Book Review: The Global Journalist in the 21st Century, by David H. Weaver and Lars Willnat (Eds.)
| Autor: | Anthony Moretti |
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| Rok vydání: | 2013 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Journalism & Mass Communication Educator. 68:432-434 |
| ISSN: | 2161-4326 1077-6958 |
| DOI: | 10.1177/1077695813509990 |
| Popis: | David H. Weaver and Lars Willnat (Eds.). The Global Journalist in the 21st Century. New York: Routledge, 2012. 585 pp.The Global Journalist in the 21st Century is a quantitative researcher's dream. It is filled with page upon page of survey and other data that examine what journalists in almost three dozen countries look like, think about, and worry over, and how those individuals complete their day-to-day responsibilities as various internal and external forces weigh upon them. For what it is worth, many journalists in democratically ori- ented nations admit to a left-center to left political affiliation and believe their owners are right-center to right on the political scale.Journalists from places as different as China and Chile or Singapore and Slovenia took part in the surveys, and they were responding in almost every case to researchers native to that country. The surveys were conducted by telephone, mail, online, or in-person.One of the intriguing results is that in many countries, the question of "who" is a journalist remains undefined, if it is discussed at all. As a result, it also is a challenge to determine a true total number of men and women who practice the craft. But that might not necessarily be a bad thing. The September/October 2013 issue of the Columbia Journalism Review asks the provocative question "What is journalism for?" New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen suggests such a question is "100 times better than the more commonly seen, 'who is a journalist?' which is nothing but an invitation to class war" (p. 28). For their part, Weaver and Willnat state that identi- fying and then comparing journalists from country to country has become more diffi- cult because "there has been a blurring of the boundaries between journalism and other forms of communication, and between journalists and those formerly known as media audiences" (p. 529).Some of the most interesting nuggets of information I found about journalism in various countries follow:* Chinese "TV journalists regard themselves more as 'mouthpieces of party and government' than their colleagues from newspapers, news Web sites, and maga- zines" (p. 19).* Japanese journalists agree that "the watchdog role is considered an important media function, [but] only about one-third of (them) believe they actually fulfill this role" (p. 57).* Danish "journalists find that organizational conditions do play too big a role in actual news selection while relevance has too little priority" (p. 164).* In Britain, there is deep concern about "how much of the journalism industry will in years ahead be economically able to hire young journalists at all, let alone nurture them into becoming watchdogs" (p. 230).* Attacks on journalists in Russia have led to at least three hundred deaths, yet "the popularity of being a journalist has not declined" (pp. 278-279).* American journalists believe that over "the last 30 years, the autonomy of reporters at U.S. news organizations has eroded steadily" (p. 355).The final chapter compares the findings about U. … |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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