Keywords
Journalism, professional roles, professional attitudes, conflict, press, media system, quantitative research, survey
Abstract
Based on a survey of 122 journalists from four Spanish newspapers carried out from 2015 to 2016, this paper analyses to what extent these professionals perceive a disconnection –a gap– between their role conception and their perceived role enactment, that is between their professional ideals and their journalistic practice, and which are the most “conflicting” roles in a Polarized Pluralist media system. According to the perceptions of the professionals surveyed, journalists in Spain hold a role conflict when they work in a newspaper. The findings show significant differences between the role conception and the perceived role enactment in six of the seven professional roles. The biggest divergences are located in the watchdog, civic and disseminator roles. The conflict between the professional ideals and their implementation in the news is always resolved in favor of the media organizations. Our results are consistent and support the previous studies that have defined the Polarized Pluralist media system as a media ecosystem where journalists accumulate little power compared to the media organizations, which are in financial debt and dependent on political and economic powers. Results are discussed according to the literature review as well as the context in which the study was developed.
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Technical information
Received: 05-04-2018
Revised: 23-05-2018
Accepted: 01-08-2018
OnlineFirst: 15-11-2018
Publication date: 01-01-2019
Article revision time: 48 days | Average time revision issue 58: 41 days
Article acceptance time: 118 days | Average time of acceptance issue 58: 74 days
Preprint editing time: 226 days | Average editing time preprint issue 58: 182 days
Article editing time: 271 days | Average editing time issue 58: 227 days
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Roses-Campos, S., & Humanes-Humanes, M. (2019). Conflicts in the professional roles of journalists in Spain: Ideals and practice. [Conflictos en los roles profesionales de los periodistas en España: Ideales y práctica]. Comunicar, 58, 65-74. https://doi.org/10.3916/C58-2019-06