Defending a Paradigm by Patrolling a Boundary

Abstract

Drawing on the concepts of paradigm repair and professional boundary work, this study examined the way the New York Times and the Guardian portrayed the whistle-blowing group WikiLeaks as being beyond the bounds of professional journalism. Through a textual analysis of Times and Guardian content about WikiLeaks during 2010 and early 2011, the study found that the Times depicted WikiLeaks as outside journalism’s professional norms regarding institutionality, source-based reporting routines, and objectivity, while the Guardian did so only with institutionality. That value thus emerged as a supranational journalistic norm, while source-based reporting routines and objectivity were bound within national contexts.