The power of primary definers: How journalists assess the pluralism of economic journalism

Abstract

After the financial crisis, journalism scholarship has extensively pointed out how the journalistic debate on economic policy has been dominated by a strong emphasis on austerity and a limited range of elite sources. Building on 19 semi-structured interviews with Finnish political and economic journalists, this article examines how journalists themselves evaluate the pluralism of the economic policy debate. This article shows how journalists covering economic policy are critical when evaluating the level of pluralism in economic journalism, referring to a narrow range of expert sources and a widely shared economic policy consensus. These findings testify to the ability of ‘primary definers’ to set the boundaries of ‘legitimate controversy’ in economic journalism. Also, the interviews show how ruptures in economic policy, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting vast amount of monetary and fiscal stimulus, create space for more pluralism in economic journalism.