Determinants of Journalists' Professional Autonomy: Individual and National Level Factors Matter More Than Organizational Ones

Abstract

This article seeks to map systematically predictors of journalists' perceived professional autonomy. On the basis of survey responses of 1,800 journalists from 18 countries, the study tests the extent to which journalists with different backgrounds and jobs, who work for different media and organizations, under different kinds of ownerships and pressures, in democratic and nondemocratic regimes, can perform their roles as society's main providers of information. We demonstrate that predictors of professional autonomy are twofold: comprising journalists' perceived influences on news work, and objective limits of autonomy that exist beyond journalists' perceptions. The latter reside on 3 levels: the individual journalist level, the organizational level, and the societal level. Journalists' subjective perceptions of political, organizational, procedural, professional, and reference group influences proved to be strongest predictors of professional autonomy. Of the hypothesized objective determinants of journalists' autonomy, ownership, editorial rank, and professional experience had the highest predictive value.

Notes

¹The negative relationship with state ownership and the positive relationship with public ownership are analyzed in comparison with private ownership.

Note. Cell entries contain following information: number of news organizations (number of journalists).

²In every country, there exists a tacit consensus among journalists and media scholars regarding the media that are considered to substantially shape the national political agenda. Hence, we selected those quality outlets which are commonly believed to have the greatest impact in this regard. For popular print media we selected the outlets with the highest circulation numbers. The selection of radio and TV stations was based on the ratings of their newscasts.

³Sources are experts' assessments in addition to public opinion data such as World Values Survey.

Note. Comparisons of public and state ownership were made to the private ownership; and country effects were compared to the United States and baseline category.

*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

⁴The United States does not appear in the model because it was used as baseline category for the dummy-coded country variables.

⁵Private ownership served as baseline category for the dummy-coded ownership categories, so it does not appear in the model.

⁶Scale ranges from 5 (full autonomy) to 1 (no autonomy).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zvi Reich

Zvi Reich (Ph.D., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2004) is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communication Studies at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. His research interests include journalism studies, especially concerning aspects of epistemology, authorship, news practices and technology use.

Thomas Hanitzsch

Thomas Hanitzsch (Ph.D., Ilmenau University of Technology, 2004) is a Professor of Communication at the Institute of Communication Studies and Media Research, Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich. His research interests include journalism cultures, conflict journalism, celebrity news, media and trust, and comparative communication research.