Publication details
Leaving the Prime Minister’s newspapers: Boundaries of journalistic professionalism among Czech journalists
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| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | In June 2013, the Czech-Slovak businessman Andrej Babiš, running a successful food, chemical and agriculture concern Agrofert, decided to widen the scope of his business activities by buying one of the most significant Czech media houses, Mafra. Allegedly, without any political or opinion-making intentions. In the general election that followed later that year, Babiš’s “anti-political” movement ANO got into the Czech Parliament. The businessman himself became a deputy; later, he was appointed the Minister of Finance in a coalition government. In December 2017, the oligarch - already controlling large segments of the industries, the media, and politics - became the Czech Prime Minister. Since 2013, the media house Mafra, comprising, most importantly, two major national newspapers, has seen an outflow of prominent journalists, illustrating the bad reputation of partisan press in the post-socialist context. The journalists left in several waves, corresponding with milestones of Babiš’s takeover and gradual tightening of his grip on the newswork in Mafra. In September 2018, a walkout of a celebrity “war correspondent” together with her five colleagues caused a fatal injury of the reputation of Mafra newspapers. By reconstructing the disintegration of the two newsrooms based on 20 in-depth interviews with those journalists who left and those who have not left (yet), our case study seeks to address the questions of boundaries of professional journalism in the Central and East European oligarchized media systems and of limits of the professional autonomy. We aim at identifying the precise moments/lines in which the infringements of professionalism (coming from above and from within the media organization), namely of the professional autonomy, become unacceptable for media professionals and inconsistent with their professional identities. In particular, we address the following questions: How do journalists working in Mafra construct/on what principles they build their professional and organizational identities? How do they legitimize their work for the media house and solve their potential cognitive dissonance? On the other hand, what motives and professional principles made the journalists who have left leave? What constitutes the boundary line between professional - autonomous - journalism and its impracticability, between staying in/leaving a media house that is subject to a conflict of interest? |