Routine reliance revisited: Exploring media importance for German political journalists

Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly

Volumn 81, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 857-876

  Reinemann, Carsten ^a  

^a JOHANNES GUTENBERG UNIVERSITY   (Germany)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ADVERTISING;

EID: 16344361934     PISSN: 10776990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/107769900408100409     Document Type: Article

References (153)

1. See, for example, Brent Cunningham, "Manhattan Mindset. The World Sees News Through New York Eyes," Columbia Journalism Review (March/April 2001): 22-27, 26.
2. In addition, media are also mentioned as an important source in practical guides to journalism, for example in Tony Harcup, Journalism. Principles and Practice (London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi: Sage, 2004), 44-45, 53-54.
3. See, for example, Mark Fishman, Manufacturing the News (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1980);
4. Lucig H. Danielian and Stephen D. Reese, "A Closer Look at Intermedia Influences on Agenda-Setting: The Cocaine Issue of 1986," in Communication Campaigns About Drugs: Government, Media, Public, ed. Pamela J. Shoemaker (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1989), 47-66;
5. Michael J. Breen, "A Cook, a Cardinal, his Priests, and the Press: Deviance as a Trigger for Intermedia Agenda Setting," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 74 (summer 1997): 348-56;
6. Daron R. Shaw and Bartholomew H. Sparrow, "From the Inner Ring Out: News Congruence, Cue-Taking, and Campaign Coverage," Political Research Quarterly 52 (summer 1999): 323-51.
7. See, for example, James D. Halloran, Philip Elliot, and Graham Murdock, Demonstrations and Communication: A Case Study (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970);
8. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, "Return to the Concept of Powerful Mass Media," Studies of Broadcasting 9 (spring 1973): 67-112;
9. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann and Rainer Mathes, "The 'Event as Event' and the 'Event as News.' The Significance of Consonance for Media Effects Research," European Journal of Communication 2 (summer 1987): 392-414;
10. Jochen Peter, "Our Long 'Return to the Concept of Powerful Mass Media.' A Cross-National Comparative Investigation of the Effects of Consonant Media Coverage," International Journal of Public Opinion Research 16 (summer 2004): 144-68.
11. See, for example, Noelle-Neumann and Mathes, "The 'Event as Event' and the 'Event as News"';
12. Larry J. Sabato, Feeding Frenzy: How Attack Journalism Has Transformed American Politics (New York: Lanahan, 1991);
13. Shaw and Sparrow, "From the Inner Ring Out."
14. Leon Sigal, Reporters and Officials: The Organization and Politics of Newsmaking (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath & Co, 1973).
15. Wolfgang Donsbach, "Journalism Research," in German Communication Yearbook, ed. Hans-Bernd Brosius and Christina Holtz-Bacha (Cresskill: Hampton Press, 1999), 159-80.
16. Pamela J. Shoemaker and Stephen D. Reese, Mediating the Message. Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content, 2d ed. (White Plains: NY: Longman, 1996).
17. See, for example, Stanley K. Bigman, "Rivals in Conformity: A Study of Two Competing Dailies," Journalism Quarterly 25 (spring 1948): 127-31;
18. Warren Breed, "Newspaper 'Opinion Leaders' and the Process of Standardization," Journalism Quarterly 32 (summer 1955): 277-84;
19. Tim R. Donohue and Theodore L. Glasser, "Homogeneity in Coverage of Connecticut Newspapers," Journalism Quarterly 55 (autumn 1978): 592-96;
20. Tony Atwater, "Consonance in Local Television News," Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 30 (autumn 1984): 467-72;
21. Stephen D. Reese and Lucig H. Danielian, "Intermedia Influence on the Drug Issue. Converging on Cocaine," in Communication Campaigns About Drugs: Government, Media, Public, ed. Pamela J. Shoemaker (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1989), 29-46;
22. Shaw and Sparrow, "From the Inner Ring Out."
23. For a description of these differences see, for example, Thomas E. Patterson and Wolfgang Donsbach, "News Decisions: Journalists as Partisan Actors," Political Communication 13 (summer 1996): 455-68;
24. Frank Esser, "Editorial Structures and Work Principles in British and German Newsrooms," European Journal of Communication 13 (summer 1998): 375-405;
25. Mark Deuze, "National News Cultures: A Comparison of Dutch, German, British, Australian, and U.S. journalists," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 49 (spring 2002): 134-49.
26. Breed, "Newspaper 'Opinion Leaders"';
27. Warren Breed, "Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis," Social Forces 33 (winter 1955): 326-35;
28. see also Reese and Danielian, "Intermedia Influence on the Drug Issue";
29. Stephen D. Reese, "Setting the Media's Agenda: A Power Balance Perspective," Communication Yearbook 14 (1991): 309-40.
30. See, for example, Breed, "Social Control";
31. Ruth C. Flegel and Steven Chaffee, "Influences of Editors, Readers and Personal Opinions on Reporters," Journalism Quarterly 48 (winter 1971): 645-51;
32. Judee K. Burgoon, Michael Burgoon, David B. Buller, and Charles Atkin, "Communication Practices of Journalists: Interaction With Public, Other Journalists," Journalism Quarterly 64 (spring 1987): 125-32, 275;
33. Michael Schudson, "The Sociology of News Production Revisited," in Mass Media and Society, ed. James Curran and Michael Gurevitch (London: Edward Arnold, 1991), 141-59;
34. Dan Berkowitz and Yehiel Limor, "Professional Confidence and Situational Ethics: Assessing the Social-Professional Dialectic in Journalistic Ethics Decisions," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 80 (winter 2003): 783-801.
35. See, for example, Breed, "Social Control";
36. Herbert J. Gans, Deciding What's News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time (New York: Vintage, 1979);
37. John McManus, Market-Driven Journalism: Let the Citizen Beware? (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994).
38. See, for example, Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1960 (New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1962);
39. Timothy Crouse, The Boys on the Bus: Riding With the Campaign Press Corps (New York: Random House, 1972);
40. Gaye Tuchman, Making News. A Study in the Construction of Reality (New York: The Free Press, 1978);
41. Sharon Dunwoody, "The Science Writing Inner Club: A Communication Link between Science and Lay People," Science, Technology & Human Values 5 (winter 1980): 14-22;
42. Fishman, Manufacturing the News;
43. Sabato, Feeding Frenzy;
44. Vincent Kiernan, "Embargoes and Science News," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 80 (winter 2003): 903-20.
45. Gans, Deciding What's News, 177.
46. See, for example, Barbie Zelizer, "Journalists as Interpretive Communities," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 10 (autumn 1993): 219-37.
47. See, for example, Donsbach, "Journalism Research";
48. Zelizer, "Journalists as Interpretive Communities."
49. See, for example, Breed, "Newspaper 'Opinion Leaders"';
50. Walter Gieber, "News Is What the Newspaperman Makes it," in People, Society, and Mass Communications, ed. Lewis A. Dexter and David M. White (New York: Free Press, 1964), 172-82;
51. Jeremy Tunstall, Journalists at Work. Specialist Correspondents: Their News Organizations, News Sources and Competitor Colleagues (London: Constable, 1971);
52. Sigal, Reporters and Officials;
53. Crouse, The Boys on the Bus;
54. John Dimmick, "The Gate-Keeper: An Uncertainty Theory," Journalism Monographs 37 (1974);
55. Donsbach, "Journalism Research";
56. Rainer Mathes and Barbara Pfetsch, "The Role of the Alternative Press in the Agenda-Building Process: Spill-Over Effects and Media Opinion Leadership," European Journal of Communication 6 (spring 1991): 33-62;
57. Shaw and Sparrow, "From the Inner Ring Out."
58. See, for example, Charles K. Atkin, "Anticipated Communication and Mass Media Information Seeking," Public Opinion Quarterly 36 (spring 1972): 188-99;
59. Dimmick, "The Gate-Keeper: An Uncertainty Theory."
60. Shoemaker and Reese, Mediating the Message, 95-96;
61. Zelizer, "Journalists as Interpretive Communities."
62. Donsbach, "Journalism Research";
63. Matthew C. Ehrlich, "The Competitive Ethos in Television Newswork," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 12 (summer 1995): 196-212.
64. Gans, Deciding What's News, 126.
65. McManus, Market-Driven Journalism;
66. see also David L. Altheide, Creating Reality: How TV News Distort Events (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1976), 50-55;
67. David L. Altheide and Paul Rasmussen, "Becoming News: A Study of Two Newsrooms," Sociology of Work and Occupations 3 (May 1976): 235-36.
68. Breed, "Newspaper 'Opinion Leaders"';
69. Noelle-Neumann, "Return to the Concept";
70. Shoemaker and Reese, Mediating the Message;
71. Mathes and Pfetsch, "The Role of the Alternative Press";
72. McManus, Market-Driven Journalism;
73. Ehrlich, "The Competitive Ethos";
74. Shaw and Sparrow, "From the Inner Ring Out."
75. Gans, Deciding What's News, 179;
76. Ehrlich, "The Competitive Ethos."
77. Gans, Deciding What's News, 176;
78. Ehrlich, "The Competitive Ethos."
79. Tunstall, Journalists at Work;
80. Ehrlich, "The Competitive Ethos."
81. See, for example, Gans, Deciding What's News, 116, 128;
82. McManus, Market-Driven Journalism.
83. The reliability of sources is also mentioned in Gans, Deciding What's News.
84. See, for example, Wolfgang Donsbach, Medienwirkung trotz Selektion. Einflussfaktoren auf die Zuwendung zu Zeitungsinhalten. [Media Effects Despite Selectivity. Influences on the Selection of Newspaper Content.] (Cologne: Boehlau, 1991).
85. McManus, Market-Driven Journalism.
86. For descriptions and models of the news production process see, for example, David Manning White, "The 'Gate Keeper.! A Case Study in the Selection of News," Journalism Quarterly 27 (summer 1950): 383-96;
87. Charles R. Bantz, Suzanne McCorkle, and Roberta C. Baade, "The News Factory," Communication Research 7 (spring 1980): 45-68;
88. McManus, Market-Driven Journalism.
89. Carsten Reinemann, Medienmacher als Mediennutzer. Kommunikations-und Einflussstrukturen im politischen Journalismus der Gegenwart [Media Makers as Media Users. Structures of Communication and Influence in Today's Political Journalism] (Cologne: Boehlau, 2003).
90. Hans J. Kleinsteuber, "Federal Republic of Germany," in The Media in Western Europe. The Euromedia Handbook, ed. Bernt Stubbe Østergaard (London / Thousand Oaks / New Delhi: Sage), 75-97.
91. See, for example, Deuze, "National News Cultures";
92. Donsbach, "Journalism Research:;
93. Esser, "Editorial Structures";
94. Barbara Pfetsch, "Political Communication Culture in the United States and Germany," The Harvard International Journal of Press/ Politics 6 (spring 2001): 46-67.
95. Donsbach, "Journalism Research";
96. Esser, "Editorial Structures."
97. Simone C. Ehmig, Generationswechsel im deutschen Journalismus [Generational Changes in German Journalism] (Freiburg: Alber, 2000);
98. Donsbach, "Journalism Research."
99. See, for example, White, "The 'Gate Keeper"';
100. Breed "Newspaper 'Opinion Leaders"';
101. Gieber, "News Is What the Newspaperman Makes it";
102. Sigal, Reporters and Officials;
103. Gans, Deciding What's News;
104. Fishman, Manufacturing the News;
105. Dan Berkowitz, "Refining the Gatekeeping Metaphor for Local Television News," Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 34 (spring 1990): 55-68;
106. McManus, Market-Driven Journalism.
107. See, for example, Reese and Danielian, "Intermedia Influence on the Drug Issue";
108. Shaw and Sparrow, "From the Inner Ring Out";
109. Peter, "Our Long 'Return to the Concept of Powerful Mass Media.'"
110. Renate Köcher, Spürhund und Missionar [Bloodhound and Missionary] (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Munich, 1985);
111. Armin Scholl and Siegfried Weischenberg, Journalismus in der Gesellschaft [Journalism in Society] (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998).
112. Leo Rosten, The Washington Correspondents (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1937);
113. William L. Rivers, "The Correspondents After 25 Years," Columbia Journalism Review 1 (spring 1962): 7-8;
114. John W. C. Johnstone, Edward J. Slawski, and William W. Bowman, The News People: A Sociological Portrait of American Journalists and Their Work (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1976);
115. Judee K. Burgoon, Michael Burgoon, and Charles Atkin, What Is News? Who Decides? And How? A Preliminary Report on the World of the Working Journalist Conducted for the American Association of Newspaper Editors as Part the Newspaper Readership Project (Washington, DC: 1982);
116. David Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit, The American Journalist. A Portrait of U.S. Newspeople and Their Work (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986);
117. David Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit, The American Journalist in the 1990s. U.S. Newspeople at the End of an Era (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1996).
118. The research question make no difference between "work-related" or "leisure-time" use of news media because discussions with journalists revealed that any kind of news media reception could influence their work, be it during office hours or at home. This view is supported by their notion that most journalists read their first paper or watch their first TV news at home and/or listen to radio news on their way to work.
119. For recent studies see, for example, Wolfram Peiser, "Setting the Journalist Agenda: Influences from Journalists' Individual Characteristics and From Media Factors," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 78 (summer 2000): 243-57;
120. Pamela J. Shoemaker, Martin Eichholz, Eunyi Kim, and Brenda Wrigley, "Individual and Routine Forces in Gatekeeping," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 78 (summer 2001): 233-46;
121. Patrick Lee Plaisance and Elizabeth A. Skewes, "Personal and Professional Dimensions of News Work: Exploring the Link Between Journalists' Values and Roles," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 80 (winter 2003): 833-48.
122. Analyzing a survey of German journalists, Scholl and Weischenberg identified a small group of what they called "self-referential journalists." These journalists used more media outlets than their colleagues. Armin Scholl and Siegfried Weischenberg, "Autonomy in Journalism: How it is Related to Attitudes and Behaviour of Media Professionals," Web Journal of Mass Communication Research 2 (September 1999) [www.scripps.phiou.edu/wjmcr/vo102/2-4a-B.htm] [last retrieved: 28 July 2001].
123. See, for example, Hans Mathias Kepplinger, "Publizistische Konflikte [Media Conflicts]," in Öffentlichkeit, Öffentliche Meinung, Soziale Bewegungen, ed. Friedhelm Neidhardt (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1994), 214-33.
124. Beate Schneider, Klaus Schönbach, and Dieter S türzebecher, "Westdeutsche Journalisten im Vergleich: Jung, Professionell und mit Spass an der Arbeit [West German Journalists: Young, Professional, and Having Fun in their Job]," Publizistik 38 (spring 1993): 5-30;
125. Scholl and Weischenberg, Journalismus.
126. See, for example, Patterson and Donsbach "News Decisions";
127. Ehmig, Generationswechsel.
128. There is no complete directory of journalists in Germany and journalists' unions do not make their member lists available for research. Therefore, individual names of journalists had to be searched for in various sources. Among them are Zimpel and the Deutsches Bühnenjahrbuch (two directories of German media including names of individual journalists), and the directory of the Bundespressekonferenz (members of the organization of Berlin correspondents). In addition, Webpages of several media were used. Taken altogether, these sources can be regarded as valid bases for the sampling of political journalists. Therefore, they were used in earlier studies, too, for example by Patterson and Donsbach, "News Decisions," and Ehmig, Generationswechsel. For sampling, the respective number of names was picked randomly from an alphabetical list of journalists for each medium.
129. Question wording for daily newspapers was: "How much time do you normally spend per day reading daily newspapers?" Question wording for the other media was similar.
130. Question wording was: "Journalists often follow the reporting of other media very closely. Generally speaking, how important are other media for the following aspects of your work? Very important, important, not so important or unimportant."
131. Question wording for searching for stories was "How important are the following sources when you are looking for stories about national politics?" Question wording for the other stages was similar.
132. Patterson and Donsbach, "News Decisions";
133. Esser, "Editorial Structures."
134. See, for example, Köcher, Spürhund und Missionar;
135. Patterson and Donsbach, "News Decisions,"
136. Scholl and Weischenberg, Journalismus;
137. Peiser "Setting the Journalist Agenda."
138. Six different types of media were distinguished according to the structure of the German media market: Regional and national press, public and private radio stations, and public and private TV stations. These types of media differ in their ownership and/or their quality and intensity of political reporting.
139. The editorial position of the medium was measured using a 7-point scale (left-right). For analysis, this 7-point scale was condensed to three points (left vs. center vs. right).
140. The age of the journalists was measured with an open question. Following Ehmig Generationswechsel, who found fundamental differences in the role perceptions of different generations of German journalists, the sample was divided into three generations corresponding to her findings.
141. Due to the holistic organization of journalistic work in Germany, "reporters" only responsible for information gathering are rarely found in German newsrooms. Therefore the term "sub-editor/ reporter" is used here to make clear that the distinction between "sub-editor / reporter" and "editor" only refers to differences in the hierarchical position and not so much to different work profiles. See Esser, Editorial structures."
142. Journalists were asked for the time they daily spend on 12 different activities. On the basis of a hierarchical cluster analysis, three groups of journalists with similar activity profiles were identified.
143. The individual political positions of journalists were measured using a 7-point scale (left-right), For analysis, this 7-point scale was condensed to three points (left vs. center vs. right).
144. For a comparison of response rates for surveys of journalists see David H. Weaver, The Global Journalist. News People Around the World (Cresskill: Hampton Press, 1998).
145. See, for example, Schneider, Schönbach, and Stürzebecher, "Westdeutsche Journalisten im Vergleich";
146. Scholl and Weischenberg, Journalismus.
147. The rank order of β coefficients indicates the relative importance of the predictors in their explanation of the variance in dependent variable, if all other predictors were held constant. Due to item nonresponse the basis for the multivariate analysis is reduced to n = 265.
148. 2 = .10; Medium: β = .18 (p < .05).
149. 2 = .08; Individual political position: β =.20 (p < .05).
150. David H. Weaver, "Audience Need for Orientation and Media Effects," Communication Research 7 (summer 1980): 361-76.
151. In spite of the "holistic principle" in German newsrooms there are journalists not regularly involved in research for a specific story. Therefore, this analysis only was conducted for journalists working on national politics at least once a week. These authors make up 80% of the journalists surveyed (n=228)
152. Esser, "Editorial Structures," 395.
153. Former TV producer Danny Schechter cited in Cunningham, "Manhattan Mindset," 26.