Paradox of professionalism: The professional identity of journalists who work across media cultures

Abstract

Growing media practitioner mobility, as well as the migration of Transnational Media Corporations across borders and media cultures, gives rise to new questions about how journalistic professionalism travels. Transnational Media Corporations carrying their own organisational cultures must operate in wider national, political and cultural settings that may create dissonance for the organisation and its professional journalists. Normativisation of journalistic professional practices shapes professional identity formation and journalists’ perceived roles of professionalism in the news-making process. A degree of dissonance may be expected when practitioners who have been trained in and first worked under traditional liberal Western press cultures, take up journalistic positions in State-Owned Transnational Media Corporations belonging to countries that the West characterises as authoritarian. The case of CCTV-NEWS,1as a State-Owned Transnational Media Corporation that recruits Western journalists, will be investigated to find out how journalists manage the potential dissonance. The significance of this interpretive research is that it offers a glimpse into how journalism professionalism travels in the context of increasing international employment mobility for journalists. In addition, research into CCTV-NEWS, as a State-Owned Transnational Media Corporations, from the perspective of professional identity of international employees, is an innovation.