View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Queensland University of Technology ePrints Archive This is the author’s version of a work that was submitted/accepted for pub- lication in the following source: Hanusch, Folker (2008) Mapping Australian journalism culture : results from a survey of journalists’ role perceptions. Australian Journalism Re- view, 30(2), pp. 97-109. This file was downloaded from: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/68822/ c Copyright 2008 Journalism Education Association of Australia Inc Notice: Changes introduced as a result of publishing processes such as copy-editing and formatting may not be reflected in this document. For a definitive version of this work, please refer to the published source: Mapping Australian journalism culture: Results from a survey of journalists’ role perceptions Accepted for publication in Australian Journalism Review Folker Hanusch, University of the Sunshine Coast Abstract Research on journalists’ characteristics, values, attitudes and role perceptions has expanded manifold since the first large-scale survey in the United States in the 1970s. Scholars around the world have investigated the work practices of a large variety of journalists, to the extent that we now have a sizeable body of evidence in this regard. Comparative research across cultures, however, has only recently begun to gain ground, with scholars interested in concepts of journalism culture in an age of globalisation. As part of a wider, cross-cultural effort, this study reports the results of a survey of 100 Australian journalists in order to paint a picture of the way journalists see their role in society. Such a study is important due to the relative absence of large- scale surveys of Australian journalists since Henningham’s (1993) seminal work. This paper reports some important trends in the Australian news media since the early 1990s, with improvements in gender balance and journalists now being older, better educated, and holding more leftist political views. In locating Australian journalism culture within the study’s framework, some long-held assumptions are reinforced, with journalists following traditional values of objectivity, passive reporting and the ideal of the fourth estate. Introduction Ever since the early days of journalism research has the journalist as a subject of inquiry been of interest to the academic research community (for example, White’s (1950) study of Mr Gates). But while sociological models to research journalism practice have been at the forefront of journalism studies since the 1920s (Zelizer, 2004: 47), it was not until the 1970s that the first comprehensive and representative study of journalists in one country was conducted. Johnstone et al.’s (1976) study, for the first time, was able to paint a picture of who American news people were, what their demographic background was and how they thought about certain issues. This survey has since been replicated in the US by the well-known studies conducted under the guidance of David Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit (1986, 1996; Weaver et al., 2007), enabling us to not only arrive at a general portrait of journalists there but also to make historical comparisons over a 40-year timeframe. In a wider context, the American studies provided a starting point for other similar efforts around the world, with Weaver (1998) producing a comparison of journalistic demographics and work practices across 21 countries and regions, including a profile of Australian journalists, based on a study undertaken in 1992 (Henningham, 1998). These were followed by various other survey-based studies, reporting results from a diverse number of countries and regions (eg. Herscovitz, 2004; Hanitzsch, 2005; Ramaprasad, 2001). Increasingly, such surveys were used to make comparisons across countries and cultures, because, as Weaver (1998) pointed out, while there were a certain number of similarities in how journalism was practised around the world, important differences still existed. One such example, which has been documented by a number of scholars, lies in the differences between Anglo-American and German journalism practices (Donsbach, 2003; Esser, 1998; Köcher, 1986; Wilke, 2003). Yet while there now exists a large variety of studies from around the world which provide us with a glimpse of journalists’ backgrounds, values, beliefs, attitudes and role perceptions, a common conceptual approach to differentiating between these countries and their journalists’ has been missing from the analysis (Hanitzsch, 2007). One limitation of Weaver’s (1998) collection was the fact the included studies were all conducted separately, with slightly differing frameworks, methodologies, sample sizes and survey instruments. In order to enhance comparative journalism studies on the conceptual level, therefore, German journalism scholar Thomas Hanitzsch (2007) thus developed an approach which would enable researchers to conduct the same surveys using the same methodology in Hanusch Mapping Australian journalism culture 2 a number of countries around the world, in order to try to find out more about journalism culture in an increasingly globalised world. The project, named Worlds of Journalisms (www.worldsofjournalisms.org), created a network of researchers in 19 culturally diverse countries around the world, including Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Egypt, Fiji, Germany, Indonesia, Israel, Mexico, Romania, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Uganda and the United States. This, for the first time, would allow for a standardised comparison of journalists’ characteristics, attitudes, views and role perceptions in these countries. Importantly, the project put culture at the centre of its inquiry, which was deemed particularly important in order to test evidence the “onward march of globalisation coincides with a convergence in journalistic orientations and practices” (Hanitzsch, 2007: 367). It is anticipated that the project will develop important knowledge and suggestions for future research in comparative journalism research. While the project is still ongoing, with the first results due to be published in 2009, this paper will report the results of the Australian sample for the purpose of identifying the type of journalism culture that exists in this country and in order to update previous studies into Australian journalists to some extent. Researching Australian journalists This update of the profile of Australian journalists is important, because, unlike in more populous countries such as the United States and Germany, where researchers have updated their studies over roughly ten-year time frames (Weaver and Wilhoit, 1986, 1996; Weaver et al. 2007 in the United States; Scholl and Weischenberg, 1998; Weischenberg et al., 2006 in Germany), in Australia the only large study of this kind was conducted in the early 1990s. Henningham’s (1993; 1994; 1995a; 1995b; 1996; 1998) work in this area stands as exemplary in terms of the detail it provided about Australian journalists, having surveyed more than 1400 journalists. Shortly after Henningham’s study, Julianne Schultz (1998) examined how Australia journalists dealt with the dilemma of needing to serve notions of the Fourth Estate while at the same satisfying their employers’ commercial imperatives. Her study, conducted in 1992, was based on a survey of 286 Australian journalists. Since that time, however, precious little large-scale research has been conducted on Australian journalists, apart from Brand and Pearson’s (2001) study into Australian journalists’ views of their audience, and audiences’ views of news. The need for an urgent update of Henningham’s study has been identified previously (Forde and Burrows, 2004), but unfortunately a large-scale effort hasn’t been forthcoming so far. Thus, while itself limited by a number of factors, this study aims to provide a glimpse of the Australian situation by making use of the data gathered as part of the Worlds of Journalisms project and comparing it with relevant information gathered by Henningham as well as Brand and Pearson (2001). While there have been other surveys of Australian journalists, these were usually based on smaller sub-samples, such as Brisbane journalists (Hart, 1981) or country journalists (Pretty, 1993). Before embarking on the analysis of this study of 100 Australian journalists, it is important to briefly review what we know about how journalism culture in Australia, particularly compared to other countries. Australian journalism has, due to the country’s history as a British colony, long had a close affiliation with an Anglo-Saxon style of journalism that is to be found particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States, but has also been exported to a number of other countries. There are broad similarities in the way journalism is practiced in Anglo-Saxon countries, although there are some exceptions in regard to some specific aspects as well. For example, Deuze (2002), in comparing national news cultures in The Netherlands, Germany, Britain, Australia and the USA, has shown that journalists in the Anglo-Saxon countries were more tied to certain functions, with a large number of specialist job descriptions, while the two mainland European countries exhibited more holistic approaches to job functions. This has resulted in Anglo-Saxon publications being less open to personal biases due to an extended gatekeeper chain, but perhaps more open to organisational biases (Esser, 1998). Further,