News decisions: Journalists as partisan actors

Abstract

Journalists in the Western democracies define themselves primarily as news professionals who are committed to a form of journalism marked by its objectivity and political neutrality. Yet they are also partisan actors whose political beliefs affect their news decisions. This conclusion is backed by evidence from a survey of journalists in five countries: the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and Sweden. In all five countries, there is a significant correlation between journalists’ personal beliefs and their news decisions. The relationship is strongest in news systems where partisanship is an acknowledged component of daily news coverage and is more pronounced among newspaper journalists than broadcast journalists, but partisanship has a modest impact on news decisions in all arenas of daily news, even those bound by law or tradition to a policy of political neutrality.