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Gender, organizational and

professional identities in

journalism

Marjan de Bruin

Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication,University of the West Indies

A B S T R A C T

The emphasis of this review essay is on gender in journalism, placed in the context of

work done by media professionals in news organizations. In the recent debates on

this topic, certain aspects of news production practice are assigned crucial roles:

gender, journalistic professionalism, and the media organization. This essay reviews

the literature on each of these aspects and identifies where and how concepts of gender identity, professional identity and organizational identity occur. At the con-

ceptual level, inconsistencies in concepts are pointed out and a preliminary position-

ing of gender, professional and organizational identity in media organizations is

suggested. This review also argues that in certain countries, a shifting balance can be

observed: a growing hegemony of organizational identity over professional identity in

which gender seems to be a casualty of conflicts outside gender relations per se.

K E Y W O R D S gender identity journalistic profession media organization news production organizational identity professional identity

Introduction

The question which sparked this review essay is how gender should be viewed

as a variable in (news) production within a media organization in relation

to what is commonly called professionalism. In other words, what happens

on the work floor of media organizations, especially editorial departments,

when journalists – in this case, women – try to follow professional values andpractices and at the same time try to fulfil organizational demands?

Before undertaking any research into this area, I tried to develop a clearer

understanding of the factors that seem to be crucial to this question: gender

Journalism

Copyright © 2000 SAGE Publications

(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)

Vol. 1(2): 217–238 [1464-8849(200008)1:2;217–238;013418]

REVIEW ESSAY

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and media production, professionalism, the media organization and the way

these interconnect.

Each of these areas has its own tradition of discussion and study. The

organizational context of media production has been a topic of research forover 50 years, resulting in a stream of media organizational studies. The media

professional involved in news production – as an employee as well as a

member of a professional community – has also been the subject of various

studies. Women and media, widened in recent years to ‘gender’ and media, has

been the topic of continuing discussion in academic and journalistic circles.

However, the intersection of media organizational theories, studies on pro-

fessionalism and gender remained largely unexamined. The most recent

debates on this topic explain the central concepts, define them occasionally,

but leave much to be explored. They seem to be defined at different levels and

from different angles; their interconnection has remained implicit or described

only partially.

This essay reviews the literature on media organizations, professionalism

and recent debates on gender in media production, then tries to point out

the inconsistencies in the concepts and suggests a preliminary alternative

positioning of gender, professional and organizational identity in media

organizations.

Studies in media organizations

Over the last 50 years, media studies, or sociological studies of media organiza-

tions and news production, have reflected a variety of approaches and angles,

expressing the dominant – or fashionable – paradigm of the time (Bagdikian,

1971; Breed, 1955; Curran, 1990a, 1990b; Curran et al., 1982; Dimmick, 1979;

Elliot, 1977; Epstein, 1973; Esser, 1998; Flegel and Chaffee, 1971; Gallagher,

1982; Gieber, 1956; Hall, 1973; Hirsch, 1977; Johnstone, 1976; Murdock and

Golding, 1977; Pool and Schulman, 1959; Schlesinger, 1990; Schudson, 1991;

Sigal, 1973; Sigelman, 1973; Tracey, 1978; Tuchman, 1978; Tunstall, 1971;

White, 1950).

Between the early 1950s and the beginning of the 1970s, the main

emphasis in research on media organizations was along the perspective that

White (1950) had put forward. White’s focus and that of some of his con-

temporaries (Gieber, 1956; Pool and Schulman, 1959) was the individual

professional: how judgements on news selection were affected by the gate-keeper’s personal and idiosyncratic biases.

Breed (1955), in his study on social control in the newsroom, recognized

the pressure to conform to corporate style and culture. His focus reflects an eye

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for interpersonal behaviour and group dynamics as factors that control the

behaviour of the newsroom workers. Power, influence and control were seen as

functions of the organizational hierarchy, but ‘the organization’ itself – as a

source of constraints, influencing or determining media production – was notexplicitly at the core of his analysis.

The immediate organizational working environment, the occupational

bureaucracies – colleagues and editors – were also noticed much later, in the

late 1960s and early 1970s, when research focused on external social pressures

(defined as the views of editors and readers), but did not examine these

pressures as organizational constraints (Flegel and Chaffee, 1971).

Most of the early studies on news production seem to look at the media

organization from a functionalist perspective. The organization was perceived

as a neutral entity; the behaviour of its employees was seen as determined by

their position in the hierarchy. Power differences based on organizational

positions provided the key to understanding. That perspective led Tunstall

(1971) to conclude – reflecting on the mid 1960s in the UK as well as the USA

– that adequate organizational study on communications organizations did

not exist.

Tunstall’s own description of media organizations (1971) went further

than focusing on individual and interpersonal relationships. It was much

more elaborate than anything seen in media literature till then, differentiatingthe variety of goals, orientations and priorities with their potential for con-

flicts. His central themes – ‘much occupational behaviour can be seen in terms

of responding to uncertainty’ and journalism must be seen as an ‘indetermin-

ate and segmented occupation’ – (Tunstall, 1971:6) relate to insights from

sociology, psychology and organizational theory.

The complexity of the relationship between occupational behaviour,

professional beliefs and organizational values in media production was

pointed out by several other authors in the early 1970s (e.g., Epstein, 1973;

Sigal, 1973; Sigelman, 1973).

At about the same time in the UK, Stuart Hall was adding a different

dimension to the debate: the ideological ‘common ground’ of media organiza-

tions and structures of power – and the institutional connections between

both ‘spheres’ – became a major factor in approach and analysis (Hall, 1973).

One of the analytical consequences of this perspective was mentioned by

Elliot: since media organizations should be seen as ‘producers of cultural

artifacts which will appeal to mass markets’ (Elliot, 1977:164), analysis of

media organizations should be done as ‘the analysis of the production of media culture under the conditions of democratic capitalism’ (p. 143).

In trying to pull it all together, Hirsch (1977) structured the research

findings on media organizations from the early 1950s up to his time of writing

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along three levels of analysis: occupational, organizational and institutional,

examining relationships between organizations or professions and the larger

societal environment in which they operate. But Hirsch, at that time working

at the University of Chicago, did not refer to the ideological questions raisedby his British colleagues. A similar angle was taken by Johnstone (1976),

reporting on organizational constraints on news work and Dimmick (1979),

looking at media organizations as ‘political coalitions’. Their studies did not

connect media organizations to wider cultures or larger power structures.

This last aspect was emphasized by Curran et al. (1982), in pointing out

the need to look at cultural interests and macro-economics, reflecting on

previous years of research on media organizations. Curran et al. focussed on

the way in which different researchers have perceived the power of the mass

media and how these different perspectives affected the interpretation of ‘the

media organization’. A pluralist interpretation saw media organizations as

largely autonomous, with media professionals on equal footing with political

and economic institutions. It looked at professional behaviour as determined

and inspired by professional ideologies and journalistic principles. A Marxist

interpretation assumed that the dynamics in culture producing industries,

e.g. media organizations, could be understood primarily in terms of their

economic determination and their submission to dominant culture and

ideology (Curran et al., 1982).Various authors during these years argued that the liberal–pluralist, as well

as the Marxist perspective, obscured the complexities of the internal and

external relations of media production. They called for a linkage and in-

tegration of approaches (Gallagher, 1982; Tracey, 1978).

This attempt to re-balance the approaches of political economy and

cultural insights in studying media organizations can be seen in the wave

of reflection published at the beginning of the 1990s on the way news

organizations, or media, have been looked at. Authors (Curran, 1990a, 1990b;

Berkowitz, 1990; Schlesinger, 1990; Schudson, 1991; Shoemaker, 1997) spoke

of ‘rethinking’, ‘revisiting’, ‘reappraising’, ‘refining’.

Some of the recent studies on news organizations use an organizational

perspective, describing the structures which channel editorial control and

journalistic autonomy, showing also ‘how much editorial structures . . . have

formed professional role understanding’ (Esser, 1998: 394).

Studies on journalistic professionalism

Most of the earlier studies on professional journalists discuss professionalism

as an identification with a certain set of belief systems concerning the

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functions of the media and the role of journalists. For McLeod and Hawley in

the 1960s (1964), a professional, in defining his (they didn’t say: ‘or her’) job,

will emphasize certain characteristics: the job is unique and delivers an

essential service, it isn’t something you do just so, it demands ‘intellectualactivity’ and it includes a broad range of autonomy. The professional journal-

ists will also exhibit ‘distinctive patterns of cognitive judgement and differing

specific attitudes’ (McLeod and Hawley, 1964: 538). Other literature (John-

stone et al., 1972/1973; McLeod and Rush, 1969; Menanteau-Horta, 1967)

adds to this the broader social obligations that come with being a professional

as well as the view that professional culture is transmitted through a long

period of socialization.

The wider context in which the notion of professionalism in journalism

was developing was brought into focus by, among others, Schudson (1978),

who interpreted the growth of (US) journalism towards a profession ‘as a

response to the unrestrained market-oriented journalism’ of the first half of

the 20th century.

What, in the meantime, this profession at the practical level was supposed

to be, in the eyes of the professional, was not at all clear. Values, supposed to

be crucial to the profession, were continuously under scrutiny – objectivity

versus subjectivity; detachment versus advocacy; observer versus watchdog

(Johnstone et al., 1972/1973: 522). Professional practice reflected many differ-ent positions in this debate leading to sometimes conflicting professional

orientations and identities – even within the same organization or medium

(Burns, 1972[1964]). These conflicting orientations didn’t seem to weaken the

idea of a professional basis of journalism. Johnstone et al. in the 1970s found

very widespread support among American journalists for investigative journal-

ism, which challenged ‘objectivity’ and ‘detachment’ – for decades seen as

essential in the professional’s behaviour (Johnstone et al., 1972/1973: 528).

What is actually defined as core values in the journalistic profession was –

and still is – extremely difficult to identify and to generalize. Surveys in the

1990s among professional journalists on professional roles and values as well

as reporting practices for 12 countries spread over six regions worldwide show

agreement on one or two professional roles, but a great variety of opinions on

others (Weaver, 1998). The role ‘getting information to the public quickly’ was

generally seen as ‘very important’ and there was ‘some agreement’ on ‘the

importance of providing access for the public to express opinions’ (Weaver,

1998: 465).

On other roles, however, the rankings show extreme variations. Forinstance, what is seen by US journalists as one of the four most important roles

of journalism, being a watchdog on government, is valued as the least

important role by journalists in countries as diverse as Algeria, Germany and




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Chile (Weaver, 1998). ‘Reporting accurately or objectively’, which is the

highest ranking role for journalists in Taiwan, is seen as the least important by

British journalists – even less important than ‘providing entertainment’.

Journalists in the vast majority of the other countries surveyed, however, saw

‘providing entertainment’ as the least important professional role of journal-

ists (Weaver, 1998: 466, 467). But then again, ‘on various measures of pro-

fessional orientation . . . British journalists are as a group “less professional”

than their U.S. colleagues’ (Henningham and Delano, 1998: 159).

It is not only that the professional roles are judged quite differently

around the globe, but there are very different values given to such questions as

which dimensions of the job are considered to be most important and whether

some ethically questionable reporting practices might be justified in the caseof an important story. The only practice that seems almost universally agreed

on is not revealing news sources when confidentiality has been promised

(Weaver, 1998: 479).

What Johnstone et al. wrote almost 30 years ago – that apparently, there

were occupational segments, organized around alternative professional identi-

ties, while other elements of the professional ideology were commonly shared

(1972/1973: 540) – still seems to be the case. Perceptions by journalists of the

core values in their profession, professional identities, differ considerably

worldwide, and sometimes even within one country or region. Sometimes

they reflect what appear to be contradictory orientations on functions and

priorities, as for instance an identification with ‘public journalism’ as well as

with the more traditional ‘disseminator function’ (Weaver, 1998). Often they

seem to embrace bits of different ideologies, leading to pluralistic or confused

role perceptions.

The vast differences in professional orientation make it impossible to

generalize about the actual profile of ‘the professional identity’. The presence

of an idea of ‘a’ professional identity is the most that can be said.

Studies on gender and media production

In work on gender and media production, much has been done on the

qualities of content: representation of women in media content; the analysis

of the ‘masculine narrative form’ of news discourse; the unbalanced and one-

sided gender choice in the use of sources. Van Zoonen (1994) in the bench-mark Feminist Media Studies gives a comprehensive overview of this and

various other aspects. Here I focus specifically on studies done on women’s

occupational role in (news)media organizations.

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Women’s presence in media organizations and their – often minor – share

in ownership and control, and the skewed media employment patterns have

been frequent topics of research worldwide. During the late 1970s into the

1980s, several case studies on the position of women in the media hierarchyand the role of women in the organizational production process began to

appear in the professional journals: on male and female gatekeepers – do they

respond differently to news stories of women? (Scott Whitlow, 1977); on

women’s page/lifestyle editors – does sex make a difference in the final

product? (Merritt and Gross, 1978); on job satisfaction among newspaper-

women (Barrett, 1984); on goals and achievement orientations of women

newspaper managers (Sohn, 1984); on perceived career barriers for female

television news anchors (Ferri and Keller, 1986). And Bleske (1991) replicates –

40 years after White’s classic on ‘Mr. Gates’ – the gatekeeper study for ‘Ms.

Gates’. Of course, there is no comparison possible with the original study since

White didn’t assess gender in his research.

Some of the studies with a general focus began to differentiate by gender,

sometimes revealing striking perceptions. For instance, Joseph (1982: 219),

researching reporters’ and editors’ preferences toward reporter decision-

making, writes about female editors: ‘It is perceived these females are extrem-

ely hungry to maintain their status and to advance’ and, therefore, ‘the fewer

reporter challenges the better’.Mostly descriptive research on gender and media during the early 1990s,

in many cases under the heading of women and media and usually undertaken

by women, added valuable information to the overall picture of what was

happening inside media organizations. There was a heavy emphasis on por-

trayal of gender in media content but also a steady stream of research on

gender patterns in media employment. The latter initially didn’t go beyond

descriptive accounts of male and female physical presence in media organiza-

tions (Burks and Stone, 1993; De Bruin, 1994; Gallagher, 1981; Gallagher and

Von Euler, 1995; Gallagher and Quindoza-Santiago, 1994; Jimenez-David,

1996; Mills, 1997; Robinson and Saint-Jean, 1998; Weaver, 1997; Weaver and

Wilhoit, 1996).

Gallagher and Von Euler (1995) attempted to broaden the picture geo-

graphically and produced one of the first and of the very few global standard

reference books on gender patterns in media employment. Although some

regions are not well represented or are totally absent, and others are over-

represented (Europe for instance), the overall picture is easily recognizable in

many countries: in most of the cases, women form a minority in the mediaworkforce; they occupy a minor fraction of middle management in media

organizations, especially news organizations; and are even more seriously

under-represented in senior management.




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Weaver and Wilhoit are less pessimistic for US journalists and observed

that women journalists gained managerial responsibility and influence during

the 1980s. This was true especially in weekly newspapers and magazines,

where women were approaching parity with men in numbers by 1992 (1996:

181, 182). But a closer look at the same statistics also shows a lower percentage

of women than men to have a ‘great deal’ of influence when push comes to

shove: on hiring and firing (Weaver and Wilhoit, 1996: 182, 184).

A methodological problem in comparing available research is that a part

of the studies relates to women’s overall share in media jobs (media organiza-

tions in general), while another part limits itself to news departments specific-

ally. For instance, a major part of Gallagher and Von Euler’s global data deals

with ‘all employees: permanent full-time staff and people engaged on tempor-ary contracts . . . all occupational groups’ (1995: 11). But Weaver and Wilhoit,

in their substantial analysis of three major surveys among journalists in the

USA, deal only with full-time editorial or news people responsible for the

information content of English-language mainstream general interest news

media (1996: 247).

Some authors tried to go one step further, looking at correlations between

women’s presence in the media organization and certain qualities of content

(Jolliffe and Catlett, 1994), but mainly from a gender-neutral perspective. Do

female writers choose different subjects in their stories (Weaver, 1997)? Do

women differ in their ratings of media priorities (Weaver, 1997; Weaver and

Wilhoit, 1996)? Does the greater presence of women’s writings on the New York

Times’s front pages have anything to do with what appeared to be a wider

range of stories of special interest to women offered by this paper (Mills,

1997)?

It is only recently that there has been more systematic research on the

interaction of gender and organizational variables. In 1994, Van Zoonen

observes ‘There exist very few studies that examine the interaction of gender

with organizational variables’ (p. 55). And four years later, Carter et al. still

confirm that the media politics of gender – in other words ‘how gender

relationships shape (journalism’s) forms, practices, institutions and audiences’

– ‘deserve much more critical attention than they have typically received to

date’ (Carter et al., 1998: 3).

This shortage of research is not exceptional. Organizational theory in

general has neglected gender aspects (Alvesson and Billing, 1997; Halford

et al., 1997; Martin and Collinson, 1999). This is partly because both genderand organizational culture ‘are phenomena which the analytical and anato-

mizing mentality of organizational studies finds difficult to grasp’ (Gherardi,

1995:12).

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The recent literature on gender and media production shows a changing

perspective. Counting men and women, identifying positions and mapping

employment patterns is regarded as necessary and useful baseline data but it is

also seen as only scratching the surface of the realities of media organizations.In order to learn more about what is actually taking place on the work floor, it

is necessary to go beyond the ‘body count’ and to start looking at specific

social practices, embodied in conventions and rules, formally and informally,

based on history and tradition, sustained by people working in the media

organizations (De Bruin, 1998).

Various authors over the last few years have began to problematize gender

and media production by defining and looking at the gendered substructures

in the media organizations (Allan, 1998; Carter, 1998; Kitzinger, 1998; Skid-

more, 1998; Steiner, 1998; Van Zoonen, 1998b). Earlier studies which had

looked at the division of labour in media organizations into ‘male’ and

‘female’ areas, or at vertical segregation – examples of gendered substructures

– had presented these realities more as labour profiles within an organization

than as processes taking place in an organizational culture. The emphasis had

been more on figures, on job and task descriptions than on symbols, values,

meanings and significations. The focus had mainly been on overviews of

employment patterns and less on cultural interpretations of everyday work,

actions and language, as feminine or masculine, structuring relations in themedia organization.

The relatively recent emphasis on gendered substructures, on gendered

realities embedded in news production practices, has led to various starting

points of analysis. Some authors choose to take off from the influence of the

‘macho culture of newsgathering’ produced by male dominance in the news-

room. This culture excludes women journalists, making them feel that their

feminist or feminine concerns are ‘not what is required of a true news

professional’ (Skidmore, 1998: 207, 209). Others underlined how men, by

insisting on defining women journalists in terms of their sex, rather than as

professionals, stopped women from gaining advancement, because journalism

and femininity – in men’s view – didn’t go together. They looked at the

interaction in the newsroom where women had to position themselves in a

male culture and where professional culture and gender were at odds with each

other (Steiner, 1998).

The news discourse, as part of the newsroom’s culture, was seen as

carrying its own gender politics by standards of news ‘objectivity’ and ‘ways of

knowing’ (Allan, 1998; Kitzinger, 1998). Kitzinger attempted to uncover thegender-politics in news coverage by identifying the subtle processes ‘such as

the selective privileging of “masculine” over “feminine” discourses and “ways

of knowing” (logic versus emotion, science versus intuition)’ (1998: 187). She




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pointed at the asymmetrical judgements about men’s and women’s emotions

and credibility that shape the production of news and argued how ‘the

positions of men and women within media hierarchies interact with gendered

values to create particular tendencies in the coverage’ (Kitzinger, 1998:198).

Interconnections between studies

In the studies on the media organizations, media professionals and gender in

media production reviewed earlier in this article, we can find some initiatives

to make interconnections. The media organization studies of the 1970s

and early 1980s (Elliot, 1977; Epstein, 1973; Gallagher, 1982; Sigal, 1973;Sigelman, 1973; Tuchman, 1978; Tunstall, 1971) show several examples of

these cross-boundaries linkages.

Sigelman indicated very clearly that the professional ‘holds dual citizen-

ship. He is, to a greater or lesser extent, committed to the methods and goals

of both his organization and his profession’ (1973: 141). To avoid conflicts

between these two commitments, the organization will create control-

structures, tension-avoiding processes, Sigelman argued.

Sigal (1973) showed the self-serving functions of professional ideals andEpstein (1973) pointed at the power of the organization, often implied and

difficult to notice, to alter professional values. He also recognized the complex-

ity of these inter-relationships: do personal values of newsmen (Epstein’s

word) shape the organization they work for, or vice versa?

Occupational ideals could in fact serve what suits the organizational

structure at a particular time (Elliot, 1977) – a view supported by Tuchman’s

study ‘that professionalism serves organizational interests by reaffirming the

institutional processes in which newswork is embedded’ (1978: 12). Notions,

accepted within the occupation, could be used to ‘strategically control’ com-

municators (Gallagher, 1982). On the other hand, organizations could also

accommodate these occupational notions. Beam (1990) focused on the ques-

tion to what degree the media organization was willing to accommodate the

professional behaviour and professional standards of journalists. His central

concept for this kind of relationship between ‘organization’ and ‘profession’

became ‘organizational professionalism’ (Beam, 1990: 9). The key ques-

tion, according to Beam, was to determine who defines the organizational

space that allows professional behaviour. To conceptualize the profession insuch terms of power relationships was a perspective, that, according to

Beam, was ‘virtually ignored’ till then – 1990 – in the body of journalistic work

(1990: 2).

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Up to the late 1970s, many – perhaps most – of the studies on media

organizations made no differentiation in findings between men and women.

Media workers were seen as employees (although a special kind) always in

the double bind of being a ‘professional’ in a subordinate, organizational,position. Gender remained mostly unmentioned in relation to the dynamics

of media organizations.

The emphasis in the recent discussion on gender in (news) media produc-

tion and gender in journalism has been on the one hand on the connection

between gender and professionalism – in which professionalism refers to

professional practice of women in the newsroom (Allan, 1998; Carter et al.,

1998; Creedon, 1993; Kitzinger, 1998; Steiner, 1998; Van Zoonen, 1998b;

Weaver, 1997) or to the presence of professional women in the newsroom

(e.g. Beasley, 1993; De Bruin, 1999; Gallagher, 1981, 1982; Gallagher and

Quindoza-Santiago, 1994; Gallagher and Von Euler, 1995) – and on the other

hand on the dynamics between the organization and gender (Van Zoonen,

1998a).

In trying to capture gender and professionalism as variables in media

production, the catch phrase has become ‘gender orientation in journalism’

or ‘gendered professionalism’. Van Zoonen (1998b: 35, 36) structures ‘the

gendered nature of journalism’ along the lines of topic selection (female

journalists feel that topics relevant to women are neglected or marginalized);angles and styles; the choice of sources and spokespersons (overwhelmingly

male) and ethical values (female journalists claiming to hold a set of ethical

values different to that of their male colleagues).

In an earlier publication, Van Zoonen urged us to distinguish between the

different categories, or domains of journalisms. The two major dimensions she

used in distinguishing such domains were ‘the goals of journalistic organiza-

tions’ – referring to Tunstall’s Journalists At Work – and ‘gender’ (Van Zoonen,

1998a:125, 126, 128). ‘The particular articulations of structure and subjectivity

found in each domain produce various forms of agency within journalism and

construct so-called “organizational identities” of journalists’ (Van Zoonen,

1998a: 123).

Conceptual difficulties

In the recent debates, the concepts ‘professional’ and ‘organizational’ are used

by different authors in different ways. Some introduce these terms as thevarious levels of individuals working together and combine both concepts by

focussing on ‘gendered professionalism’ through an organizational context’

(Skidmore, 1998: 208). ‘Organizational’ sometimes refers to the newsroom,




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other times to the media organization as a whole, but the references are used

interchangeably. From time to time these two seem to blend in the ‘organiza-

tion of the profession’, referring to the media organization.

Also, ‘journalistic organizations’ and ‘media organizations’ are used syn-

onymously, with a reference to Tunstall (Van Zoonen, 1998a), who, however,

did not use these concepts in the same way. He differentiated between ‘news

organizations’ and ‘media organizations’ (Tunstall, 1971: 25). In the latest

discussions, this differentiation has disappeared from the analysis. Likewise,

there is no clear distinction made between ‘the culture of the newsroom’ and

‘the culture of the media organization’. This observation may look like

splitting hairs, but in using these terms as synonyms, the probable tension

between professional identity and organizational identity dissolves.‘Professionalism’ and ‘professional identity’ seem to be defined mainly by

focussing on the professional values of ‘objectivity’ and ‘detachment’, which

are used in one breath and seem to indicate one and the same core value. Yet,

in recent discussions journalists remind us that these concepts are not the

same: moving away from detachment does not require the professional

to abandon journalistic objectivity (Merritt, 1998: 25). Some authors place

‘objectivity’ alongside ‘professionalism’ and ‘routines of bureaucracy’ which

together ‘disempowered individual reporters’ (Steiner, 1998:147). Others focus

on the professionalized formulation of ‘objectivity’ as the guiding principle of

so-called impartial journalism, which should be looked at as ‘an androcentric

instance of definitional power to the extent that it ex-nominates . . . those

truth-claims which do not adhere to masculinist assumptions about the social

world’ (Allan, 1998: 129).

In all debates, media organization, professionalism and gender play

crucial roles. The interplay between these variables is a complex process with

overlapping, coinciding, and contradicting positions and locations. It seems as

if the descriptions of practices, discourses, and identifications in the variouscase studies and essays, actually prepare new ground for distinguishing –

certainly at a conceptual level, but in later research also at an operational level

– organizational, professional and gender identity.

Organizational, professional and gender identities

The distinction between professional identity and organizational identity is

clear at a conceptual level. In reality, however, the difference is not alwaysobvious; certainly not in recent times where organizational interests, often

driven by economics, seem to have become much more influential at all levels.

What journalists believe to be a unique professional ideology – professional

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identity – may very well be a proxy for organizational values with which they

identify – organizational identity in disguise.

I prefer to look at ‘organizational identity’ – and I borrow from Whetten

and Godfrey (1998) – as the shared understanding among the members of an

organization of ‘who-we-are’, of what makes the organization distinctive from

other organizations – as a relational and comparative concept. This under-

standing is collectively constructed through a continuously renegotiated set of

meanings and meanings structures (Whetten and Godfrey, 1998: 35, 36). It

corresponds with what Du Gay (1997) calls a social constructionist approach

which highlights ‘the ways in which work meaning and identity are culturally

and historically constructed’ (p. 297).

Organizational identity in this approach is a framework of beliefs, valuesand feelings. Not a stable, fixed, completed collection, but rather a changing

schema with a range of varieties forming multiple identities, depending on the

specific interaction with the immediate and wider environment. In this view,

organizational identity is not constructed in a single, linear process, but is

constructed through many processes within the context of an organizational

culture, in which notions of gender also exist.

‘Organizational identity’ is connected to a cultural and spatial ‘territory’ –

in this case the (news media) organization – and is carried by those who form

part of the organization, as long as they belong to it. ‘Professional identity’

refers to a wider frame of reference – an ideology – not so much carried by the

members of a clearly identifiable organization, but rather by an imaginary

community, that stretches across organizations. Moving out of a particular

organization doesn’t necessarily imply an ending of the professional identity;

however, it usually does mean the end of a particular organizational iden-

tity.

Closely connected with organizational identity are the concepts ‘reputa-

tion’ – how the environment defines the organizational identity – and ‘image’

– the way insiders believe outsiders see the organization (Gioia, 1998: 23).

Reputation and image also play a role in the formation and continuation of

professional identity. The decline of public trust in professional journalists, for

instance, currently taking place in various countries is affecting the ‘reputa-

tion’ of the professional, influencing professional identity. In Europe, efforts

to restore the damaged reputation of the profession by organizing media

accountability are high on the agenda of the European Journalism Centre. In

the USA, the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) is determined toidentify the causes of declining credibility of the media in order to ‘regain the

confidence and respect’ of the audience. In pursuit of this aim it has created a

3-year, in-depth, million-dollar project (ASNE, 1998).




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The image of the organization – what journalists think of how outsiders

see their organization, whether it is seen as successful or not – is still ‘one of

the most important predictors of job well-being’ for journalists (Weaver and

Wilhoit, 1996: 110).In the debates under discussion in this article, professional identity and

organizational identity are not new concepts, but they haven’t always been

made explicit. In the discussion on the profession and the media organization,

Beam’s (1990) study on ‘organizational professionalism’ described conditions

for organizational identity-forming, but the concept of organizational identity

itself didn’t surface.

In the debate on gender and production in media organizations, the

question of ‘organizational identity’ surfaced recently. Van Zoonen mentioned

‘organizational identity’ a few years ago but gives a more refined and precise

definition in recent work. In explaining the productivity of organizational

powers, she states that ‘specific organizational policies and budgets, routines,

job requirements, market needs etc. are intersected by discourses of sub-

jectivity – among which are those of gender and ethnicity – and construct an

organizational identity that reflects the individual styles and preferences of

the communicator and the structural imperatives of the media organization,

and which is more than the sum of its parts’ (Van Zoonen, 1998a: 137). In her

conceptual model, ‘professionalism’ is part of, or is absorbed by, ‘structures’, aconcept which refers to many other influences on media production, all

constituting ‘organizational identity’ (Van Zoonen, 1998a: 137). Organiza-

tional identity is positioned as ‘more or less coterminous with agency’ and

agency ‘refers to what journalists do within the structural constraints posed by

the organization of the profession and is thus always embedded in organiza-

tional routines and pressures’ (Van Zoonen,1998a: 137, 128).

This is where I would like to introduce a different emphasis. The absorp-

tion of professionalism by ‘structures’ may be the direction in which the

profession is developing, but judging from US and global research findings we

certainly haven’t gotten there yet. Research findings are indicating, or at least

can be interpreted as doing so, that the traditional tension between news

organizations and media organizations, or between professional identity and

organizational identity, still exists and is experienced by many journalists

(Shoemaker and Reese, 1991; Weaver, 1998; Weaver and Wilhoit, 1996).

However, the relationship between what is taken to be central to the organiza-

tion by journalists – organizational identity – and what they take for granted

as principles of their profession and professional standards – professionalidentity – is more and more a source of serious conflict.

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Gender and journalistic production: shifting balances, merging

identities or changing hegemony?

Organizational limitations are influencing one of the most crucial compo-nents of journalists’ professional profile and satisfaction with work: auton-

omy. For the first time in three decades barely half of the US journalists in

Weaver’s study saw themselves as having the kind of clout in the newsroom

that their predecessors did (Weaver and Wilhoit, 1996: 62). They felt their

freedom was limited significantly by ‘internal organizational constraints

of editorial control, time-space limits, or inadequate staffing’ (Weaver and

Wilhoit, 1996: 65). The diminishing autonomy in the newsroom was, accord-

ing to some journalists, ‘a result of the ascendance of a corporate culture’

(Weaver and Wilhoit, 1996: 62). Journalists in the USA are not alone in this

view; various examples from other countries can be found in Weaver’s collec-

tion of surveys (Weaver, 1998).

The formal and informal, organizational policy restrictions on what can

be defined as ‘newsworthy’ have limited, more and more, the professional

judgement on this aspect. The concern for profit over quality and the need to

compete in the market – organizational interests – are seen by professional

journalists as leading to corrosive effects (Weaver and Wilhoit, 1996: 65, 67).

Journalists cannot perform adequately as professionals (Weaver, 1998).Since the early 1970s, we have known that US journalists are more likely

to have high job satisfaction (which by the way has gone down, Weaver and

Wilhoit, 1996: 101) if they think their organization is doing a good job – a

finding confirmed in many other countries (Weaver, 1998: 478). In Taiwan,

the second most important predictor of job satisfaction is journalists’ rating of

their news organization (Lo, 1998: 81). The opposite can also be found: a

majority of Algerian journalists surveyed in 1986 rated their news organiza-

tions as doing a fair or poor job and a substantial part of them felt a lack of

interest and respect toward the profession (Kirat, 1998: 335). They showed a

low level of job satisfaction. In either case, the organization’s image – the way

insiders believe outsiders see the organization – influenced the individual

professional’s satisfaction.

In various instances – e.g., Australia, Korea, Germany, the USA, the UK –

journalists judge the organization’s product to be too influential in the

formation of public opinion and state their belief that this influence should be

less (Weaver, 1998). This distancing of themselves from the organization’s

output may be interpreted as an attempt to separate professional identity froman increasing hegemonic organizational identity.

In some countries – for instance, the USA – the traditional characteristics

of professional identity seem to be fading out. In the 1990s, only 7 percent of




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all journalists were members of the largest professional association in the USA,

compared to almost three times as many three decades ago (Weaver and

Wilhoit, 1996: 128). Readership of professional literature also showed a steep

decline.Commitment to journalism is no longer a motivation for additional

training. Two of the now more important factors that correlate are lack of

experience and salary (Weaver and Wilhoit, 1996: 45) – both instrumental in

getting or keeping a job. By 1992, the percentage of journalists planning to

leave the profession had almost doubled over a decade and was almost four

times as high as in the early 1970s (Weaver and Wilhoit, 1996: 111).

The increasing influence of the media organization on job-satisfaction

and quality of work is affecting journalists’ perception of responsibilities. We

could perhaps say that in these cases organizational identities are shaping, or

re-shaping, ‘professional identities’.

Gender notions have been recognized in certain professional values affect-

ing professional identity. Some see this as masculinity (as currently defined by

western societies) according so much better with journalism’s values – ‘that

men’s professional identities are much less fragmented and problematic than

those of women in journalism. . . . Female journalists working in traditional

news journalism therefore have a much more fragmented and contradictory

professional identity than men’ (Van Zoonen, 1998b: 39, 45). But is it thatjournalism ‘accords’ with masculine values or is it perhaps that its values have

been constructed to fit masculine values? Traditionally developed by male

decision makers, who used to monopolize decision making positions, certain

styles and values will have become accepted as professional standards, and at

the same time will have become part of the organization’s house-style – ‘that’s

how-we-do-it-here.’

Others see professional values as subordinate to the ‘social and cultural

expectations of the macho newsroom that women are expected to work

within’ (Skidmore, 1998: 208). The positions of men and women within the

media organizations’ hierarchy ‘interact with gendered values to create partic-

ular tendencies in the coverage’ (Skidmore, 1998: 198). Sometimes journalists

define situations as gender-neutral while at the same time indicating that

gender does play a significant role, and in doing so, they seem to make

contradictory statements. For instance, in a Finnish survey 74 percent of the

Finnish journalists, men and women, said that their gender had not been an

important career factor (Heinonen, 1998: 173). Yet, 41 percent of the women

in the same group said that their sex did have a negative impact on theirsalary, and more than 34 percent claimed that it had adversely affected their

career opportunities. What seem to be contradictory answers can be better

understood when using the distinction between organizational, professional

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and gender identity. In some answers, organizational or professional identity

dominated the responses; in others, gender identity seems to be the prime

frame of reference.

From an organizational identity point of view, ‘who-we-are’ has become

very diluted. The increased pace of globalization, the agglomeration of media

interests of all kinds and the effects of the internet have more and more

blurred the traditional points of identification and may overwhelm them

entirely. The pressures of the market in some instances have led to the deeper

integration of news organizations into entertainment networks. In other

instances, competition has led to an entertainment culture, not always appre-

ciated by, or sympathetic to, the professional. These same market develop-

ments, however, seem to offer women more opportunities in journalism: ‘Thenews genre is changing and therefore more women can enter journalism as a

profession’ (Van Zoonen, 1998b: 45).

In many regions, the organizational environment of media organizations

has changed drastically: the number of media has multiplied; the size of most

media has increased; their nature and production have changed, influenced by

changes in ownership structure and technological changes. The organization’s

interest is to work at the appearance of consistency over time and place, in

spite of these changes. Organizational identity is constructed with the balance

shifted toward flexibility – to be able to adapt rapidly (Whetten and Godfrey,

1998: 22).

Professional identity, on the other hand, with its eroding culture and poor

support structure may not be strong enough to withstand economic pressures

dominating organizational culture and changing organizational identity.

Developments in organizational identity and professional identity may not

always be ‘in step’ any more; the balance may be shifting.

But there may be more at stake than shifting balances. In certain coun-

tries, research findings on journalists’ perceptions of their profession indicate

the growing hegemony of organizational identity over professional identity

and an increasing tension between the two. Against this background gender

seems to be a casualty of conflicts outside of gender relations per se. In

societies where there are not too many media outlets, professional identity will

probably be absorbed by the strong demands of organizational identity. In

situations where the presence of more media offers a greater horizontal

mobility, new professional identities may emerge (e.g., ‘public journalism’). In

some instances, organizational identity may be responsible for structuring,determining and maybe even absorbing professional identity.

Since there is no generally accepted approach to almost anything in

journalism anymore, except the former macho tough-guy investigative role,




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the greater presence of women seems more likely to be decided not by

professional judgment but by personal bias and market needs. It may be seen

as simply an attempt to soften and domesticate the profession. Bring it ‘in-

home’ rather than in-house. Male journalists’ response to the entry of women

may then be a disguised protest against this market-driven dilution of the

journalist’s role and the changes in media.

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Biographical notes

Marjan de Bruin is Senior Lecturer at the Caribbean Institute of Media andCommunication (CARIMAC), University of the West Indies. She is president of the

Gender and Communication section of the International Association of Media and

Communication Research (IAMCR). Her research interests are in professional

socialization, gender, dynamics in the newsroom and quality of media coverage.

Address: CARIMAC, University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Kingston 7,

Jamaica. [email: [email protected] and [email protected]]

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