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To cite this article: Yigal Godler & Zvi Reich (2013): HOW JOURNALISTS THINK ABOUT FACTS,Journalism Studies, 14:1, 94-112
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HOW JOURNALISTS THINK ABOUT FACTS
Theorizing the social conditions behind
epistemological beliefs
Yigal Godler and Zvi Reich
Journalists’ ability to capture and deliver factual information is central to their sense of
professionalism and to their societal and democratic functions. The need to understand
journalists’ dealings with facts becomes especially pronounced in an age when news
organizations face an economic crisis and journalism’s exclusive jurisdiction over the supply of
news information is challenged by new and old forces. This study*part of the ‘‘Worlds of
Journalism’’ research project*attempts to analyze fact-related beliefs among 1800 journalists
from 18 different countries, and test their associations with a wealth of individual, cultural
and organizational variables. The study draws on a rich reservoir of data from diverse regimes,
institutional and national backgrounds, types of news organizations, ownership and media, as
well as different genders, years of journalism experience, education and seniority. Our research
appears to be well placed to evaluate journalists’ degree of awareness to the challenges of reality
depiction, and to outline through quantitative methods the social conditions which promote
epistemological naivety in the form of objectivism, and sophistication as expressed in
interpretationist epistemologies. Our findings indicate that conditions of ownership, nature of
the political regime, personal beliefs and social environment, produce variance in journalists’
takes on reality depiction.
KEYWORDS epistemology; journalism; journalistic fact; reality; sociology of knowledge; social
construction of reality
Introduction
Journalists’ ability to depict reality is rarely seen as a given among scholars.
According to the prominent journalist and intellectual, Walter Lippmann ‘‘news and truth
are not the same thing, and must be clearly distinguished’’ (1922, p. 650). Questioning
journalists’ depiction of reality becomes even more tempting in an age of grave economic
and technological uncertainty, when journalists’ exclusive jurisdiction over the supply of
news information is challenged by new and old forces, such as public relations specialists,
bloggers, citizen journalists, etc. (Compton and Benedetti, 2010; Downie and Schudson,
2009; Hermida, 2010; McChesney, 2008). In this intellectual climate, studying journalists’
perceptions of facts has several advantages:
1. The functional rationale: Studying journalists’ perceptions of facts may deepen our
understanding of their most basic societal function, that of providing information which
eludes the immediate experience of the citizenry (Allan, 2004; Stephens, 1997; Zelizer,
2004a). Furthermore, studying journalists’ perceptions of facts may elucidate the likely
consequences of their work for the maintenance of an informed and democratically
Journalism Studies, Vol. 14, No 1, 2013, 94�112ISSN 1461-670X print/1469-9699 online
# 2013 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2012.689489
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involved citizenry, equipped with credible information regarding actual states of affairs
(Ferguson, 1995; McChesney, 2008).
2. The professional rationale: Studying journalists’ perceptions of facts may uncover connec-
tions between journalists’ practical experiences and widely accepted professional
ideologies (Allan, 2004; Gans, 2004; Tuchman, 1978; Zelizer, 2004a). While journalists may
see themselves as both duty-bound and able to convey factual information, their views may
overlook fundamental difficulties inherent in the journalistic ethos and its underlying ideals.
3. The academic rationale: Studying journalists’ perceptions of facts may help fill the void
resulting from the scarcity of scholarship on the topic of journalists’ epistemological
beliefs, as only a few studies have dealt with the topic directly (Ekstrom, 2002; Ettema and
Glasser, 1985, 1998; Hearns-Branaman, 2011).
Several identifiable difficulties plague the study of journalists’ epistemological
beliefs. First, studying beliefs forces researchers to rely primarily on subjects’ self-reports,
a fact which makes it impossible to ascertain the credibility and sincerity of interviewees’
responses, which constitute a significant evidentiary basis for journalists’ beliefs, however
imperfect. Second, largely as a result of their professional ideology, journalists tend to take
their fact-related practices and thoughts for granted, fostering an unreflective mindset.
Thirdly, the ambiguous findings elicited by the fragmentary research of journalists’ fact-
related thinking, have been largely interpreted in accordance with a priori theoretical
assumptions, such as the automatic adoption of scholarly views which question journalists’
reality depiction, even when not fully warranted by the data. More specifically, arguments
explicitly forwarded by journalism scholars concerned with journalistic epistemology suffer
from three basic lacunae:
1. A focus on exotic or highly localized branches of journalism: The few studies that have dealt
directly with the issue of journalistic epistemology, such as Ettema and Glasser (1985,
1998) and Ekstrom (2002), have focused on the rather atypical genre of investigative
journalism, leaving untouched journalists in general. Similarly, Hearns-Branaman’s (2011)
careful analysis of journalists’ epistemological beliefs has limited itself to US and UK
political correspondents, and covered only 20 reporters.
2. A focus on what journalists fail to know: Prominent scholars of journalism have emphasized
the non-objective nature of news, stemming from personal predilections, organizational
dictates and routinized practices (Altheide, 1976; Gans, 2004; Harcup and O’Neill, 2001;
Tuchman, 1978; Zelizer, 2004a). They have elaborated on news-work procedures that
failed to produce facts, without providing a comparably detailed account of what could
constitute factual knowledge in journalism.
3. Problems of interpretation: Prominent studies which have dealt either directly or indirectly
with the subject of journalists’ perceptions of facts have tended to rely on interview
transcripts exegesis and inference (Ettema and Glasser 1985, 1998; Gans, 2004; Tuchman,
1978), rather than on dealing explicitly with the subject of fact-related beliefs, leaving their
analysis exposed to the potential dangers of theoretical misinterpretation.
In what follows, we attempt to understand journalists’ beliefs regarding the
possibility of reality depiction. Our goals are sociological in the sense of the ‘‘strong
programme’’ in the sociology of knowledge (Barnes and Bloor, 1981), that is, we attempt
to identify the material and cultural reasons behind journalists’ beliefs regarding the world.
Thus, we shall outline the institutional, social and individual conditions that are related to
reporters’ epistemological beliefs.
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We draw on interviews with a large sample of journalists (N�1800) from the 18
different countries covered by the ‘‘Worlds of Journalism’’ research project. These
journalists work in print, radio and television news outlets, and are of varying national,
organizational and personal backgrounds. We construct two relatively coherent types of
epistemological beliefs (using Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) and Factor Analysis) and
then attempt to establish the political, institutional and personal conditions most
conducive to the existence of each (using a two-way ANOVA).
Literature Review
A monumental discord exists between scholars of journalism and journalists
themselves over the challenge of reality depiction. Scholars inspired by cultural studies
focus on ‘‘debunking’’ journalists’ pretensions to objectivity, attributing to them naıve
realism (Zelizer, 2004a), while reporters stress their commitment to ‘‘reality’’, ‘‘facts’’ and
‘‘truth’’ (CCJ and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2001; Kovach and
Rosenstiel, 2001; Zelizer, 2004b). Indeed, Windschuttle (2010) has criticized the deleterious
consequences of cultural studies for journalism education, specifically as it undercuts the
central tenet of professional journalism: the pursuit of truth. However, it remains unclear
under what circumstances the culturalist characterization of journalists as being in thrall to
naıve objectivity, is most applicable. Indeed, the scholarly attitude toward journalistic
objectivity has not been uniform.
An emergent brand of critical realism among several journalism scholars, to which
the authors of the present study subscribe, has been far more sensitive to the culturalist
critique of journalism, while retaining the bulk of the classical realist belief in objective
reality. Albeit admitting the symbolic manipulations for which news organizations and
individual reporters may be rightly faulted, critical realism stresses the crucial presence of
objects in the external human-independent world, which serve as triggers for journalistic
reportage. To paraphrase Schudson (2005): journalists do not create the natural cataclysms
they report on. In addition, the cultural critique of journalistic objectivity has been faulted
for a ‘‘category mistake’’: while applicable to some areas of journalistic work, such as
editorials and advocacy journalism, the cultural critique of objectivity does not apply
to ‘‘straight news reporting’’, which can be put to an empirical test (Gauthier, 1993).
Moreover, Lau (2004) has argued that it is possible to express both realist and culturalist
criticisms of, and qualifications regarding, journalistic objectivity through a concise
conceptualization, which could help identify the institutional and social loci that may
encourage journalists’ attitudes toward reality depiction. Lau introduces a novel typology
that distinguishes between two groups of factors impacting and biasing news production:
internal factors impacting news production, that is, practices, values and ideologies shared
by reporters and factors extraneous to journalism, such as ownership and government
regulations.
The main critics of journalists’ belief in the possibility of objective reporting are*to
borrow Lau’s typology*the internalists. The more dominant camp among journalism
scholars, internalists argue that it is journalists’ work as part of human society and within
social groups, with their cultural, social and ideological influences, which makes the
effort of reality depiction problematic (McNair, 1998; Romano, 1987). Underscoring the
inevitability of journalists’ failure to depict reality, Stuart Hall has noted that
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of the millions of events which occur every day in the world, only a tiny portion ever
become visible as ‘‘potential news stories’’, and of this portion, only a small fraction are
actually produced as the day’s news in the news media. (1981, p. 234)
In elaborating on this thesis, internalist scholars have devoted much space to
pervasive socio-psychological factors, responsible, in their view, for the unavoidable
failures of reality depiction in journalism: the need for social and organizational self-
presentation, the need to interact with a social environment, ideological immersion,
human subjectivity along with the tendency to strive for consistency in one’s views, as
well as practices of journalistic selection (Allan, 2004; Donsbach, 2004; Epstein, 1973;
Ericson, 1998; Ericson et al., 1987; Fishman, 1980; Gans, 2004; Harcup and O’Neill, 2001;
McNair, 1998; Molotch and Lester, 1974; Patterson, 1998; Romano, 1987; Roshco, 1975;
Tuchman, 1978; Zelizer, 2004a). Similar concerns have been discussed in Sociology of
Knowledge, as well as Philosophy.
Largely since the 1970s, scholars with interests in the Philosophy of Science and the
Sociology of Knowledge, have attempted to provide sociological explanations to scientific
theories, arguing that nature and objective reality could not provide a satisfactory account
of science. Instead, to explain scientific work and its products, recourse was had to purely
sociological and psychological factors and circumstances, such as social negotiations for
sought-after substances in laboratory work, the use of technical locutions merely to
establish one’s professional prestige, and more generally, inter-subjective agreements
which were denoted as ‘‘truth’’ for purely honorific purposes (Barnes and Bloor, 1981;
Latour and Woolgar, 1986; Rorty, 1998).
Meanwhile, externalist scholars in journalism research have presupposed that reality
depiction as part of journalistic work was achievable in principle, though often hindered
by external factors. The externalists have recognized the existence of news bias, but
attributed it to a small number of institutional contingencies (as opposed to ubiquitous
social or psychological forces), without which reality could be accessed and conveyed with
a high degree of accuracy. Listed among the sources of factual flaws and investigative
idleness were corporate ownership over news organizations, its profit orientation, the
resulting dependence on advertising and reliance on official spokespersons’ and
statements (Hermann and Chomsky, 1988; McChesney, 2008; Sinclair, 1928), but these
were regarded as reversible institutional structures, not as inevitable hindrances to reality
depiction. Put otherwise, these scholars believe naıve realism to be far from pervasive and
locate it in corporate-owned and commercially influenced news environments.
As with the previous intellectual camp, the externalist approach in journalism
research is also grounded in a broader philosophical tradition, which originates in the Age
of Enlightenment and its conception of the natural sciences, and contends that reality is
knowable. According to this view, the goal of eliciting reliable information about the
natural world is achieved through experiments and observations that are designed to test
scientific theories, which can be either true or false. A theory’s truth or falsity does not
depend, in this view, on the identity of the experimenter, on the society in which he lives
or on the structure of the human mind, but exclusively on the actual state of nature, for
which it is possible to have evidence. Further, experiments are controlled so as to
neutralize potential intervening factors which could bias the process of knowledge
acquisition (Mermin, 1998; Popper, 1959; Sokal, 2008).
Hanitzsch (2007) has suggested that a similar divide between those accepting the
existence of objective reality and those questioning its existence may obtain between
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journalists from various social and institutional landscapes. Thus, a distinction is theorized
to exist between two kinds of journalists: interpretationists and objectivists.
1. Interpretationist journalists are conceptualized as epistemologically modest news workers
who stress the inevitable bias produced by their practices and ideologies, openly
relativistic, and punctuating the necessity of interpretative and analytical efforts in
depicting reality.
2. Objectivist journalists are conceptualized as naıve realists, adopting a position typically
attributed to them by journalism scholars and viewing reality depiction as possible and
unproblematic, though occasionally hindered by commercial and political constraints.
This division, however, should not be viewed as an a priori binary approach to journalistic
epistemologies, but merely as a logical and theoretical distinction. Following Hearns-
Branaman’s (2011) valuable insights into journalists’ epistemological beliefs, we accept
the possibility that even in our sizeable sample, contradictory epistemological beliefs can
coexist, albeit with different socially dependent and institution-specific emphases and
variance.
RQ1: Which extraneous factors shape journalists perceptions of reality?
H1: As corporate ownership increases, objectivism increases.
Externalists emphasize a bias resulting from corporate profit orientation and its
dependence on official sources (Croteau and Hoynes, 2000; Golding and Murdock, 2000;
Hermann and Chomsky, 1988; McChesney, 2008; McManus, 1994; Underwood, 1993). To
conceal their internalization of this institutional bias, reporters may avow objectivity.
H2: As the political regime’s democracy level increases, interpretationism increases.
Gans has suggested that objectivist journalism, understood as detachment and
neutrality, might be inconsistent with democracy, since ‘‘as detached or neutral observers’’
journalists ‘‘cannot take on deliberate political roles and thus cannot normally write or talk
on behalf of the people they cover or to whom they supply news’’ (2011, p. 6). Similarly,
Hanitzsch has suggested that objectivist beliefs among journalists may result from anti-
democratic influences on reporting, entailing a ‘‘totalitarian understanding of ‘truth’’’
(2007, p. 376).
RQ2: Which internal factors shape journalists perceptions of reality?
H3: As conservative leanings increase, interpretationist views increase.
Gans has provided a list of values which pervade journalists’ work, such as
‘‘ethnocentrism’’ (2004, p. 42), an automatic preference for what is perceived as the
national way of life and values, and ‘‘responsible capitalism’’ (2004, p. 46), a tendency to
be optimistic about entrepreneurship and free market economics, while noting that
consciously ‘‘ideologists are not wanted by the news media, for most journalists believe
ideology to be an obstacle to story selection and production’’ (2004, p. 191). The reason
for this contradiction may lie in the fact that journalists tend to conceal their political and
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ideological biases by quoting interviewees with identical positions to their own, as
Tuchman (1978) has noted. Similarly, psychological approaches to the analysis of
journalistic work, supportive of the internalist view, have turned their attention to
journalists’ tendency to avoid information which contradicts their positions (Donsbach,
2004; Stocking and Lamarca, 1990). In addition, these ideas serve as background for the
debate over the direction of news bias: the argument of ‘‘liberal bias’’ (Goldberg, 2001)
versus the argument of an institutionally motivated and unconscious right-leaning bias
(Hermann and Chomsky, 1988; McChesney, 2008).
H4: With stronger religious beliefs comes greater interpretationism.
Schmalzbauer (2002) points to the willingness of Catholic and Evangelical journalists
to bring their religious convictions into professional life, based on interviews with
20 American journalists from the elite media. Schmalzbauer underscores two points which
are relevant to the study of epistemological beliefs. First, he has noticed that most of the
journalists interviewed expressed a ‘‘modest support’’ for the ideals of objectivity, balance,
and detachment. Second, and more interestingly, whenever his respondents displayed
a religious conviction, they accompanied it with an immediate use of ‘‘the rhetoric of
objectivity’’ (Schmalzbauer, 2002, p. 168), suggesting perhaps an attempt to compensate
for their admitted bias. It is therefore possible to surmise that journalists may be partly
aware of the epistemological difficulties resulting from strong personal ideologies, and
could perhaps find refuge in the belief that journalism can at best hope for interpretation,
and nothing beyond it.
H5: As educational level increases, interpretationism increases.
The contribution of the educational level to epistemological beliefs has been
evidenced indirectly in earlier broad-scale surveys of journalists. Weaver et al. (2007) have
noted that, despite an overall decrease in its prominence from previous studies,
educational level predicted the endorsement of the interpretationist role among journal-
ists. Thus, a richer academic experience, on the face of it, would seem inconsistent with
simplistic and taken-for-granted views of facts and objectivity, especially in light of the
extant scholarship in journalism research reviewed earlier and studied in institutions of
higher education. It is therefore reasonable to expect a more interpretationist approach
among journalists with higher education.
H6: As the number of journalists among one’s friends increases, objectivism
increases.
In an attempt to theorize the factors responsible for journalists’ perceptions of
reality, Donsbach has argued that ‘‘social interaction with their fellows away from the job
is a way journalists can assess shared reality’’ (2004, p. 140). Fellow journalists, who
‘‘represent professional norms’’ (2004, p. 140) are ‘‘perceived as the most legitimate
influence’’ on journalists’ decision-making. In this context, Donsbach has pointed out that
in both the United States and Germany, a large number of the journalists that were
surveyed have stated that ‘‘one of their three best friends’’ (Donsbach, 2004, p. 140) was
also a journalist. In light of the previously mentioned prevalence of a professional
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commitment to objectivity among journalists, it seems reasonable to expect journalists
with such a commitment to have a larger number of other journalists as friends.
Methodology
The paper reports results based on a comparative survey of journalists in 18 countries,
including Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Egypt, Germany, Indonesia, Israel,
Mexico, Romania, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Uganda and the United States. The
selection of countries encompasses all major world regions, democratic, semi-democratic
and authoritarian societies. Meanwhile, our sample of news workers includes journalists
from varying types of news organizations, ownership and media, possessing different
political beliefs and levels of religious commitment, with diverse educational backgrounds
and social environments, as well as different levels of experience.
Data were collected within a larger collaborative framework in which international
scholars participated in all stages of the project. We first developed a fully standardized
questionnaire in English to ensure a maximum level of cultural overlap. Translation into the
relevant languages was aided by back-translation procedures in some countries and
committee approaches involving bi-lingual experts in others. Field research took about
22 months and was completed in April 2009. In each country, we interviewed a quota
sample of 100 journalists working for 20 news organizations. In most countries the
interviews were conducted by telephone. In Bulgaria, Egypt and Indonesia, and also partly in
China and Chile, we conducted face-to-face interviews, mostly because journalists in these
countries were not accustomed to and were highly distrustful of telephone interviewing.
Turkey was the only country that deviated from the overall survey method as journalists
were asked to fill out the questionnaire on their own with a researcher being present.
Sampling was carried out in two steps. First, 20 news organizations in every country
were selected according to a common quota scheme. Following Hofstede (1998), we
intended not to generate representative samples but a mix of journalists and news
organizations that was comparable across countries. Newsrooms were selected along two
first-level parameters: first, we distinguished between types of media, as well as between
national and local/regional media. We decided to exclude online media as they were virtually
non-existent in some of the countries by the time the survey was carried out. Second, we
stratified print newsrooms into quality (citizen-oriented) and popular (consumer-oriented)
media, and electronic media according to ownership (public, state-owned and privately
owned channels). The selection of popular print media was based on circulation, while the
quality outlets were chosen according to their recognized agenda-setting power.
Whenever possible we selected five journalists in every newsroom. Following a now
classic definition provided by Johnstone et al. (1976), we defined journalists as those who
have at least some editorial responsibility for the content they produce. Respondents
included those working in traditional ‘‘hard news’’ beats as well as investigative reporters,
but also sports, travel and celebrity reporters. Within news organizations, journalists were
further stratified according to the extent of their editorial responsibility. Ideally, one
journalist was selected from the highest level of the editorial hierarchy (strategic leadership:
e.g. chief editors and their deputies), one from the middle level (operational decision-makers:
e.g. senior editors and desk heads) and three from the lowest level of the newsroom
hierarchy (e.g. reporters). The selection of the journalists in each of these categories
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was based on random sampling. From all 356 newsrooms that were chosen in the
first place, 22 refused to co-operate and were subsequently replaced. On the level of the
journalists, we had to substitute 236 interviewees from the altogether 1800 journalists
due to refusal.
Findings
The following data provide a quantitative picture of social and structural conditions
which have been found to be associated with journalists’ fact-related beliefs. All of the
hypothesized variables have been found to produce significant variations in epistemo-
logical beliefs, with external, that is, structural or institutional factors, accounting for
mixed epistemological beliefs and internal factors, that is, cultural, social and ideological
variables, accounting for distinctive epistemologies, and primarily interpretationism. In
order to provide a picture as exhaustive and as authoritative as possible, the choice
of subjects for this study has been guided by the aim of covering a rich multitude of
journalists’ social environments, including political regimes, institutional and ownership
structures, news cultures, educational and ideological backgrounds, and differing
journalistic work specializations.
However, before examining our hypotheses, it is important to provide a holistic
description of journalists’ elusive thinking regarding facts. At the descriptive level, Table 1
indicates that on average journalists across all nations, whether residents of democratic,
semi-democratic or authoritarian countries, workers of state-owned or corporate-owned
news organizations, adhere to the belief in objectivity, as the lowest average commitment
to objectivity is still within the range of agreement (‘‘I think journalists can depict reality
as it is’’, mean �2.38, SD �1.174).
Furthermore, to determine if epistemological beliefs could be reasonably grouped
into general attitudes toward facts as Hanitzsch (2007) has suggested, we used SSA Space
Diagram for Dimensionality (Figure 1, Table 3), a statistical device aimed at discovering
interrelations between apparently separate variables. As can be seen, two clearly distinct
clusters of epistemological variables have emerged, with beliefs such as the preference for
analysis concentrated to the left of the vertical line, and beliefs in the self-explanatory
nature of facts, in substantiation and impartiality, concentrated to its right (Coefficient of
Alienation �0.03267). These two clusters of discrete ordinal variables have been collapsed
into two complex additive variables fully correlated with their component variables
TABLE 1
Epistemological beliefs’ descriptive statistics
N Mean SD
No influence of personal convictions on my reporting 1775 1.91 1.020I provide analysis 1773 2.07 1.202Facts speak for themselves 1772 2.10 1.040I remain strictly impartial 1774 1.92 0.972I make only substantiated claims 1769 1.58 0.829I think journalists can depict reality as it is 1762 2.38 1.174I always indicate which side has better position 1734 3.39 1.241
Journalists’ responses ranged from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree). In some casesjournalists chose not to respond.
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TABLE 2
Factor analysis rotated component matrix
Component
1 2
v1 0.701 �0.190v2 �0.006 0.647v3 0.573 0.172v4 0.784 0.001v5 0.564 0.001v6 0.528 0.424v7 �0.004 0.738
*Rotation converged in three iterations.Extraction method: Principal Component Analysis; rotation method: Varimax with KaiserNormalization. Total variance explained �46.291 per cent.
FIGURE 1
SSA Space Diagram for Dimensionality
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(in all cases r�1, p�0.000), and then recoded into dichotomous variables, ‘‘interpreta-
tionism’’ and ‘‘objectivism’’, respectively, with the median serving as the separating line
between those journalists regarding each of these beliefs as important and those
attributing to them lesser importance. Dichotomization was performed owing to the fact
TABLE 3
SSA input matrix
FIGURE 2
Percentage of corporate ownership in conjunction with objectivism and interpretationism.
Objectivism: F �5.256, p �0.022. Interpretationism: F �6.079, p �0.014. Only statisti-
cally significant (0.05) F values are listed
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that a two-way ANOVA, the mode of statistical analysis chosen, requires the dichotomiza-
tion of the variables whose variance is being tested. This mode of analysis was chosen over
correlational analysis so as to minimize the chances for theoretically unimportant, albeit
statistically significant, correlations typical of large samples (Cohen, 1994).
Furthermore, the division into variable clusters is also consistent with a Factor
Analysis we have performed, indicating that two distinct unobserved variables, possibly
being underlying manifestations of objectivism and interpretationism, account for 46.291
per cent of the variance in epistemological beliefs (Table 2). The fluctuations in objectivism
and interpretationism as a function of changing social and institutional conditions are
examined in what follows.
H1, which predicted that objectivism increases with higher corporate ownership,
has only found partial and indirect support in the data, with adherents of low
FIGURE 3
Democracy level in conjunction with objectivism and interpretationism. Objectivism:
F �10.140, p �0.001. Interpretationism: F �94.740, p �0.000. The ordinal variable
‘‘democracy level’’ was tested and found to be normally distributed. Only statistically
significant (0.05) F values are listed
FIGURE 4
Level of right-leaning views in conjunction with objectivism and interpretationism. Interpreta-
tionism: F �10.059, p �0.002. The ordinal variable ‘‘level of right-leaning views’’ was tested
and found to be normally distributed. Only statistically significant (0.05) F values are listed
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interpretationism found in news organizations with higher percentages of corporate
ownership (F�6.079, p�0.014; Figure 2). However, low interpretationism did not
translate into high objectivism, as corporate-owned news organizations were also
characterized by low objectivism (F �5.256, p �0.022).
Similarly, H2, which foresaw that political democracy would coincide with
interpretationism, appears to be only indirectly supported by the data. While lower
objectivism has been found among journalists in the more democratic countries
(F�10.140, p�0.001), these countries have been also characterized by lower inter-
pretationism (F�94.740, p�0.000).
H3, which predicted that more conservative views would coincide with higher
interpretationism, has found a measure of support in the data (F�10. 059, p�0.002), with
FIGURE 5
Religion importance in conjunction with objectivism and interpretationism. Objectivism:
F�36.497, p�0.000. Interpretationism: F�12.327, p�0.000. The ordinal variable
‘‘religion importance’’ was tested and found to be normally distributed. Only statistically
significant (0.05) F values are listed
FIGURE 6
Education level in conjunction with objectivism and interpretationism. Objectivism:
F�11.979, p�0.001. The ordinal variable ‘‘educational level’’ was tested and found to
be normally distributed. Only statistically significant (0.05) F values are listed
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more interpretationists discovered as one moves from leftist views closer to the centre of
the political spectrum (see Figure 4).
Similarly, consistent with H4, more interpretationists have been discovered
among those journalists with stronger religious commitments (F�12.327, p�0.000)
(see Figure 5).
In contrast, H5, with its assumption that a higher educational level would coincide
with higher interpretationism among journalists, has found only indirect support.
While objectivism has been found to be significantly lower among journalists with a
higher educational level (F�11.979, p�0.001), interpretationism did not vary significantly
(Figure 6).
At the same time, H6, which predicted that a social environment consisting of other
journalists would coincide with a belief in objectivism, has found clearer support in the
data. Objectivism was found to be more prevalent among those journalists who have
greater percentages of journalists as friends (F �10.502, p�0.001) (Figure 7).
Discussion
A curious relationship has emerged between extraneous factors, that is, the
character of institutions and regimes, shaping news production and journalists’ mixed
commitments to objectivist and interpretationist epistemological beliefs. This state of
affairs reverses in the case of internal factors, such as journalists’ ideologies and social
relations, which produce mostly, though not always, disproportional commitments to
interpretationist beliefs.
Corporate-owned organizations appear to produce an epistemological indecisive-
ness, as journalists working for such organizations refused to identify themselves clearly
with either one of the two schools of thought and tended to be neither strong objectivists
nor strong interpretationists. While it has been theorized that corporate-owned news
organizations may encourage the internalization of commercial dictates, such as the
reliance on official and hence less costly sources (Herman and Chomsky, 1988), it is prima
FIGURE 7
Percentage of friends connected with journalism in conjunction with objectivism and
interpretationism. Objectivism: F�10.502, p�0.001. Only statistically significant (0.05)
F values are listed
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facie unclear why these reporters would fail to have a procedural or strategic under-
standing of reality. To borrow Tuchman’s (1978) terminology, these reporters cannot be
conceptualized as strategic objectivists, who regard as fact every statement made by their
sources. However, they also refuse to view themselves as interpreters or analysts,
suggesting that some remnants of journalisms’ professional ethos of objectivity may
nonetheless find their way into reporters’ epistemological beliefs.
Similar lessons can be drawn with respect to journalists working within democratic
political regimes, who exhibit an analogous indecision with respect to objectivism and
interpretationism. A partial explanation for this phenomenon may be the prevalence of
corporate-owned news organizations*whose possible effects on journalists’ epistemological
beliefs were discussed in the previous paragraph*in western democracies. Moreover, contrary
to Gans’s tacit expectation that journalists within democracies would ‘‘take on deliberate
political roles’’ (2011, p. 6), they appear to do the opposite in avoiding interpretationist positions.
The findings point to a possibility that some institutional structures may place cognitive
constraints on the development of clear-cut positions with respect to the possibility of reality
depiction in journalism. Quite plausibly, this may be an extension of journalists’ dominant
professional ideology, at least in the western world, which discourages them from voicing
definitive worldviews. However, it is by no means self-evident that all structural realities
would produce identical manifestations of epistemological indecision. Thus, it is conceivable
that state ownership in non-democratic and semi-democratic countries may imply a
greater servility to government authority, leading to a ‘‘totalitarian understanding of ‘truth’’’
(Hanitzsch, 2007, p. 376). At the same time, we cannot exclude the possibility that journalists
in state-owned news organizations would exhibit greater awareness of the distinction
between fact and interpretation, due, in large measure, to explicit and unambiguous
instances of censorship and government intervention.
Putting aside the possibility that journalists within democracies may be more affected by
their immediate institutional, primarily corporate, environments, it is possible to theorize that
liberal values which pervade the political cultures of western democracies could be somewhat
averse to debate-stifling conceptions of reality such as the objectivist conception. However, this
possibility confounds strictly structural factors, such as the nature of political regimes, with
cultural and ideological influences, leading the discussion toward internal factors.
Internal factors, having to do with journalists’ ideological and religious beliefs, their
educational levels, as well as their immediate social environment, have generally produced
stronger and more pronounced epistemological beliefs, primarily, though not exclusively,
to interpretationism. These results may reflect, among other things, a dependency
obtaining between one type of belief and another, perhaps more foundational, type of
belief. In addition, the data may suggest a theoretical mechanism functioning as a
cognitive boundary beyond which strong ideological, cultural and social commitments
translate into explicit individual theories of knowledge, including conceptualizations of the
external world, possessed by reporters.
A case in point is the importance of religious beliefs which, as we have seen, is
related to stronger interpretationist beliefs among reporters. Naturally, presupposing the
existence of an omniscient and omnipotent entity seems to make it logically impossible,
for example, for facts to speak for themselves*that is, without reference to the highest
form of authority. The plausibility of this characterization is further strengthened when we
are reminded that religion is not only a set of ontological claims about the nature of the
universe, but is also said to be a source of authority, moral guidance and meaning. If so,
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the effect of religion importance would be equivalent to that of a very strong ideological
bias, which, further, is seen as inevitable by those exhibiting it (Schmalzbauer, 2002).
Similarly, rightward or conservative ideological orientations were also found to be
related to stronger interpretationism. This contrasts with earlier theorizing, as the
phenomenon reaches across regimes and ownership types rather than being localized
in certain institutional settings, suggesting the existence of an open ideological bias.
Externalists working within the tradition of political economy have denied the role of
individual ideological bias in distorting reality depiction in journalism, postulating instead
an institutionally induced unconscious bias. However, the internalist argument of an
individual bias among some journalists seems to be consistent with our data, however
imprecise with respect to the directionality of this bias. Thus, it would appear that there
is something in conservative views that is sufficiently powerful to overrule reporters’
professional ethos of neutrality and objectivity. In line with Gans’s (2004) observation, that
certain conservative values pervade the news, our findings suggest that the more
conservative reporters will tend to be more opinionated.
Higher levels of education seem to be also antithetical to objectivism. On the one
hand, assuming education to be a vehicle of enlightened and sophisticated thought, one
may be drawn to conclude that more years of schooling are instrumental in instructing
journalists as to the biasing effects of their personal beliefs, as well as their institutional
constraints. On the other hand, adopting a more cynical view toward education, one may
arrive at the opposite conclusion. If schooling is no more than a means of indoctrination,
then greater education is quite consistent with greater bias and ideological conformity.
Thirdly, leaving aside one’s normative view of education, the readiness to eschew
objectivism at higher levels of education may be the product of journalists’ perceiving
themselves as more knowledgeable with regard to the issues they cover, even if, once
again, the admitted low objectivism does not translate into high interpretationism.
The one exception to these explicit and, to a lesser extent implicit, commitments to
interpretationism encouraged by internal factors, is the relationship between the
percentage of journalists in the immediate social environments of the respondents and
their commitments to objectivity. Donsbach has made the following point about
journalists’ relationship to their social environment: ‘‘social interaction with their fellows
away from the job is a way journalists can assess shared reality’’ (2004, p. 140). If so, the
‘‘shared reality’’ of journalists who foster friendly relations with other journalists appears to
them as objectively present. Presumably, the journalistic professional ethos plays a major
role in their informal encounters. In addition, it is possible that inter-subjective agreements
about reality, that is, the convergence of several subjective views, have an objectifying
effect (Rorty, 1998) when discussed informally by reporters.
Finally, we should qualify these theorizations by emphasizing that statistical
relationships of the sort discovered in the present study are neither definitive nor causal
accounts of journalistic epistemologies, even if they illuminate promising paths for future
theoretical and empirical work.
Conclusion
Our study has indicated that structural realities, such as the nature of the political
regime and the news organization, emphasized by theorists of extraneous factors, may
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contribute to mixed and equivocal epistemological beliefs, while at the same time
providing evidence that social, cultural and ideological factors, discussed by internalists,
could produce more decisive epistemologies among reporters. Thus, far from being
uniformly uncritical toward their ability to depict reality, we have outlined the socio-
ideological landscapes and the working conditions which produce more nuanced
journalistic approaches to knowledge than previously believed, even if on the whole
journalists still maintain strong ties to the professional ideals of objectivity and impartiality.
Data were gathered from a multitude of journalistic contexts, including diverse news
cultures, political regimes, news organizations, ownership types, ideological and educa-
tional backgrounds, as well as various work specializations, amounting to 1800 journalists
from 18 different countries. Preliminary statistical analyses (SSA and Factor Analysis) have
indicated that journalists’ beliefs regarding reality depiction could be grouped into two
distinct and internally coherent clusters of variables, one expressing a commitment to
objectivity on the part of journalists (Objectivism) and the other expressing journalists’
belief in the inevitability of interpretation (Interpretationism).
Nonetheless, it should be noted that of the great multitude of variables and the
diverse landscapes studied only a handful of variables have been found to be meaningfully
related to epistemological beliefs. This suggests that journalism’s dealings with facts cannot
be easily reduced to determinate social conditions exerting a well-defined and unchanging
influence on journalists’ fact-related thinking. Instead, journalism may be conceptualized
with the help of ideas imported from the Sociology of Professions, as a form of ‘‘tacit
knowing-in-action’’ in Donald Schon’s (2001, p. 193) terminology, who sees professional
practice as inexpressible in terms of finite rule systems, or when adapted to our case, in
terms of an exhaustive repertoire of invariable cognitive responses to a number of social
and institutional circumstances. Simply put, journalists may well perceive facts differently
not only under different personal, social and institutional circumstances, but also as a
function of infinitely diverse professional situations encountered in their minute-by-minute
practical experience with given stories, sources and types of information.
Beyond the social conditions conducive to fact-related beliefs, our data may offer
some insight into the nature and character of journalistic epistemologies per se. While it is
true that preliminary statistical analyses have pointed to the existence of two conceptually
distinct groupings of attitudes toward facts, our findings have also indicated that these
groupings are by no means mutually exclusive categories. As we have seen, the level of
objectivism was at times directly proportional to the level of interpretationism, suggesting
that the relationship between the two may be more liquid and complementary than
it appears at first glance, with journalists possibly unaware of serious contradictions
between the two worldviews. This suggests that Hanitzsch’s (2007) proposal to regard
objectivity and interpretation as two ends of a continuum may need to be re-examined,
and perhaps adjusted to Hearns-Branaman’s (2011) evidence that contradictory epis-
temologies may coexist.
However, these conclusions may require some qualifications, having to do with this
study’s central limitation*its reliance on self-reported beliefs. Indeed, self-serving
statements may distort the accuracy of our characterization of epistemological beliefs,
if one of the complex epistemological variables proves to consist of insincere responses.
To mitigate such problems in future studies, participant observations may be used
to reveal what lies beyond the declared commitment to objectivity and interpretation.
Moreover, content analyses may be employed to learn more about the manifestations of
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reporters’ factual perceptions in treating such textual material as press releases, as well as
other documents covered by journalists, in ways which may allow researchers to make
inferences about journalistic perceptions of facts, from what is being selected, omitted,
changed, emphasized or buried in a mountain of details.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The study was funded by several institutions to which the authors wish to express
gratitude, including the German Research Foundation, Swiss National Science Founda-
tion, Rothschild-Caesarea School of Communication at Tel Aviv University, School of
Journalism & Communication at the University of Queensland and City of Vienna. The
authors also thank Tali Avishay-Arbel for her statistical advice. This work is dedicated to
the memory of Alexander Godler.
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