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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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