Objectivity, Professionalism, and TruthSeeking in Journalism

Michael Schudson and Chris Anderson

The feld o journalism studies and the subfeld o sociology that examines proessionalizationand proessional systems—the sociology o the proessions—have coexisted in a state o mutualindierence or decades. Few o the classic proessional studies in the sociology o proessionshazard even a guess as to journalism’s proessional status, preerring or the most part to ocuson the traditional proessions o medicine and law (see, or example, Bledstein, 1976; Dingwall& Lewis, 1983; Freidson, 1970; Haskell, 1984); most studies o journalistic proessionalism, onthe other hand, orego engagement with the bulk o the sociological literature on proessionaloccupations and systems. (For a rare exception, see Tumber & Prentoulis, 2005.) At a time whenmany o the most important scholarly questions about journalism revolve around issues o theoccupation’s power, authority, and proessional status, there is much to be gained, it would seem,rom revisiting questions o journalism and proessionalization rom an explicitly sociologicalangle—articulating a deeper understanding o journalism’s troubled proessional project, the re-lationship between the objectivity norm and that project, and the manner in which journalistsattempt to orge a journalistic jurisdiction out o the link between their everyday work and theirheavily qualifed claim to possess a orm o proessionalized knowledge.To draw these journalistic and sociological perspectives on proessionalization into dialog,we begin this chapter with an overview o Weberian studies o the proessions, carried out in thelate 1970s and 1980s, including a discussion o Abbott’s (1988) inuential analysis o “proes-sional jurisdiction.” We then examine the two major strands o scholarship that have emergedwithin the feld o journalism studies. The frst strand, emerging rom journalism itsel (or ex-ample, Weaver, Beam, Brownlee, Voakes, & Wilhoit, 2007), tends not to worry about whether journalism produces authoritative knowledge or possesses proessional traits; or researchers inthis line o work, the importance o journalism is sel-evident and not dependent on its status ina hierarchy o occupations. The emphasis in this line o work is to measure the degree to which journalism has achieved proessional status, oten through occupational or educational surveys.A second strand o work comes rom the sociology o news organizations (Fishman, 1980; Gans,2004; Schudson, 1978; Tuchman, 1978) and media studies (Zelizer, 1992) and ocuses on thecharacter o journalistic knowledge or claims to knowledge and thus on the standing o journal-ism’s “cultural authority” in Paul Starr’s (1984) terms. While the frst strand suers rom its(probably unconscious) adoption o the “trait perspective” on the proessions, the second strand

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7. OBJECTIVITY, PROFESSIONALISM, AND TRUTH SEEKING IN JOURNALISM

conuses journalistic objectivity with journalistic proessionalism per se. As Hallin and Manci-ni’s (2004) recent work demonstrates, objectivity is not the defnitive proessional norm in manynon-American media systems where proessionalism, nonetheless, exists.In our conclusion, we advance the argument that a productive mode o analysis o journal-istic objectivity, proessionalism, and truth seeking would continue to build on the best work o the two strands noted above while adopting a modifed version o Abbott’s (1988) ramework.For Abbott, the study o the proessions begins with the study o proessional work, and “thecentral phenomenon o proessional lie is thus the link between a proession and its work” thatAbbott calls “jurisdiction.” Jurisdiction reers to the day-to-day manner in which a proessionboth concretizes and displays its base o “abstract knowledge” or, in the peculiar case o journal-ism, knowledge real and expert but by no means abstract. We seek to integrate Abbott’s analysiswith the two streams o research mentioned above, apply it to current controversies surrounding journalistic proessionalism, and outline an agenda or uture research.

FROM OCCUPATIONAL TRAITS TO OCCUPATIONAL STRUGGLE

The most productive era within the subfeld o sociology dedicated to proessionalization re-search begins with the widespread abandonment o the “trait approach” o occupational analysis,an approach that dominated the feld or decades and whose more extreme normative tendenciesdefned a proession as a model o occupational autonomy and sel-regulation worthy o imita-tion (Carr-Saunders & Wilson, 1993, Tawney, 1920). Key to the trait approach was an attemptto isolate certain proessional characteristics and then to determine the degree to which vari-ous occupational categories ulflled them. No single overview stands out as authoritative, butlists generally include the ollowing eatures: work based on scientifc or systematic knowledge,ormal education, sel-governing associations, codes o ethics, a relationship o trust betweenproessional and client (as opposed to a strictly market-based relationship), licensing or otherbarriers to entry to the feld, and widely recognized social status or social esteem. In the 1960sand 1970s, taking their cue rom Everett C. Hughes and inspired by Max Weber’s work on statusand authority, sociologists abandoned the trait approach, passing “rom the alse question ‘Is thisoccupation a proession’ to the more undamental one ‘What are the circumstances in which peo-ple in an occupation attempt to turn it into a proession and themselves into proessional people’”(Hughes, 1963, p. 655). In the orty years since Hughes’ challenge, the study o the proession asan idealized structural-unctionalist category has been replaced in much o sociology by the moreWeberian study o proessionalization and the “proessional project.”One o the frst explicitly Weberian proessionalization theorists, Magali Saratti Larson ar-gues in her analysis o the “proessional project” that “ideal typical constructions do not tellus what a proession is, only what it pretends to be.” We should ask instead, she argued, “whatproessions actually do in everyday lie to negotiate or maintain their special position.” (1977, p.xii). In MacDonald’s (1995, p. 7) ormulation, the word “‘proession’ is a lay or olk term, and[…] assessing whether an occupation is or is not a proession, is a semi-proession, or is more orless proessional than other occupations is what the ‘olk’ do. It is not the task o sociology to doit or them scientifcally.” As Freidson (1983, p. 27), fnally, summarizes the point:

I “proession” may be defned as a olk concept then the research strategy appropriate to it is phe-nomenological in character. One does not attempt to determine what a proession is in an absolutesense so much as to how people in society determine who is proessional and who is not, how they“make” or accomplish proessions by their activities.

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SCHUDSON AND ANDERSON

Initially advanced by Saratti Larson (1977), the theory o the proessional project has re-mained at the center o much o the most important work in the sociology o the proessions orthe past several decades. The concept represents a usion o Freidson’s early, groundbreakingwork on the medical feld with Weber’s classic analysis o the attempts o occupational groups tolink economic class and social status. For Saratti Larson, proessions are neither naturally exist-ing occupational categories nor the bearers o socially unctional “traits”; rather, they are collec-tive social actors who “attempt to translate one order o scarce resources—special knowledgeand skills—into another—social and economic rewards.” This eort is what Saratti Larson calls“the proessional project” and which she describes as a collective intention with coherence andconsistence even though the “goals and strategies pursued by a given group are not entirely clearor deliberate or all the members” (p. xiii).Framed in this manner, certain aspects o the proessional project assumed key roles in theWeberian analysis o proessional struggle that prevailed in the late 1970s. These aspects includ-ed: a proession’s attempt to create organizational monopoly on a socially useul body o abstractknowledge; the need or a market in which to transact the exchange o the technical utilizationo that knowledge; the relationship between a proession’s monopolization o knowledge and itsmembers’ social status; the mutual interdependency o the proession’s drive or social mobilityand market control; attempts to convert economic power to social status (and vice versa); theultimate dependence o this knowledge monopoly on the sanction o the state; and, fnally, theneed or a proession to “produce its producers” via schooling, credentialism, codes o ethics, etc.(Collins, 1979). Indeed, much sociological writing about proessions was related to and inspiredby sociological studies o education and higher education as a system or the orderly reproduc-tion o a class system and the legitimation o class inequality. Neo-Marxist studies emphasizedthe place o education not in training individuals to acquire technical knowledge or skills ft orthe modern economy but to acquire cultural capital to justiy their high standing in the socialorder (Bourdieu, 1984; Collins, 1979; Ehrenreich & Ehrenreich, 1979; Karabel & Halsey, 1977).Early criticism o the ideal o objectivity in US journalism drew on this work or shared in thesame intellectual mood skeptical o the authority o proessions and inclined to see claims toneutrality, detachment, or dispassion as a veil or power. (Debates over objectivity in US journal-ism arising in the Vietnam war years are summarized in Schudson, 1978; a spirited deense o objectivity as a journalistic ideal is Lichtenberg, 1989.)From this disciplinary reorientation, it ollows that any investigation into issues o proes-sionalism, objectivity, and truth seeking in journalism specifcally should move rom the questiono whether journalism is or is not a proession to the more interesting analysis o the circumstanc-es in which journalists attempt to turn themselves into proessional people. Rather than outliningthe traits that best characterize proessionals, and then assessing the degree to which journalistsattain them, we can analyze the social process through which journalists struggle to claim proes-sional status. This research agenda places the study o journalism within the sociological study o the proessions, and can cast new light on many o the classic institutional histories o journalism,including those that ignore or discount a sociological lens.

PROFESSIONAL RESEARCH AND JOURNALISM

How has this disciplinary transition rom “traits” to “struggle” played out within the feld o jour-nalism studies? It would be an exaggeration to say that developments in sociology proper havehad no eect on studies o journalistic proessionalism. Arguably, however, the relationship hasbeen indirect. Much o this can perhaps be attributed to the general decoupling, over the past two

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