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Considerable international evidence points to a general liberal positioning and preference for nonconservative political parties on the part of journalists, but less is known about the detail of journalists' ideological values. This article applies attitudinal tests designed to measure conservatism versus liberalism to random samples of journalists and citizens in Australia. It is found that in most dimensions of liberalism-conservatism, including attitudes toward welfare, industrial relations, crime and punishment, ethnic diversity, religion, and sexual and social issues, journalists are significantly more liberal than the general public.

Applies attitudinal tests to measure conservatism versus liberalism of journalists and citizens; finds that journalists are significantly more liberal.

Personality, a little-explored variable in studies of journalists, may prove useful in understanding news people's values and motivations. A short test of two personality dimensions was applied to a random sample of 173 Australian journalists, who were found to be more extroverted than the general population, but not significantly different on the dimension of neuroticism. Job stress was related both to neuroticism and to extroversion, while extroversion was related to the valuing of information disseminating roles of media and of direct feedback from the public. Early success in journalism was related positively to extroversion and negatively to neuroticism. Further approaches to the study of personality in journalism are suggested.

In this first comprehensive national study of Australian journalists, the author surveyed 1,068 news people in all mainstream news media. Australian journalists are similar to their U.S. colleagues in distributions of age, sex, and socio-economic background, but have less formal education. Like U.S. journalists, Australians have mixed professional and ethical values and are committed both to investigative and to news-disseminating roles of the media.

Results from a survey of journalists in Hawaii are compared with results from a national U.S. sample of journalists by Weaver and Wilhoit. Although Hawaii's journalists are more ethnically diverse than U.S. journalists, there are proportionately more Caucasian journalists than Caucasians in the Hawaii population. Compared with the national sample, Hawaii's journalists put more emphasis on investigating government claims, providing analysis of complex problems, and serving as an adversary of government.