CHAMPAGNE Double Dependency

8/19/2019 CHAMPAGNE Double Dependency

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The “Double Dependency”:

The Journalistic Field Between

Politics and MarketsPat r i ck Champagne

It is certainly no accident that for some time French journalism hasseemed preoccupied with problems of professional ethics.' Caughtbetween the competing imperatives of “freedom of the press” and the“laws of the market,” few professions are represented in such starklyopposing ways. The social profile of the journaiist tends in effect to

oscillate between the prestigious role of the great repórter, who some-times pays with his life to cover conflicts, the investigative journaiist,who uncovers scandals and thus serves democracy, or the political

commentator, who censures or celebrates the nation’s officials, andan opposite, highly negative pole: the corrupt journaiist who writes

puff pieces, profits from the world’s miseries, or even, like the

paparazzi, tries to invade people’s privacy, making news for purelymercenary purposes. In short, the journaiist is an uneasy awkwardfigure, capable of good as well as bad, who has to come to termswith the political and economic constraints that weigh on him,rendering his position unstable and uncomfortable.

An Ambiguous Position

The considerable symbolic power the media possess today - espe-cially radio and television, owing principally to their wide diffusionand the impact their images seem to have on the “general public” -


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no doubt explains why this tension is now tending to become quasi-permanent. If there is a properly joumalistic exploitation of this

malaise insofar as journalists employ formulas to win large audiences,it nevertheless remains that the profession is unarguably traversed bya sort of endemic crisis. This is shown by, among other indicators,the recent spate of books written by journalists on the news and itsvagaries, as well as on the current transformation of the profession.Some evoke the gap in the education of journalists, which is seen astoo weak with respect to the power they now hold simply by virtue

of technological progress; others denounce an all-powerful “medi-acracy,” which rules unchecked; still others point, on the contrary, to

the manipulation of journalists by political authorities (as during thefirst Gulf War and Kosovo), or, more generally, to the proliferationsince the mid-1970s of public relations consultants of all kinds, who

produce “ready-made events” and “media campaigns” for all who

can pay their exorbitant fees.This malaise, which affects a not insignificant part of the journal-

istic scene, in fact expresses in its way all the ambiguity of the jour-nalistic field’s position in the field of power. This position is very

powerful in its effects (wfiich explains why some speak, a bit naively,of the press as the “fourth estate”), but, at the same time, by reasonof this very power finds its operation strongly dominated and con-

trolled by other fields, especially the economic and the political. Inother words, to paraphrase a well-known expression, many socialactors, especially those who belong to various fractions of the dom-inant class, think that the press is too serious a matter to be left to

journalists.This situation is far from radically new, however, and cannot in

itself explain the recent boom in criticai discourse about the newsprofessions. The autonomy of the joumalistic field has always beenthreatened; one has no difficulty finding numerous alarmist dis-

courses of the same kind at the end of the nineteenth century, at the

time of the rise of the popular press, or later, episodically in responseto events or limit-situations such as wartime censorship, which places

journalists in the position of victims, or, conversely, media excesses,which put them in the position of the accused (so-called media lynch-

ings). Despite the joumalistic milieu’s incontrovertible efforts toprofessionalize its activities, to submit only to intellectual imperatives

and techniques of information production - evinced, among other

things, by the creation of the first school of journalism at the end ofthe nineteenth century and their proliferation over the past fewdecades - it seems that journalists’ search for autonomy runs up

against two limits: on the one hand, the strictly political requirements

THE DOUBLE DEPENDENCY 49


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of press outlets which have been, in France at least, deeply implicated

in broader political struggles; on the other, the increasingly strong

relations which connect them to the real or imagined expectations ofthe public, from which, in the last instance, they eam their living. In

other words, journalists are structurally condemned to produce -variably, depending on the period and outlet - under political and/oreconomic constraints. If, now as ever, the purely moral barriers sometry to erect are almost necessarily destined to fail in view of thestrength of the externai constraints on journalism and the weaknessof the profession’s will to effectively impose such codes on itself, the

ethics codes and journalistic charters remain of interest in how theydraw up the list of obstacles typically faced by the news professions.The principal function of the reflections on “journalistic ethics”which periodically reemerge could well be to update the list of these“excesses,” which are, as it were, inscribed in the very practice of a

profession situated at the frontiers, in the position of mediator.If we consider just the recent period, most debates about journal

istic ethics and practice seem to be organized mainly around threethemes. First o f all, many journalists worry about the growing weight

of economic considerations in the media sector, which has in factbecome a major focus of financial investment. In the second place,television and radio journalists note and deplore the excesses ofa pronounced acceleration of journalistic work, which tend tointensify competition and above all the speed of communication

techniques. Finally, all agree on the major impact of modern meansof communication (especially television) on the general public, whichat the same time changes the relation of forces between different types

of media, modifying both the types of viewpoints that are diffusedand the very process of their circulation.

50 THEORETICAL ORIENTATIONS

The journaiist between politics and the economy

The history of journalism could well be in large part the story of animpossible autonomy - or, to put it in the least pessimistic way, the

unending story of an autonomy that must always be re-won becauseit is always threatened. Journalistic production is always strongly dic-tated by the social, especially political and economic, conditions in

which it is organized. Schematically, we can distinguish two majortypes of press: one that is strictly dependent on the State and thusdestined to serve the powers that be (this was the case, for example,of the press in Communist regimes or of television news in France


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during the Office de radiodiffusion-télévision française [ORTF]);^and another that is constituted on the model of the for-profit com-

mercial enterprise (this is the case in France for the daily press and,since 1985, the privatized sector of television news). Practicallyspeaking, no major general news organization can heed only purelyintellectual considerations. Competition, urgency, sales considera-tions, and political constraints always weigh on the production anddiffusion of news, in different proportions according to the outlet.

That the press is no longer controlled by the political powers that bedoes not imply the complete freedom of joumalistic expression (onwhat grounds would journalists have this privilege?); there are other,equally strong constraints on joumalistic production, notably thoseimposed by profitability. Many publications in the former Commu-

nist countries of Eastern Europe had to close, and those that survivedpaid the price of a profound transformation of content that did notstrictly speaking appear as an improvement. Some journalists evenpreferred the era of political censorship, which was too visible not to

be perceived by all and was embodied by a few more or less naivebureaucrats who could be fooled without much trouble. Economic

censorship, which occurs through the paper’s sales, is stronger andmuch more merciless. It is anonymous and can appear legitimate to

many: if the paper doesn’t sell, or sell enough, whose fault is it butthat of the journalists themselves, who don’t know how to interest

their readers.^The major contradiction within the operation of the joumalistic

field lies in the fact that the joumalistic practices that best conform

to journalists’ ethical codes are very often simply not profitable. The joumalist ideally wants to be the stalwart servant of the truth at anyprice, but he belongs to a paper that bears a price and is situated

within an economic enterprise with its own exigencies, which are notall of the mind. The popular press, or “gutter press” as they say in

England, thrives while the “serious” press barely survives. In Europe,legislative frameworks that regulate joumalistic activity have recog-nized this contradiction and tried to attenuate it. These laws gener

ally consist of two main arrangements: on the one hand, repressivemeasures that aim to protect private individuais from the excesses of

the press, especially regarding defamation and the protection ofprivacy; on the other hand, forms of economic assistance, journalis-

tic activity being recognized as a true public institution necessary for

the proper functioning of democracy. We greet the birth of a newnewspaper of whatever kind as progress for democracy, and rituallydeplore the disappearance of a paper as an attack on pluralism, a

voice falling silent.



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If journalistic aaivity in democratic regimes seems to be littlesubject to political power, today it is, to the contrary, incontestably

dominated by the economic field. On the one hand, newspapers canonly survive in their rather luxurious present-day form (color photos,

long editions, etc.) thanks to advertising (which pays up to half ofthe cost of the paper, often more), which is borne by businesses. Butthe risk of declining advertising revenue in an economic downturncan seriously threaten newspapers’ financial equilibrium. Beyond thisgeneral pressure, we know that firms, especially the larger ones, canexert pressure individually by withdrawing (or threatening to with-draw) their advertising budget from certain newspapers that have

published (or want to publish) unfavorable articles. But this type ofdirect pressure, often denounced by journalists themselves, concealsa much stronger pressure with much more important day-to-dayeffects; the fact that newspapers themselves are economic enterprises

and are thus directly subject to economic laws which often come intoconflict with the imperatives of intellectual production.

The effects of this economic domination on journalistic production can be seen in the often similar histories of a number of news-

papers.^ At the origin of a new paper is generally a small group ofyoung journalists. Fresh out of school and without material means(hence with nothing to lose), they bring a noble vision of their profession and an activist approach; they are outraged by the mediascene as it is and denounce the compromises of the “establishment

press.” They draw up a generous editorial policy, at the center ofwhich is almost always the concern to tell their readers the truth, nomatter the cost. Set up in a small office at the back of a courtyard,

the newspaper only carries on thanks to volunteer and activist work,with very low salaries distributed among a small number of all-purpose editors who produce the paper out of sheer enthusiasm. Thensuccess comes for some (fewer and fewer) papers. The newspaper

modernizes, hires more journalists, pays tbem better and better.Gradually, through a process of routinization, the activist enterprisebecomes just another economic enterprise. It has to ask banks foradvances, figure out how to raise capital, settle its accounts, pay itsdebts. Journalism becomes an activity much like any other, under-

taken to make money and make a career. Sales are monitored withmounting concem. Editorial content changes imperceptibly, follow-

ing an internai crisis that pits the founders against the new genera-

tion of journalists. The newspaper less and less embodies the idea of

journalisme pur et dur (pure, hard journalism). Often, this evolutionis perceived as a political slide from left to right, from generous uto-pianism to cold realism; as the transition from an activist paper to a



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general interest paper, from a serious paper to a more frivolous one

(see, for example, in France the case of weeklies like L’Express, Le

Nouvel Observateur, Le Point, and L’Evénement du jeudi or dailieslike Libération and Le Monde). In fact, the principie behind thischange, which is quite real, lies in large part in the new dependen-cies the journalists face precisely as soon as their project succeeds.

What changes are the structures of producing news. The recruitmentof editors changes more or less quickly, the originally badly paideditors giving way to credentialed young people in search of a career.The newspaper’s operation no longer involves only those who createdit, but a growing number of people (investors, administrators, newly

hired journalists, etc.) who are as attached to the economic successof the business as to its founding ideais. Through a sort of inversion,political weeklies which initially carried mostly articles interruptedby rare advertisements become lush advertising catalogues into whicha few political articles are inserted (it is sometimes necessary to leaf

through page upon page of ads). The paper becomes a businessand can be sold as such to financial groups who buy it for businesspurposes. From then on, news production finds itself caught in a

production logic characterized principally by intense competitionand speed.


Technological transformations of the profession

Among the second group of problems mentioned by professionals atthe dominant media outlets (whose effective weight within the jour-nalistic field is determining) are the conditions within which the pro

fession is practiced. New technologies lead journalists in the nationalmedia to work under constant time pressure, and increasingly tomake news “direct” and “in real time.” Television journalists produce

“continuous news” and have to decide rapidly, among the uninter-rupted flux of images, which portions they will use and produceinstant commentary for. As a French television joumalist remarkedof CNN, producing the news increasingly consists of “putting the

camera in the halls of power where something is happening.” In theend, it is the very idea of joumalistic work that is partially called into

question here; the ability to react quickly and to produce instant com-mentaries become the qualities most sought in journalists. But the

growing speed of covering the news places journalists in a positionof weakness: far from being able to listen and comprehend, which isnecessary for those who want to understand the events thrown up by


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the present, they are forced to mobilize ready-made explanatoryschemes and look for reference points in precedent.

Small news agencies that try to cultivate another conception of journalistic work, and in particular want to prioritize long investi-

gations (over three months) and subjects beyond the most topical,have great difficulty selling their work to the mainstream media. Thesmall number of press groups creates competition that is that muchstronger since the economic interests at stake have become consider

able. On television, entertainment programs that are also news(televised news broadcasts, political programs, news magazines) areperceived and conceived as occasions to attract the maximum market

share, the public being drawn to watch the ads that run before,during, and after each program. The cost of each program has to bepaid by the advertising it generates, which depends on the audience.

Another, no less important, obstacle to the practice of journalismstems from the very fact that so much power is attributed to themedia. This has the effea of making specialized “public relations

strategists” proliferate and prosper. These specialists design highlyelaborate “events” and increasingly sophisticated “media cam-

paigns” for clients whose requests are often rather naive - “we wantto be on the front page,” “we want to be on the evening news,” “wewant our picture in the paper,” “we want to hold a press conference:

get us a dozen journalists!”, and so on. Results are then measured bytype of media, topic, district, etc., supported by statistics and graph-ics. The problem is not whether or not, faced with these new entice-ments, journalists become complacent or even act out of material

interest. They are generally taken in by this game in the best of faithbecause it is explicitly designed to take them in; public relations agencies really do put themselves in the journalists’ place, doing real newswork for these always hurried social actors who are constantly goingfrom topic to topic. The real question is who pays for the Services

of PR specialists and benefits from their expertise and the sort of

“symbolic added value” it produces.This rationalization of the use of the media not only involves busi-

nesses or national political authorities. It tends to spread to all leveis

of the social universe and to all spheres of activity. Even those who

cannot afford the Services of an agency try more or less awkwardly to be “media friendly.” Few Street demonstrations today, for

example, are not prepared and designed to “get on television”; the

organizers negotiate the route and the time and place of dispersai

with public officials according to the imperatives of television news;

public relations specialists many of whom are, moreover, former

journalists even advise union officials, who, in a sort of mirror



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game, try to interest journalists by finding out what interests them.It is much too simple to say, as is often said, that journalists are

manipulated manipulators, since what is commonly called “news” oran “event” is a particularly complex collective product that partly

escapes the control of journalists themselves. No doubt, in the processof producing news there are explicit efforts to manipulate, which journalists recognize and denounce without necessarily always beingable to escape. On the one hand, there is active manipulation: “newsspectacles,” the fabrication of phony scoops, exaggerated or sensa-

tionalized reporting - in short, the massive use of formulas intendedto produce larger runs for the newsweeklies or raise television ratings.

On the other hand, there is passive manipulation: the constant effortsof mystification aimed at journalists (press files, organized visits, etc.),with the borders which formerly separated news from public rela

tions becoming increasingly fluid and uncertain. But this vision ofmanipulation obscures the incommensurably greater effects gener-ated by the joumalistic field in its most ordinary functioning, beyondany explicit effect to manipulate, when the joumalist only listens, we

could say, to his professional conscience.


The dual structure of the joumalistic field

The last point on which most analysts agree is the growing weight ofthe mass media in the manufacture of news, and hence of “socialproblems.” When we invoke the vagaries of journalism today, we are

in fact mostly talking about television news, since it has the largestaudience and thus the greatest political effects. To understand theimpact of this evolution, it is advisable to take leave of the journal-ist and consider the structure of the joumalistic field as a whole. A

number of its chararteristics in fact belong to the market for whatare called mass-market symbolic goods in general, as opposed to thelimited market o f creators (artists, scientists, writers, and others) whotend to produce in specialized joumals or short-run books for a muchmore restricted public of other intellectual producers, who are

also competitors. But this fundamental structure, which opposes“producers” to “vulgarizers” or “reproducers,” or symbolic goodsproduced according to internai intellectual imperatives to symbolic

goods produced to respond to externai demand, is found again withinthe mass market field, especially the joumalistic field, and so on atall leveis, like a series of Russian dolls. If the mass media producestandardized products on a large scale, designed to respond to


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pre-existing, extem al demand - which can now be measured in a verysophisticated way by marketing techniques - it remains that not all

media outlets are equally subject to this desperate search for thelargest possible public. Thus, the print media taken as a whole maybe contrasted to audiovisual mass media: the press, which requiresan act of sale, only reaches publics that are highly segmented bothgeographically (Parisian versus provincial daiUes) and socially (thepopular press versus the more political and “highbrow” press),whereas television and radio directly reach a much larger and more

diversified public on a national levei, without regard to residence. Buteven within the television sector, although it is the most dependentof the mass media on the supposed expectations of the public, theconstraints of ratings vary according to the channel (a completelyprivate channel like T F l as opposed to, for example, an entirelypublic channel like Arte)'* and, for each channel, time of broadcast(prime time as opposed to late night, for example) - and so on.

We can see distinctions of the same order within the print media.Certain recent publications aimed at a popular readership (forexample, Voici or Gala) are almost entirely conceived according to a

strict marketing logic that in effect eliminates the journaiist asautonomous intellectual worker as such, demand being measuredwith such precision that it predetermines the character of the product.

On the other hand, newspapers like the big Paris daílies make it apoint of journalistic honor to maintain a relative autonomy in relation to the most immediate demands o f the public and support certainforms of journalism that are not economically profitable (like majorinvestigations) but good for the brand name or “positioning” of thepaper. Among the papers that claim to produce serious news, the ten-

dency toward autonomization is constant; good advertising revenueand plentiful classifieds suffice, so that journalists forget that they

are supposed to write for the readers and not for one another, which

they tend to do more or less unconsciously. One finds this dual struc-ture within one and the same paper, different areas offering greateror lesser degrees of relative autonomy according to the paper andthe section. It manifests itself in degree of specialization (likesports, Science, or the financial markets as opposed to miscellaneous

news or crime) and in which subjects make it on the front page, thatis, are of more “general interest” than others or are likely to becomeso. And if the mass-market papers sometimes deal with serious sub

jects, albeit most often in the inside pages, conversely, the so-calledserious papers are not above putting catchy headiines or salacioustopics on the front page from time to time to maintain or increase

circulation.

56 THEORET ICAL ORIENTATIONS


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Thus we see that it is hardly possible to speak of journalists ingeneral, despite a number of common traits that characterize the pro

fession (such as dependence on relations with audiences, the speed ofwork and writing, and the existence of subjects imposed by current

events). Generic discourse on “the joum alist” is in fact a major obsta-cle to understanding the field of relations within which this actor is

situated and thus plays the game. Depending on the outlet and newsdepartment, journalists are nearer to or farther from the intellectual

pole, they are more or less integrated into the strictly economic neces-sity of seeking to maximize circulation, they are more or less compe-tent concerning the topics they cover, and they write their articlesthinking more or less about the intellectuals they vulgarize or the other journalists who write in the area and are at once colleagues and com

petitors. Since journalism is a highly specific intellectual activity thatcan only exist and endure by being economically profitable in the shortterm, we see that all outlets and all journalists are, to varying degreesaccording to their position within the field and the editorial structure,more or less divided against themselves. They are torn between the

contradictory demands of economic profitability, taking political posi-

tions, and the imperatives proper to intellectual work.The structure of the joumalistic field is homologous to that of the

field of the dominant class, which is also characterized by a tension

between an intellectual pole and an economic pole. These two socialspaces have their own relatively irreconcilable laws of operation.Economic success in many respects opposes intellectual consecration:the first is of a purely material order and can be rapid and ephemeral,while the second is more symbolic and requires time for the slow

recognition by the peer group, but is durable. As an intellectual enterprise (in the economic sense), as intellectual activity under externai

constraints, in practice the joumalistic field has to reconcile these twoantagonistic social universes. Within the dominant class, it tends to

exert, via its own power of diffusion, a particular effect of mixing upboundaries - among other reasons, because it has an interest inmixing them up, especially that which separates the economic andthe intellectual poles. This is embodied, as it were, in the hybrid,impossible figure of the media intellectual (or, more precisely, the

intellectual-for-the-media). An economically successful joumalisticenterprise always also seeks properly joumalistic, which is to say

intellectual, success. And if large circulation does not always make a

great newspaper, poor circulation is always perceived as failure.The power proper to the joumalistic field and its capacity to weigh

on other social fields can be seen in particular in the fame it creates,which falls more within the logic of the economic or political pole



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than in that of the intellectual field. If the journalistic field consecratespeople already consecrated by the social spaces from which they come

(by interviewing a Nobel Prize winner, for example) - figures whosefame owes nothing to the media and remains beyond ephemeralmediatization - it also possesses its own power of consecration byintroducing the figures it presents to the general public as important.The latter owe their fame essentially to the media: they are basicallymedia personalities, and often derive quick material profits from this.

But this pure media fame, which is very often nothing but a thinlydisguised form of commercial promotion, is in itself ephemeral and,

in the case of intellectuals-for-the-media, requires the ongoing main-tenance work of journalists in a sort of struggle against oblivion.


Iwo Prínciples of Legítimacy

The media field’s immanent power of consecration - the power to say

who and what is important, and what we should think about impor

tant things and people - is based on its own legitimacy, which journalists have collectively accumulated in the course of history. In fact,this social space is traversed by not one but two competing princi

pies of legitimacy, which face off to define journalistic excellence. Theprincipie of this competition is the profound duality of journalisticactivity, which is at once intellectual and economic. In France, thegood journaiist is first of all, to put it briefly, one who writes for Le

Monde or, to a lesser degree, for Libération, or one who conformsto the principies taught in journalism school (some of which aremoreover run by former Le Monde journalists). He or she is a newsprofessional who tries to ward off the two major threats that constantly weigh on the intellectual autonomy of journalistic production:

on the one hand, political partisanship; on the other, the quest forcirculation at any price one sees in the scandal sheets. This first - wecould say intellectual - principie of legitimacy was incarnated in theemblematic figure of Le Monde founder and editor-in-chief HubertBeuve-Méry. An austere figure to himself, his coworkers (who were,

legend has it, badly paid), and his readers (he scorned photos anddemanded that his journalists fa ire emmerdant - “be boring”), hewas particularly uncompromising with news: he rejected “scoops”

and made the exactitude of the factual Information published in hispaper a point of honor. This moral and intellectual rigor brought highsymbolic profits, so that Le Monde quickly became the paper ofmanagerial and influential circles; but it did not pay from an eco-


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nomic point of view due to relatively low circulation and advertisingrevenues. Having set up a system whereby the journalists effectively

controlled the newspaper’s financial capital (by creating the “Societyof Editors”), and thus having in a way “neutralized” the economic

dimension of the enterprise, the newspaper’s founding editor waslittle concerned with such matters. Since the mid-1980s, Le Monde’s editors have not been so reluctant to expand the newspaper andassure its profitability. Nevertheless, the original model maintainedits force, and in the early years of the twenty-first century the Societyof Editors is marked by the clash between Beuve-Méry loyalists and

those who favor expanding the newspaper.^The second principie of legitimacy is embodied in the anchor of

the evening news on the national private television channel TF 1 or,to a lesser extent, the public (but partially advertising-funded)

channel France 2. It is of an economic-political order, even if it pres-ents itself as a form of professional excellence. Although it aims at ageneral public, television or radio news wants to be serious, professional, demanding, beyond reproach. More strongly subject to thelaws of competition than the print press, since the resources of the

big media come largely, even exclusively, from commercial advertising, radio and television journalists, many of whom also come from

journalism schools, have to try to reach the broadest possible public.To this end they employ a simple vocabulary and powerful images,covering topics that are meant to interest everyone. Their power doesnot reside in the intrinsic quality of the joumalistic work, since they

are in essence “pick-up media” - they essentially take stories originally covered by the print media and repackage them by addingvoices and images. Their specific power resides in the influence they

can have on a public that is practically coextensive with the entirepopulation, that is, in the decisive contribution they make to creating public opinion. The audience of these programs is perceived as asort of public vote of confidence, the “best” journalists being thosewho get the highest ratings, those who are in a way elected by the

viewers - which is to say, those who in effect contribute the most tothe channel economically in the form of advertisements.

Thus, between Le M onde and the TFl eight o’clock news, we pass

from a principie of internai legitimacy to a principie of externai legitimacy, from peer judgment to a viewer plebiscite - in short, from thelogic of the intellectual field to that of the political field. Even if thesemedia enterprises are situated at two antipodes, since both partici-pate in the process of producing news and are in some kind of com

petition, they cannot ignore one another. The celebrity televisionanchor is constantly judged by his colleagues in the written press.



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who are quick to denounce his professional failings, above all when

they are perceived as concessions to ratings. Conversely, as individu

ais, the journalists at Le Monde can ostensibly mark their distancefrom television news, which, in their eyes, is not made by “true jour

nalists” but only by “presenters.” A fortiori, they can refuse to par-ticipate directly in such and such a news program (even if refusalstend to be increasingly rare). This cannot be the case for the editor-in-chief of a newspaper, who is responsible for the general interestsof the paper and therefore cannot totally ignore the imperatives ofcirculation; this editor is generally pleased, even flattered, to see a

story “broken” by his or her paper picked up and cited by the television channels; furthermore, he or she cannot completely ignore inthe columns of the editor’s own paper the subjects addressed on television, even those that seem trivial, since a story on national television news, by virtue of its broad diffusion and the impact of images,

tends in itself to be an event. (We should say “television news programs” instead of “television news” in general, but the logic of this

type of media tends to exert a powerful effect of uniformity, so that

the same stories run on the news programs of different channels,

often in the same order).If the opposition between the limited-circulation and the popular

press is not new - it was clearly established by the end of the nine-teenth century with the appearance of the penny broadsheet (still

represented by London’s Sun and Mirror, or the New York Post) - it remains the case that the generalized diffusion of television fromthe mid-1970s onwards has profoundly changed the general economyof news production, and in particular the relation of forces between

the two types of press. The popular press has never had the legitimacy that television tends to have today, especially since the privati-

zation of television (or loosening of State Controls in the case o f publictelevision), the professionalization of the work of television joumal-

ists (some of whom come from the print press), and above all the vis-ibility and reach of this medium, which makes it central for allpolitical action. Thus, the functional weight of the audiovisual sectorin the total process of news production tends to be greater andgreater, the strong position occupied by Le M onde even a few years

ago being progressively taken over by, or at least shared with, television news programs.

There is an objective hierarchy among the different media outlets

that can be seen not only in the laws regulating the circulation ofinformation, but also in what we can call the phenomena of storypick-up. The press is first of all read by all journalists looking forstory ideas. Starting each day with the already existing news, they



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thus try to distinguish themselves from competing papers by bring-ing, sometimes according to a logic of one-upmanship, “a plus” (as

they say at Libération) or an original angle of attack. Important newsis thus news that is considered important by the whole of the mediaand picked up as such, certain outlets nevertheless having more“consecrating” power within the field than others. A story that, forexample, appears in the satirical weekly Le Canard encbainé and isnot picked up by another outlet remains a Canard encbainé story andhas only a very limited political effect.* Being picked up by Le Monde, however, changes the status of the story, transforming an item ofgossip into an issue worthy of political debate. And being picked up

by television news makes it into a national issue. If each outlet andeach journaiist is attentive to, not to say obsessed by, this process ofstory pick-up, this is because, on the one hand, it constitutes a sortof sanction proper to the journalistic milieu (all journalists experi-ence a certain pride at seeing one of their articles picked up by other

outlets, especially the most prestigious, which is seen as proof of theintrinsic importance of the story they originally broke). On the otherhand, it is because a story’s political efficacy, its capacity to upset and

impose itself as a current event that cannot be ignored, depends onits being picked up by other media, especially the most prestigious orefficacious insofar as they give it symbolic value added: the Parisian

daily press is “higher” than the provincial dailies, with Le Monde and to lesser extent Libération on the one side, and the televisionnews programs on the other.

The most prestigious media outlets thus have greater weight in the

production of news because they are read more, their stories arepicked up more often by other outlets, and because they exert a truepower of consecration on other papers by virtue of whether they pick

up their stories. There has long been a separation between the mainstream popular press and the so-called serious press, with the latterprincipally feeding public debates. The new weight of the audiovisualmedia in the production of major news has helped overcome this

frontier, thereby changing the logic of public debate as well as theeconomy that governs the market of opinions. It is no doubt herethat the greatest source of anxiety among those who reflect on the

evolution of the profession lies.


Notes

During the 1980s and 1990s, French television and print journalists were

widely criticized for various violations of ethical or professional norms,


15/18

such as charges of secretly altered television news footage, overly close

relations between prominent journalists and leading politicians, and

systeraatic ideological biases in coverage of foreign affairs (the firstGulf War) or subsequently, the popular “social movement” that arose in

December 1995 to protest against government plans to cut public retire-

ment and health programs. During this period, this critique manifested

itself in such regular forums as Daniel Schneidermann’s Arrêt sur images on public television Channel 5 and a flurry of books by journalists

themselves, offering varying degrees of criticai distance, culminating

most recently with Pierre Péan and Philippe Cohen’s La Face cachée

du “Monde” (The Hidden Face o f “Le M onde” [Fayard, Paris, 2003])

as well as through the films of Pierre Caries, the interventions ofacademics and intellectuals, and the creation of websites and hosting

of public discussions by activist media organizations such as Action-

Critique-Médias (ACRIMED ). - ED.

2 O RTF was the acronym for the state’s monopoly television and radio

System that underwent successive reforms but essentially remained in

place until 1981. - ED.

3 Champagne is describing in general terms the post-World War II history

of the French press. Immediately after the ending of the Nazi occupa-

tion, a politically and culturally diverse press thrived in France. Prewar

publishers who had collaborated with the Nazi-dominated French Vichy

regime were prohibited from participating in the new press system, and

generous State subsidies helped journalists start their own newspapers.

Between 1945 and 1960, most of these post-Liberation publications

closed for economic reasons, but during the late 19é0s and early 1970s,

new alternative and noncommercial press voices emerged, most notably

the daily Libération founded by Jean-Paul Sartre and other intellectuals

and activists, which survives (much transformed) to this day. - ED.

4 T F l, or Télévision Française 1, is France’s most watched television

channel and since 1986 has been wholly privately owned and funded.

Arte is a joint Franco-German government funded cultural channel with

no advertising. Whereas T F l features a range of entertainment pro-

gramming, including “reality TV ” and other game shows. Arte focuses

on documentaries, critically-acclaimed films, and other arts. - ED.

5 For a more in-depth analysis of recent changes at Le M onde, see P. Champagne, “Le Médiateur entre deux M onde”, Actes de la recherche en

Sciences sociales, 13 1-2 (2000), pp. 8-2 9. - ED.6 For more background on this unique French joumalistic institution, see

L. Martin, Le Canard enchainé ou les Fortunes de la vertu: Histoire d ’un journ al satirique, 1915-2000 (Flammarion, Paris, 2001) and C. Thog-

martin, The National Daily Press o f France (Summa, Birmingham, AL,

19 98 ), pp. 284—9. Founded in 19 15 , Le Canard enchainé is a vehicle forsatire and humor, including political cartoons, as well as serious inves-

tigative reporting. While accepting no advertising or State assistance, the



16/18

weekly has been highly profitable with circulation generally exceeding

500,000 in recent years (Martin, pp. 465, 496-7). The title literally

means “the duck in chains,” but canard also means “lie” and serves asa colloquial term, among journalists, to refer to one’s own newspaper.

Thogmartin suggests that the title could be justifiably interpreted as

“just one lie after another” (p. 285) . - ED.



17/18

BOURDIEU ANDTHE JOURNALISTIC

FIELD

EDITED BY RODNEY BENSON

AND ERIK NEVEU

P o l i t y


18/18

Chapter 2 Copyright © Pierre Bourdieu. Originally a lecture delivered in

Lyons, France, in November 1995 entitled “Champ politique, champ desSciences sociales, champ journalistique.” Chapter 3 Copyright © Patrick

Champagne. Originally published in Hermés, 17/18, 1995. Chapter 4Copyright © Dominique Marchetti. Originally published in Réseaux, 111,2002. Chapter 6 Copyright © Patrick Champagne and Dominique Marchetti.

Originally published in Actes de la recherche en Sciences sociales, 101-2,1994. Chapter 7 Copyright © Julien Duval. Originally published in Actes de la recherche en Sciences sociales, 131-2, 2000.

First published in 2005 by Polity Press

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