PRESS CLUBS, THE JOURNALISTIC FIELD AND THE PRACTICE OF JOURNALISM IN PAKISTAN

Roger Dickinson,Bashir Memon

doi:10.1080/1461670x.2011.629109

Abstract

This article reports original research findings about the role of press clubs in Pakistan and shows how media systems and social structures are powerful shaping influences on the practice of journalism. Drawing on Bourdieu's field theory the article examines field dynamics in Pakistani journalism and the means by which journalists protect themselves and their collective interests. A key element in the Pakistani news world is the press club. The empirical data collected via a survey of 576 journalists and focus group discussions show that divisions in the journalistic field between autonomy and heteronomy are not always clear cut. In Pakistan the press club system helps journalists to pursue their self-interest. This is a reminder that to understand news production and journalism and how they are performed and accomplished, it must be acknowledged that they are forms of social organization that are historically, culturally, and socially situated.

Highlights

How do journalists protect themselves and pursue their collective interests when corruption and the threat of violence are endemic to the society in which they work? This article reports on some original research on the role of press clubs in Pakistan and shows how media systems and social structures have powerful shaping influences on the practice of journalism
Bourdieu offers a way of thinking about the relative autonomy of different social spheres via an understanding of their own internal logics and dynamics, while noting that in their logics some fields are more independent than others
In this article we have presented evidence of the ways journalists in a specific national context have organised themselves in the pursuit of occupational autonomy

Summary

Introduction

How do journalists protect themselves and pursue their collective interests when corruption and the threat of violence are endemic to the society in which they work? This article reports on some original research on the role of press clubs in Pakistan and shows how media systems and social structures have powerful shaping influences on the practice of journalism.The ways in which journalists have pursued their collective interests have recently received attention from a number of scholars (Aldridge and Evetts, 2003; Conboy, 2004; Dickinson, 2008; Örnebring, 2009; Schudson and Anderson, 2009; Høyer, 2010). In essence field theory is an attempt to explain the relative autonomy of social actors in different spheres of human activity that occur within society. As such it represents a departure from the reductionism of political economists’ accounts of social processes claiming that culture and society – and cultural forms such as journalism – emanate from underlying economic systems and relations of power. Bourdieu offers a way of thinking about the relative autonomy of different social spheres via an understanding of their own internal logics and dynamics, while noting that in their logics some fields are more independent than others. Our aim here is to examine such logics and dynamics in a specific national context by exploring what journalists do to protect and strengthen their autonomy

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