Journalistic Objectivity Research Articles

Crisis Reporting and Professionalism in Journalism: An Analysis of Reporting Practices in Cameroon and Nigeria

ABSTRACT This study examines the dynamics of journalistic professionalism in crisis reporting in Nigeria and Cameroon: countries which have experienced sustained violent secessionist crises since 2015 and 2016 respectively. These crises have led to new approaches to crisis reporting, in which local journalists cover events amid severe violence and the strong nationalist ideologies typical of secessionist movements. Using an innovative mixed method that combines regression analysis and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), the article explores the nuances of journalistic professionalism in the reporting of these crises through a survey of 302 journalists from the secessionist regions in these countries. With professionalism operationalized through objectivity, the regression analysis revealed the use of emotions, the inclusion of ideologies on nationalism/secessionism, the freedom of journalists, their use of multiple/variety sources in reporting, and the inclusion of opposing views as factors affecting journalistic objectivity in crisis reporting in Cameroon and Nigeria. The FsQCA results further stress the nuances in the independence of these factors and the complex circumstances where their presence or absence could enhance objectivity in reporting. In this way, the study reveals the dialectics of existing literature on media systems using an innovative methodological approach.

A Single Wooden House Standing in Stalingrad: Alexander Werth’s ‘Russian Commentary’ on the BBC during the Second World War

This article studies the reporting of Alexander Werth from the Soviet Union for the BBC during World War II. Werth’s despatches, broadcast mostly under the title ‘Russian Commentary’, sought to bring to life the struggles of an ideologically opposed nation that had become an ally against Nazi Germany. The article analyses Werth’s technique as a correspondent, situating it within the wider political and propaganda climate within which he was working. It assesses his work’s significance for the study of ideas of journalistic objectivity in wartime. It looks too at the optimism his reporting expressed as the tide of war began to turn in the allies’ favour—a change that Werth saw as a sign that the Soviet Union’s wartime alliance would endure beyond the end of the conflict—a hope that was crushed by the onset of the Cold War, and renewed enmity between Moscow and the West.

Journalistic Objectivity: Online Media Reporting on 3 Presidential Candidates 2024 Presidential Election Contestants

Journalistic Objectivity: Online Media Reporting on 3 Presidential Candidates 2024 Presidential Election Contestants

Wizerunek Polskiego Radia S.A. jako rozgłośni publicznej (2015–2020). Studium medioznawcze

The article presents the image of Polish Radio as a public radio station in the years 2015-2020. An important research problem was the reconstruction of the perception of Polish Radio by the recipients. Based on the conducted analysis, it was proved that the Polish public broadcasting station is an issuer pursuing a social mission, caring for a high level of journalistic objectivity, implementing the concept of truth in the classical sense and promoting high culture. The author used the method of qualitative content analysis, literature criticism and literature review method.

Objetividade jornalística e perspectiva de gênero: tensões e deslocamentos

This study seeks to understand the construction of a gender perspective in journalism and the implications of feminism in its practice, related to journalistic objectivity, through the analysis of the work of journalists from the Portal Catarinas, from the South Region of Brazil. The method is the case study, with participant observation in the production of news in the Portal and in-depth interviews. The analysis showed the existence of ruptures and tensions in the journalism’s male logic. Journalistic objectivity continues to prevail over all decisions, but it does not occupy a comfortable place and is under constant tension. These dislocations indicate the possibility of the existence of feminist objectiveness in journalism.

Shared struggles, divergent paths: a comparison of grassroots and professional feminist advocates’ communication for social change in Argentina and the United States

Abstract Contemporary activism media research, largely focused on digital media's technological and discursive aspects, often lacks comparative studies and tends to overlook institutional or cultural factors in communication for social change (CSC). This study addresses these gaps by examining advocates’ sensemaking and communication praxis in contexts shaped by different advocacy traditions and sociocultural understandings of inequality. Through an analysis of 52 semi-structured interviews with Argentine grassroots advocates and U.S. professional ones, this study reveals similar media assessments across cases yet with different intersectional emphases: class in Argentina and race in the United States. Cross-case divergencies emerge in advocates’ positionality toward institutions and in their representational strategies: While grassroots advocates act as pragmatic agents of change and adopt a flexible communication style described as a “pedagogy of patience,” professional ones act as epistemic experts who offer a feminist critique of journalistic objectivity. I reflect on how these findings attend overlooked factors in CSC.

Must I follow the script? Professional objectivity, journalistic roles and the Black community journalist

This study examines how Black journalists in local legacy newspapers, digital startup media and historically Black newspapers have expressed journalistic objectivity and enacted journalistic roles. Findings showed more neutral coverage in historically white media, which was expected, while coverage in the historically Black newspaper and the digital startup reflected an advocacy role—one that did not fit within the four expected roles. Also, a “clarifier” role emerged in which journalists encouraged local protest groups to distinguish their identities.

Advertising and Journalistic Objectivity: An Issue of Ethics in African’s Media in a Case of the Democratic Republic of Congo

Advertising and Journalistic Objectivity: An Issue of Ethics in African’s Media in a Case of the Democratic Republic of Congo

Epistemic Contests in Journalism: Examining Struggles over Journalistic Ways of Knowing

In the face of struggles over journalistic epistemology arising in the present, this study proposes the concept of “epistemic contests” as a way of analyzing efforts by various actors to shape knowledge production norms and practices. Epistemic contests are not reducible to a single event or example, but instead encompass broader ongoing debates around the legitimacy of various epistemic practices of news. In analyzing these debates, this approach is attuned to the nuances of the present digital media culture as well as the current political and cultural moment. This article lays out key theoretical and methodological components of epistemic contests as applied to journalism and suggests a future research program for digital journalism studies scholars with special attention directed toward journalistic objectivity and its attendant norms. The value of this concept lies in providing a tool to examine the contestation over appropriate knowledge practices, the power to make such distinctions, and the forms of news that emerge.

Indigenizing journalistic objectivity in an African context: How ‘indigenous’ journalistic practices (re)define professional norms

Through comparative content analysis of online news reports ( N = 420), we examined how indigenous values and source citation practices (re)define journalistic objectivity away from the normative comfort domain of ‘The American standard’. We argue that ‘African’ journalistic practices will more possibly reflect more ‘objective’ narratives with a critical gaze to African values such as ‘ Ubuntu’ and ‘ Afriethics’. By comparing ‘grassroots’ with ‘elite’ source citations as reflected in ‘African’ media reportage, we found that African news narratives that embrace ‘Community Journalism’ reflect more grassroots than elite voices as distinct from ‘Western’ libertarian journalistic practices.

Objectivity: Why it is Important and How it Can be Realised in Media Practice

This study interrogates the growing tendency to assume the impossibility of journalistic objectivity. Specifically, it sieves through the controversies and articulates the way forward. The study adopts a Discourse Analysis approach and anchors its contentions on the Correspondence and Coherence theories. The analysis concludes that journalistic objectivity is distinctively a news function. And that it is not only desirable but possible and realisable if approached within a defined context. Based on this framework, the study provides a standard for achieving journalistic objectivity in media practice.

“I can’t be neutral or centrist in a debate over my own humanity”: A Study of Disagreements Between Journalists and Editors, and What They Tell Us About Objectivity

ABSTRACT Journalistic objectivity has long been in flux. This paper examines cases in which we see journalists aiming to subvert norms, and managers pushing back, reprimanding the journalists and removing them from coverage or firing them. Understanding what’s happening at these edges of acceptable journalistic practice can offer clarity about the nature of change in the field. We find journalists arguing that objectivity works differently when reporting on minority groups—so much so that they suggest focusing instead on context and truth in these cases, while managers counter that objectivity is universal. We note that scholars offer alternatives—Ward’s “pragmatic objectivity,” which recommends taking the perspective of the community, and Durham’s “strong objectivity”, which suggests embodying the most marginalized groups in a discussion. This examination offers insight into how journalism is evolving, in particular in a moment of racial reckoning.

Journalism and secessionism: A contextual analysis of reporting in the Cameroon Anglophone crisis

This article examines journalism in Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis as a reflection of the broader dynamics of ongoing secessionist conflicts in Africa. Using the evolving rhetorical approach to media framing, the study analyses articles from one state-owned and one privately-owned newspaper in Cameroon to determine the thematic framing of the crisis with respect to the national media divide. The study also examines the level of importance given to the subject of the crisis and ascertains the degree of independence or journalistic objectivity in the reporting of the crisis. The article reveals that the crisis was mainly reported through themes relating to solutions and violence, indicating that focus was placed on finding solutions to the crisis while also highlighting the crisis’ violent nature. This differs from conventional approaches to crisis reporting, which typically emphasize problem definition and causal interpretation over solution-based reporting. According to the results, the theme of crisis was highly emphasized in news coverage as it appeared in the first three paragraphs of the majority of articles evaluated. It was also found that, despite the repressive controls over the media system, journalists were largely independent and official sources were not heavily relied on.

Quotatives Indicate Decline in Objectivity in U.S. Political News

According to journalistic standards, direct quotes should be attributed to sources with objective quotatives such as ``said'' and ``told,'' since nonobjective quotatives, e.g., ``argued'' and ``insisted,'' would influence the readers' perception of the quote and the quoted person. In this paper, we analyze the adherence to this journalistic norm to study trends in objectivity in political news across U.S. outlets of different ideological leanings. We ask: 1) How has the usage of nonobjective quotatives evolved? 2) How do news outlets use nonobjective quotatives when covering politicians of different parties? To answer these questions, we developed a dependency-parsing-based method to extract quotatives and applied it to Quotebank, a web-scale corpus of attributed quotes, obtaining nearly 7 million quotes, each enriched with the quoted speaker's political party and the ideological leaning of the outlet that published the quote. We find that, while partisan outlets are the ones that most often use nonobjective quotatives, between 2013 and 2020, the outlets that increased their usage of nonobjective quotatives the most were ``moderate'' centrist news outlets (around 0.6 percentage points, or 20% in relative percentage over seven years). Further, we find that outlets use nonobjective quotatives more often when quoting politicians of the opposing ideology (e.g., left-leaning outlets quoting Republicans) and that this ``quotative bias'' is rising at a swift pace, increasing up to 0.5 percentage points, or 25% in relative percentage, per year. These findings suggest an overall decline in journalistic objectivity in U.S. political news.

Is Travel Journalism more similar to Newspaper Language or the Language of Tourism? A corpus-based study

ABSTRACT The Travel section of a newspaper is composed of texts which purport to at least partly comply with the ethical value of journalistic objectivity, yet the border between this type of writing and the overtly promotional texts produced in the tourism sector is somewhat blurred. This paper compares linguistic features in samples of text from Tourist Board websites and the Travel section and nine other sections of The Guardian to determine whether Travel Journalism can be categorised as a type of journalism, or whether it bears distinct similarities to Tourism Discourse. The results suggest that Travel Journalism differs from the other newspaper sections and is quite similar to the Language of Tourism on the basis of some features. However, in relation to others, it is decidedly different, thereby suggesting that Travel Journalism can be cleared of the allegation of being unduly influenced by the texts produced by the tourism industry.

Challenging journalistic objectivity: How journalists of color call for a reckoning

This study explores how journalists in the United States advocated for a stronger affirmation of social justice in journalism following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Analyzing the metajournalistic discourse in trade publications ( Niemanlab, Columbia Journalism Review, Poynter) and on the web, this study traces how journalists and commentators challenged the professional norm of journalistic objectivity. In particular, it examines how journalistic objectivity became identified as a problematic concept, what journalists were suggesting as its alternative, and how the journalistic establishment responded. This study identifies three dimensions of criticisms and connects these to disagreements within specific modalities of journalistic objectivity (procedural, ethical, ideological). Ultimately, this analysis locates an ideological struggle in which fundamental moral norms of journalism are not only being vigorously contested but also rearticulated and renegotiated.

Editors’ Introduction

Editors’ Introduction

A Pragmatic Study of Political Cartoons in Al-Ahram Weekly Newspaper

During the past century, political cartoons were considered as the most extreme form of expression in newspapers, as they were not committed to any norm of journalistic objectivity, or even the domain of objective reality. Some cartoonists consider political cartoons as historical sources of satirical critique of the political status quo. Generally speaking, there are various forms of cartoons, such as political, social, and humorous cartoons. Each one has a different function.
 The function of political cartoons lies in making a real change in a society in favor of suppressed classes through criticizing the status quo and unjust practices in political life. In addition, cartoons help newspapers and magazines look better by taking some space among columns of words which might be boring for the reader. At the same time, political cartoons have real contributions in affirming the role newspapers play as means of communication between a reader and a cartoonist. Political cartoons are also capable of bold dealing with different societal problems as they can escape different types of censorship. Thus, political cartoons have the mechanisms to correct the negatives of a society faster than written words, especially they are easily understood by readers.
 As cartoons are viewed as methods of communication, pragmatics is also concerned with determining the elements of communicational content, which are essential to interpretation. It is quite common for an utterance to display a number of pragmatic features. Hence, it is clear that pragmatics plays a key role in the interpretation of the communication process represented by the cartoons' language. This communication process, whether verbal or non-verbal, includes expressions and recognition of intentions. From this perspective, pragmatic interpretation is simply an exercise in which a reader infers a cartoonist’s intended meaning from his cartoon.
 Within this framework, this study tries to discuss the aspects of the implicit meanings in the language of political cartoons. The importance of the study is obviously shown by shedding light on the role of the language that can be employed to convey explicit and also implicit meaning by pragmatic devices. This study, therefore, attempts to clarify the role of pragmatic devices in explaining the hidden meaning in political cartoons. In doing so, it tries to emphasize the importance of implicature in the language of political cartoons, whether it abides or flouts Gricean’s maxims with its effect to convey the meaning. Also, it attempts to figure out why cartoonists frequently use this aspect of pragmatics in writing the language. Another goal of this study is to explain the role of speech acts, whether used directly or indirectly, and why a cartoonist sometimes uses the literal and sometimes prefers to use non-literal speech acts.
 Moreover, this study underscores the importance of the distinction between language use and linguistic meaning. Besides, it asserts a parallel distinction between speaker's reference and linguistic reference, which provokes the assumption to what extent linguistic expressions refer independently to speaker's use of them. In addition, this thesis attempts to consider the politeness phenomenon as a pragmatic device, and its role in understanding the meaning. 
 Given the distance between a cartoonist and his addressees, this study sheds light on how language users sometimes depart from the conditions of optimal information exchange which may cause confusion. In addition, this thesis emphasizes the function of deictic expressions and the role of presupposition with its relation to the implicature. In short, it shows the linguistic insights of implicit meanings employed in cartoons and attempts to discover whether or not cartoonists succeed in conveying the meaning to the addressees by employing pragmatic devices.

In feminism we trust! On how feminist standpoint epistemologies shape journalism practices in two argentine digital newsrooms

In this exploratory study, I conduct a textual analysis of the online content produced by two Argentine feminist news outlets, LatFem and Diario Digital Femenino (DDF) to examine how feminist standpoint epistemologies (FSE) shape news-making. The findings show that these newsrooms showcase features of a strong reflexivity which allows journalists to consider their own position in the social fabric, to contextualize their journalistic practices, and to question instances of systemic discrimination. Furthermore, the use of FSE enables the expression of solidarity and advocacy by reporters. I argue that the intervention to journalism as performed by feminist Argentine journalists and editors yields profound transformations to journalism practice and news content, as FSE destabilize and complicate traditional notions of journalistic objectivity and its role in democratic societies.

Politicians-based Deep Learning Models for Detecting News, Authors and Media Political Ideology

Non-partisanship is one of the qualities that con-tribute to journalistic objectivity. Factual reporting alone cannot combat political polarization in the news media. News framing, agenda settings, and priming are influence mechanisms that lead to political polarization, but they are hard to identify. This paper attempts to automate the detection of two political science concepts in news coverage: politician personalization and political ideology. Politicians’ news coverage personalization is a concept that encompasses one more of the influence mechanisms. Political ideologies are often associated with controversial topics such as abortion and health insurance. However, the paper prove that politicians’ personalization is related to the political ideology of the news articles. Constructing deep neural network models based on politicians’ personalization improved the performance of political ideology detection models. Also, deep networks models could predict news articles’ politician personalization with a high F1 score. Despite being trained on less data, personalized-based deep networks proved to be more capable of capturing the ideology of news articles than other non-personalized models. The dataset consists of two politician personalization labels, namely Obama and Trump, and two political ideology labels, Democrat and Republican. The results showed that politicians’ personalization and political polarization exist in news articles, authors, and media sources.