Suchergebnisse

As populist campaigns against the media become increasingly common around the world, it is ever more urgent to explore how journalists adopt and respond to them. Which strategies have journalists developed to maintain the public's trust, and what may be the implications for democracy? These questions are addressed using a thematic analysis of forty-five semistructured interviews with leading Israeli journalists who have been publicly targeted by Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The article suggests that while most interviewees asserted that adherence to objective reporting was the best response to antimedia populism, many of them have in fact applied a "strategic bias" to their reporting, intentionally leaning to the Right in an attempt to refute the accusations of media bias to the Left. This strategy was shaped by interviewees' perceived helplessness versus Israel's Prime Minister and his extensive use of social media, a phenomenon called here "the influence of presumed media impotence." Finally, this article points at the potential ramifications of strategic bias for journalism and democracy. Drawing on Hallin's Spheres theory, it claims that the strategic bias might advance Right-wing populism at present, while also narrowing the sphere of legitimate controversy—thus further restricting press freedom—in the future.

Various countries have seen a rise in populist rhetoric used by politicians, parties, and movements to discredit journalists, news outlets, and "The Media." Research indicates that such rhetoric affects the public's perceptions of the news media, posing a real challenge to professional journalism. Unlike other targets of populist criticism, journalists find themselves required to mediate that criticism to the public, which puts them in a particularly awkward position. Drawing on thematic analysis of 40 semistructured interviews with Israeli journalists who have been publicly scrutinized by Israel's prime minister, this article suggests that journalists' interpretation of traditional journalistic norms, and particularly the ethos of objectivity, leads them to amplify the accusations against them, while refraining from refuting them. As journalists confuse objectivity with passivity, the populist criticism turns into a sophisticated form of "soft" censorship, which uses imagined audiences to manipulate journalists' professional norms against them.

These are challenging times for journalists' relationship with their audiences. Attacks against "the media" and the increasing weaponization of social media to harass journalists have drawn the attention of scholars worldwide. In the current climate, journalists are not only distrusted but also hated, which creates a series of distinct ramifications. In this article, we suggest a new framework to study journalists–audiences relationship, particularly in times of hostile populism: the imagined journalists approach. A mirror image of the much-studied concept of imagined audiences, imagined journalists refers to the entirety of ideas, feelings, stereotypes, and imaginaries that audiences hold regarding their imagined news producers. It brings together the research on media trust, audiences' perceptions, antimedia populism, and the emotional turn in journalism—to generate a comprehensive understanding of people's criticisms, narratives, and priorities. We demonstrate the potential of this approach by analyzing 1,215 responses to an open-ended question regarding journalists' traits in Israel in 2021. Employing qualitative and quantitative analyses, we find that: (a) right-wing and pro-populist voters hold more negative views of journalists, as expected; (b) voters express three different types of criticism of journalists (professional, personal, and national)—only one of which directly relates to their professional conduct; (c) different types of voters express different types of criticism; and (d) while objectivity and bias remain main concerns, democracy is not a dominant factor in respondents' thinking on journalists. These findings contribute theoretically and methodologically to future research in the field, as well as to urgent attempts to improve our information environment.