The Practice of Political Journalism: Comparing Russia, France, and Germany

Abstract

For both Russia and France long-standing assumptions and well-established cliches are sometimes put forward as analyses of journalistic practice. In Russia the stifling of press freedom is the dominant framework of these analyses, either employing old categories for describing the Soviet media (propaganda, censorship, and ideology) or denouncing violence against journalists (such as the tragic death of Anna Polikovskaya). In France and Western democracies in general the history of the long conquest of press freedom in the service of human rights was long mythologized and then deconstructed by one strand of media criticism (Bourdieu 1996; Halimi 1997). DOI: 10.25285/2078–1938–2017–9–2–5–11