GOOD JOURNALISM

Journalism as a genuinely public profession is facing serious economic, cultural, political and professional challenges. There is a growing need for journalism criticism that would help the profession of journalism to retain its relevance in late modern media societies. This article argues that such criticism must be sensitive to the experiences and viewpoints of people and organizations outside the traditional professional community of journalists. The paper presents results from a qualitative interview study aiming to articulate such criticism. The study formulates various evaluative dimensions for journalism criticism, underlines some concrete problems of journalism as production of public discussion, and outlines the changing styles and vocabularies used to articulate journalism's social responsibilities. These empirical results are interpreted in a framework provided by two major contributions to social theory, Pierre Bourdieu's “field theory” and Jürgen Habermas’ theory of communicative action.