THE HIERARCHY OF JOURNALISTIC CULTURAL AUTHORITY

Abstract

Print and broadcast journalists attempt to patrol the boundaries of the field. They compete with consumer perceptions and the consequent power of television that have led to a shift in traditional definitions of journalism. Among journalists from print, national and network radio and network (non-local) television, a clear discrepancy emerges between the level of esteem journalists of each medium have among their colleagues, and their popular status with the public. This study documents and analyzes the ways in which members of the American journalistic community have articulated their beliefs about who has the authoritative voice in journalism, and who is qualified to make decisions about boundaries of the craft and preferred practices. This study finds that internally, newspaper journalists are still regarded as the legitimate craftsmen. The fame that some television journalists have achieved both reflects the appreciation of TV journalism and a loathing of it, primarily due to how this fame functions in journalistic cultural authority, as well as in practices of promotion and financial compensation for journalists. Despite these tensions, journalists of different media are also shown to exhibit solidarity and recognition that they are all colleagues in a larger community with a common goal.

Keywords:

• cultural authority
• hierarchy
• print journalism
• television journalism

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the editor, editorial assistant, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments in revising the manuscript.

Notes

1. Scholarly accounts and critiques of journalism constitute another sort of meta-discourse about journalism. While some of these scholars themselves are not actual journalists, their meta-discourse is part of the larger discussion through which the journalistic community self-monitors.

2. The data for this article were collected as part of a larger project, the author's doctoral dissertation, which examined over 900 discrete items drawn from the sources mentioned over the time period between 1950 and 2006. The Major Papers search feature through Lexis Nexis includes, but is not limited to, the following: The Washington Post since 1977; USA Today since 1989; The New York Times—abstracts since 1969, articles since 1980; Boston Globe since 1988; Atlanta Journal-Constitution since 1991. Additionally, the Proquest Historical New York Times database was searched for full-text articles from 1945 through 1995. Additional sources included Slate.com, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, and E! Online.

3. Although an anchor who is well known and favorably perceived is the best scenario for a network and its ratings, an anchor who is well known and disliked is still preferred in terms of ratings than one who is liked but unknown. Examples of these two cases are Bill O'Reilly who was widely known but rated unfavorably by a high percentage of respondents and Brian Williams who was favorably rated but known to fewer respondents, according to a 2006 Gallup poll (Newport and Carroll, 2006).

4. As early as 1966, Walter Cronkite said that the TV networks “are basically dependent on the wire services” (Fensch, 1993, p. 29).