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Despite enduring "some of the worst political and economic chaos anywhere in the world" (Mwesige, P. G. 2004. "Disseminators, Advocates and Watchdogs: A Profile of Ugandan Journalists in the New Millennium." Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism 5 (1): 69–96. doi:10.1177/1464884904039556), for the last quarter century Uganda has seen significant progress under President Yoweri Museveni, who is credited with liberalizing the media and instituting a constitutional guarantee of free press (Kalyango, Y., and P. Eckler. 2010. "Media Performance, Agenda Building, and Democratization in East Africa." Communication Yearbook 34: 355–389). Now, Uganda has "one of the more vibrant media scenes in east and central Africa" (Freedom House. 2017. Freedom of the Press 2017. Uganda. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2017/uganda, para. 5–6). Still, journalist continue to face challenges. This study utilized in-depth interviews to examine the challenges Ugandan reporters face and what could be done to alleviate them. Through the lens of Shoemaker and Reese's (2013. Mediating the Message in the 21st Century: A Media Sociology Perspective. Routledge) Hierarchy of Influences Model, findings reveal that journalists' challenges come from almost every level. At the individual level, journalists lack professionalism and engage in unethical behavior. Some of these challenges can be blamed on news organizations due to low pay and failed efforts to create a united professional organization to train reporters to act ethically. Extramedia forces, namely, government restrictions, also pose significant challenge. And some restrictions, such as limited access to information, are influenced by ideological factors. As Tabaire (2007. "The Press and Political Repression in Uganda: Back to the Future?" Journal of Eastern African Studies 1 (2): 193–211. doi:10.1080/17531050701452408) suggests, "Only a much more democratic Uganda will ensure a freer press" (208). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a history of the union organizing of editorial workers at Thomson Newspapers from 1963 to 1966. In doing so, it outlines the labor organizing tactics that the American Newspaper Guild adopted to "bite back" at the corporation and the communication tools that it used to facilitate those tactics. During this period, Canada's Oshawa Times, a Toronto-area newspaper, became Thomson's first and only North American newsroom to be unionized. The union local, the Toronto Newspaper Guild, also won a strike at the Oshawa Times, making it seem viable that the international union could organize more of Thomson's 42 North American dailies. Grounding this case in histories of labor and news media in Oshawa and resistance in the print journalism industry, this paper develops the concept of temporary labor convergence as a micro-level, shortterm campaigning tactic. It is based on a labor standpoint analysis of union archival documents and newspaper reports. In a political economy of technological change and chain newspaper ownership, this paper reveals how newsworkers can challenge established social relations and advance social transformation: by mobilizing massive community support; connecting their workplace struggles to broader social issues; and creating publicity campaigns to communicate these struggles to the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that news media remain distinct despite increasingly converging news environments. Print, online, radio and television constitute not only unique packing and distribution houses of similarly obtained raw materials, as suggested by the generic approach, but also unique manufacturing houses of news, as suggested by the particularist approach. The study compares for the first time the news practices across all four media in national leading Israeli news organizations, based on face-to-face reconstruction interviews, during which a sample of 108 reporters recreated how they obtained each of their randomly sampled, recently published items (N= 859). Medium differences were not only statistically significant but also cut across all studied aspects. Patterns of reporting were much less meticulous and more source-dependent in the immediate media (online and radio) compared to daily media (print and television). Contrary to its infamous reputation, the most complex and rich reporting patterns were found on television. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Western historians locate the origins of the newspaper in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This article demonstrates that newspaper-like periodicals known as chao-pao and xiao-pao emerged much earlier in Hangzhou, China during the Southern Song Dynasty. Journalistic activities in Hangzhou at this time were not only the most well developed in China but also considerably more advanced than those of any city in Western Europe. Contrary to the idea that the modern printing press and modern styles of journalism originated in Western Europe, this article argues that Hangzhou holds an important place in journalism history for its journalistic activities nearly nine centuries ago. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The convocation of the People's Convention in January 1941 by the Communist Party of Great Britain presented Britain's newspapers with an opportunity to demonstrate their integrity according to liberal ideals. Accurate reporting of the Convention could inform the public sphere about issues of concern during a period of intense hardship, but it risked promoting revolutionary defeatism. The findings of a content analysis of a structured sample of newspapers suggests journalism offered news and comment sufficient to assist the formation of a genuine public opinion. Newspapers demonstrated their freedom from policy censorship. Editors who believed the Convention's programme addressed issues of particular importance to their readers spoke truth to power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The 2009 protests in Iran and the 2011 Arab uprisings took place in complex and fast evolving media ecologies. The BBC's Persian and Arabic language services, which reach millions, drew heavily on content created by ordinary citizens to cover events. This paper traces the flow of this content through the news process to examine how collaboration between newsrooms and citizen journalists changed from 2009 to 2011. The article argues that participation in the news process hinges on the congruence between newsroom practices, and the practices of those producing content on the streets. Such congruence requires mutual knowledge of broadcasting requirements. It finds that by 2011 journalists felt more comfortable and effective integrating user-generated content (UGC) into their news output. Importantly, UGC creators appear to have taken on board the broadcaster's editorial requirements, making them savvier content creators. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper is an in-depth study of the use of unnamed sources in the reports of two big, international news agencies, The Associated Press (AP) and Reuters. Traditionally, news agencies have referred to issues of "factuality" and "objectivity" as their valued objectives (see e.g. Boyd-Barrett, 1980; van Dijk, 1988), and as one claim to "factuality", journalists tend to use a wealth of direct and indirect quotes in their reports, often coming from unnamed sources. From the point of view of news rhetoric, presenting an unnamed source as a credible and newsworthy speaker calls for special strategies. Sometimes journalists emphasize that the person quoted does not want to be named, and recently AP, in particular, has resorted more and more to explaining the reasons for anonymity. Though the news agencies themselves seem to think that all the strategies boosting the standing of an unnamed speaker, and the expressions stressing the anonymity, just give necessary information to the reader, it can be argued that they also open a wealth of rhetorical possibilities, and thus can undermine the alleged factuality/objectivity of news agency discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, the commercialisation of the media in Norway has prompted two opposing theories concerning the impact of commercial news criteria; the first suggests it restrains, the second that it stimulates, investigative journalism. But the two theories draw the same normative conclusion, namely that commercialisation has negative implications for the contribution of media to democracy. This article presents the two theories, and puts their empirical assumptions to the test, using the distribution of awards for outstanding investigative journalism as a yardstick. The test results are discussed in the light of economic theory. It seems that critics of media commercialisation have placed too much emphasis on the cost-cutting aspect of a capitalist economy, and too little on capitalism as “the free-market innovation machine”. The conclusion is that commercial news criteria stimulate investigative journalism more than they restrain it, and that investigative journalism's contribution to democracy is more positive than negative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to contribute to the ongoing discussion about the critical potential of tabloid journalism. It does so through a comparison of two popular journalism campaigns: the “Maiden Tribute” campaign in the London newspaper the Pall Mall Gazette in 1885 (dealing with underage prostitution), and the “naming-and-shaming” campaign in the News of the World in 2000, concerning child abuse and paedophilia. The main research question is whether any or both of these campaigns can be viewed as contributions to an alternative public sphere, as defined using concepts from Örnebring and Jönsson (2004) and Atton (2002). Three aspects of the campaigns are compared: (1) How they discursively frame the issue at hand, (2) How they discursively frame the key actors present in the texts, and (3) What mode of address is employed. The purpose of this comparison is to examine whether the campaigns open up alternative possibilities in how they frame and present the issue and the actors, and in how they address and give space to their audiences. The main result is that the Pall Mall Gazette campaign has the greater claim to being a contribution to an alternative public sphere in terms of how it frames the issue and the actors. The article further argues that while there is a distinct potential of tabloid journalism to contribute to an alternative public sphere in certain circumstances, this potential should not be overstated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deployment of celebrities is a well-established practice in environmental politics, but does the involvement of actors, singers and comedians give environmentalists an edge in the battle for positive and ongoing news coverage or simply feed contemporary anxieties and debates about the state of the public sphere? This paper attempts to understand better the interaction between celebrity, protest and the news over time by asking how celebrity functions as a form of political protest, how celebrity protest relates to changing logics in news production, and how news access for non-elite political challengers gained via celebrity is negotiated and contested. The material presented here is based on an analysis of news coverage of the 35-year-long conflict over Tasmanian wilderness and interviews with journalists, activists and government/industry public relations specialists, and thus explores textual outcomes but also behind-the-scenes production dynamics and changing political/media contexts over time. The paper finds the media acting in complex and often contradictory ways as they struggle to retain control of the news agenda. It also argues that by attending to these empirical complexities and the changing dynamics over time of the celebrity–movement–media interaction, we are better equipped to address contemporary concerns about the state of the media as public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A rise in time and cost pressures has led to video news releases (“footage”) becoming increasingly popular in television editorial offices. Footage represents broadcastable video material which is made available to television stations by companies and institutions for reasons of public relations (PR). Its use is, however, problematical since editorial contents can thus be influenced by third parties. Against the background of the intereffication model of journalism and PR, the question of the influence of footage on television reporting is explored using the example of science journalism. In a case study, 44 German science journalists were asked how they dealt with this material. The results lead to the conclusion that footage is handled pragmatically. In addition, within the framework of a content analysis of transmission data relating to reporting about the Max Planck Society, the influence of footage material was assessed across a period of nine and a half months (N=274). The study revealed that almost one-third of the coverage was directly attributable to PR material with contributions based on footage being more frequent as well as longer than reports based on news releases. The influence on private stations was greater than that on public-service channels. This therefore raises the question about binding rules concerning how best to deal with footage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Press coverage of crime and punishment was central to the development of mid-Victorian journalism and extensive coverage of murder trials and public executions was a staple of middle-class newspapers. This article explores the tensions between traditional frameworks for reporting “rituals of retribution”, class-based codes of civility and squeamishness, and the emergence of early modern styles of fact-based and empathic newspaper reporting in the handling by Lincolnshire newspapers of the first private execution in the county, in 1868, when journalists were enlisted as “witnesses” on behalf of the “public”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using as a case study examples from a range of Lincolnshire newspapers, the article examines the emergence of sports journalism at a local level. Towards the end of the 19th century, provincial newspapers’ content was becoming increasingly local in orientation as attempts were made to distinguish themselves from the cheap, popular national dailies. With the growth of commercialised leisure and professional sport, increasing coverage within the local press became devoted to the reporting of such activities. The article examines the development of sports journalism between 1870 and 1914, a period of significant change within the provincial press. The work of several historians such as Richard Holt and Dave Russell have suggested that the coverage of sports news within the local newspaper played a part in forging local and regional identities: this article will assess the degree to which an analysis of the Lincolnshire press supports this argument. Increasingly, the identity of local press titles was, to an extent, shaped and defined through their sports coverage. This enabled newspapers to distinguish themselves from neighbouring rivals. The article will examine the ways in which local sports reporting competed with or complemented that appearing within the popular national press and the specialist sports papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This frame analysis of blogs active during the second Gulf War found that overall, bloggers worked within existing discourses about the war, primarily employing pro-war and anti-war frames. The blogs also promoted blogging itself as a solution to the problems of reporting on war as some bloggers saw themselves as improvements on mainstream media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the first independent and publicly available survey of Canadian attitudes about news media to raise two fundamental questions about how the public is related to the project of journalism ethics—the improvement of newsroom standards. The first question is conceptual: How should we understand and measure public attitudes about news media? The second question is practical: How should we go about reforming newsroom practices to meet those public expectations? The paper critiques current models for measuring public attitudes and argues for the adoption of a more adequate model, “ethical holism.” The paper also argues for a new approach to practical reform of news media, called “public participation ethics.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article confronts the antirealist analysis of news journalism by introducing a realist perspective based on an application and an extension of some of John Searle's ideas on the subject. This realist point of view proposes two original hypotheses, namely that news is formally based on a prior reality and that this prerequisite reality is ultimately a given reality. Defending the first hypothesis is the idea that news is intentional in that it represents a state of affairs in a mind-to-world direction of fit. The second hypothesis argues that the social reality on which news is essentially based is almost always constructed from a brute reality through a process of iteration. The article then proposes a typology of journalistic brute facts: natural phenomena, biological facts, non-intentional mental facts, human accidents, selective actions, continuous behaviours, tendencies, dispositions, and other natural propensities and, finally, verbal manifestations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In April 2004 American and British forces in Iraq were accused of torturing prisoners and photographic evidence was widely published in the press. The images of brutality by British soldiers were immediately questioned and eventually proved to be fakes. The images of American torture were authentic, but before publication some were altered for the sake of decency. The question here is "how far can editors alter photographs without destroying their authenticity as documentary evidence?" When editors alter details inside the frame they are in danger of breaking the fragile contract that exists between photographs and actuality, and that can undermine their credibility as reporters of facts. However, all photographs are representations. What we see in photographs is seen only in them and not by natural eyesight in the world. This article examines alteration that is unacceptable and discredits editors; alteration that is just about acceptable as long as no one notices or it fits preconceptions; alteration that is completely acceptable and does not spoil the everyday sense of truth in photographs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What role does the local media, particularly the local press play, in the local constituency campaign during UK general elections? Drawing on interviews with MPs and candidates and evidence from a series of content analysis studies of local newspapers, this article reviews the extent to which the local press offers coverage to political actors during and outside the period of the election campaign. It argues that the pressure to court the local media and to build a local profile is rarely matched by extensive coverage and that this should raise questions about the place of the local press in the local constituency campaign. The paper also sets out the strategies used by MPs and candidates to court the local press and argues that this reflects the very limited role that the local press plays within the local constituency in respect of its political coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American newspapers are often criticized for failure to provide an understanding of inter-ethnic relations, an issue of renewed significance since the 2000 Census found that Latinos have replaced African-Americans as the largest US minority group. While most inter-ethnic studies of American newspapers focus on Black/White relations, the purpose of this study is to explore how the editors of the Black press in the American South are responding to the growing presence of Latinos, who are assuming a role in the economy and socio-political landscape held until recently by Blacks. The study found that while the Black press rarely provides coverage of Latino issues, the editors empathize with Latino struggles. These findings may indicate a theoretical pattern, termed "empathetic rejectionism" by the authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABC asked actor Leonardo DiCaprio to interview former President Bill Clinton on the environment as part of an Earth Day special that aired on the network in April 2000. In this textual analysis, I apply Thomas Gieryn's work on professional boundary building and Erving Goffman's theories on front- and back-stage behavior to explore the controversy caused by DiCaprio's interview. Journalists at first criticized ABC News for asking an actor to do a journalist's job. They decried the DiCaprio interview as a further encroachment of entertainment into news. But as coverage progressed, print reporters began to portray experienced broadcast journalists as out of touch—as members of the "old guard". They attacked scholars and other journalists who pointed out the blurring of the news-entertainment boundary. They were made members of what one writer called the "journalism police". Print reporters covering the DiCaprio controversy concluded that broadcast journalism was a lost cause. What followed was a fight over credibility which featured frantic boundary maintenance by all parties. In fact, the three types of credibility contests described by Gieryn—expulsion, expansion, and protection of autonomy—seemed to take place simultaneously. In the end, journalists have gone to the boundary maintenance well once too often; readers and viewers may no longer care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights public journalism and its prominence as a reform movement in modern American journalism. Appeal of public journalism to reporters and newspaper editors; Failure of public journalism to establish a sturdy foundation of concepts and principles; Inadequacy of claims about the authority of the press to set a public agenda.

Examines some of the complaints that limit the authority of photography and the press. Compromised nature of photography as a foundation for authentic eyewitness reports; Poor state of the newspaper industry as a source of reliable public record; Effectiveness of a hard-hitting documentary record; Measure of the press' contribution to debate in a civilized society.