Popular journalism and professional ideology: tabloid reporters and editors speak out

Abstract

Scholars and professionals alike have repeatedly signaled a blurring of the public-private distinction in contemporary journalism. This possible ‘homogenization’ of popular and ‘hard’ journalisms can be seen as particularly impacting upon the occupational ideology of (all) journalists. In this article, this (suggested) impact is interrogated by looking specifically at those journalists directly involved: editors and reporters working for national news-stand tabloids (in the Netherlands). A range of expert interviews with journalists working for the leading tabloids in the Netherlands were conducted, in order to further study and understand the articulations of infotainment, tabloidization and popular journalism with the norms, values and ideals of journalists in the field. Tabloid journalists adhere to the same discourse, and use the same vocabulary of journalism’s professional ideology - objectivity, ethics, autonomy - as their mainstream ‘hard’ news colleagues when talking about their work and processing news. An analysis of moral, commercial, ironic and ideological interpretative repertoires shows how the journalists in the ‘popular’ field give meaning to what they do.