Beyond Puppet Journalism: The Bridging Work of Transnational Journalists in a Local Field

ABSTRACT

This article examines the position and relative power of local journalists who produce foreign correspondence in contemporary authoritarian states. The study uses field theory to examine the forms of capital and the field positions these journalists hold in a context where the local field imposes strong, unwritten boundaries around acceptable methods and forms of storytelling—leaving local journalists to practice what one correspondent called “puppet journalism.” This study draws on data collected during seven months of fieldwork, including participant observation in several newsrooms and interviews conducted in and around Kigali, Rwanda. I find that local-foreign correspondents in Rwanda occupy a bridging position, drawing from local and transnational journalism fields to construct their understanding of the journalism game (in Bourdieu's terms, their habitus). These journalists incorporate values into their work routines and news coverage that align with the transnational field, while adapting these values to better coexist with the expectations of the local field. This analysis offers insight into the routines and capital of local-foreign correspondents in a development-oriented authoritarian country and, more broadly, unpacks the ways that a journalist might draw from multiple fields to construct a bridging habitus.

KEYWORDS:

• Capital
• field theory
• foreign correspondence
• wire services
• Rwanda
• international journalism
• habitus

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Philip Howard and Matthew Powers for valuable insight on research related to this study, and David Peyton and the anonymous Journalism Studies reviewers for thoughtful comments on the manuscript.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Ruth Moon http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2170-7385

Notes

1 The primary language in Rwanda is Kinyarwanda, but almost all journalists spoke English at the elite news organizations where this study's interviews and observations were conducted, and editorial meetings took place primarily in English.

Additional information

Funding

This article is based on material from a PhD dissertation funded by a Boren Fellowship, the University of Washington's Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, and the Chester Fritz International Fellowship.