspondents. No significant national variance is detected in the relative size of the three role types, and journalists from different media systems all value objectivity, neutrality, detachment, as well as a strong audience orientation, echoing the global homogenizing tendency in certain components of journalistic culture. Yet, strong national variance prevails in key dimensions, including a watchdog role for the host country, advocacy orientation and power distance with home government, largely consistent with the respective journalistic culture in each media system, suggesting that national journalistic culture still holds a strong grip on foreign correspondence.

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confidence: 99%

Detached disseminator, populist watchdog and facilitative change agent: The professional role perception of foreign correspondents in China

Zeng

2017

“…Surprisingly, the work of foreign correspondents covering the United States has received little attention from the academic community during the past four decades. To this day, only five studies (Lambert, 1956;Suh, 1972;Mowlana, 1975a, b;Ghorpade, 1984a-c;Nair, 1991) have analyzed this small but important group of professional journalists in the United States. While we know that the United States is the main focus of international news coverage in foreign publications and broadcasts, we know little about the circumstances of how these news stories are produced and what problems US-based correspondents face in their daily work.…”

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confidence: 99%

Through their Eyes

Willnat

Weaver

2003

This study, based on a mail survey conducted in early 2000, investigates the professional norms and values, personal backgrounds, daily routines and work-related problems of foreign correspondents working in the United States. The analysis assumes that the correspondents' professional values are related to what is reported about the United States around the world - and that this news coverage matters in terms of world public opinion and policies. The study identifies how foreign correspondents perceive their professional values and provides an in-depth analysis of where foreign journalists come from, how they think about their work and how they perceive their professional roles. Professional values analyzed in this study include perceptions of the importance of different journalistic roles, opinions on the importance of different aspects of the job and journalists' images of their readers, viewers and listeners. Professional norms include opinions about which questionable reporting methods might be justifiable. The main objective is to provide a detailed analysis of who foreign correspondents are, how they cope with their daily work, what specific problems they face in obtaining information from official and private sources and how they manage to adjust their professional work to American culture and customs. Some findings of this study are compared to similar studies of US journalists to provide a comparative context.

“…Rimmer, 2012). In journalism studies, many, especially earlier scholarships, mainly tap on foreign correspondents' demographic profile and other characteristics in a static fashion (Hess, 1996(Hess, , 2005Lambert, 1956;Mowlana, 1975;Nair, 1991;Terzis, 2008;Willnat & Weaver, 2003); some offered valuable perspectives in identifying the evolved different overseas assignment modes (Erickson & Hamilton, 2006;Hamilton & Jenner, 2004). These classic studies have a clear focus on individual agents and their morphologies in the field, but did not link the individual dispositions with overseas modes, thus regrettably ignoring a dynamic and relational agent-structure relationship.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Existing literature on foreign correspondents has yet to explore the Bourdieuian dispositional theory of practice, which has been actively debated and advanced by scholars in other fields such as ethnography (see, for example, Wacquant, 2004), educational research (see, for example, Lingard et al, 2015), policy research (see, for example, Greener, 2002) and music and arts studies (see, for example, Rimmer, 2012). In journalism studies, earlier scholarships mainly tap on foreign correspondents’ demographic profile and other characteristics in a static fashion (see, for example, Hess, 1996, 2005; Lambert, 1956; Mowlana, 1975; Nair, 1991; Terzis, 2008; Willnat and Weaver, 2003); some focus on the evolving overseas assignment modes (Erickson and Hamilton, 2006; Hamilton and Jenner, 2004), but ignored the dynamics of journalists’ individual dispositions in shaping these structural changes. These classic studies have a clear dichtonomous focus on either the individual agents or their structured position patterns in the field, missing the dynamic and relational agent–structure relationship.…”

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confidence: 99%

Morphology and typology of China correspondents: A habitus-based approach

Zeng

2018

Drawing on Bourdieu's field theory and his key construct of habitus, this study examines the "Chinese habitus" and "journalistic habitus" of China correspondents, and proposes a habitus-based typology. Theoretically, this paper attempts to advance the construct of habitus as a conceptual framework for journalism and media studies. Empirically, based on a survey analysis of 101 journalists and in-depth interviews with 20 journalists, this paper maps out the primary and secondary habitus of China correspondents, and further analyzes how different Chinese habitus and journalistic habitus land China correspondents into a typology of four: Spiralists, Sporadics, Sinojournos, and Sinophiles. These different positions, as the paper argues, result in different practice of China correspondents-either to maintain or to challenge the existing power structure in the field of China correspondence. The implications of these results are discussed.