Trust and authority in the age of mediatised politics

This article examines the role of trust in the age of mediatised politics. Authority, we suggest, can be successfully enacted despite the disrupted nature of the public sphere if both rational and moral trust are utilised to formulate validity claims. Drawing from Maarten A. Hajer's theorisation of authority in contemporary politics, we develop a model of how political actors and institutions as well as the media employ both rational and moral trust performances to generate authority. Analysing a Finnish case of controversial investigative journalism on defence intelligence, we show how the media in network governance need to critically evaluate the authority performances of political actors while at the same time enacting their own authority performances to retain their position within the governing network and to manufacture trust among networked publics. This volatile position can lead to situations where the media compete for authority with traditional political institutions.

Values Influencing the Practice of Investigative Journalism in Malaysia: Media Practitioners’ Perspectives

Investigative journalism has been an American phenomenon, heavily embedded with their values. Scholars mentioned individualism and press freedom as two founding values of investigative journalism practice in the West. This study attempts to explore values influencing the practice of investigative journalism from a different viewpoint, by investigating Malaysia as a democratic country, but having a controlled media environment. Malaysia is also an interesting research subject because it is a developing country with strong Eastern values. Using local yardsticks, this study explores values influencing the practice of investigative journalism in Malaysia from local media practitioners’ perspectives. This research aims to explore more than just the differences between Western and Eastern culture, but also to understand how those different values influence the practice. In-depth interviews were used to explore the perspectives of 16 media practitioners from various backgrounds including editors and journalists who work in mainstream and alternative media in Malaysia. Vast data generated from the interviews pointing to a different viewpoint from current literature. The data, which was thematically analysed, revealed interesting findings which differentiate between Malaysian and Western practices of investigative journalism. The Eastern perspective was found to be dominant, especially in terms of collectivism culture, value of press freedom, and religious teachings influence. This study also highlighted the importance of considering the cultural factor in evaluating any journalism practice in the world. The study concludes that local values and culture must be included as research elements to understand a country’s journalism practice. Keywords: Investigative journalism, media culture, guiding values, press freedom, Malaysia.

The motives of Palestinian journalists ' reluctance to practice investigative journalism: دوافعُ عزوفِ الصّحفيين الفلسطينيين عن ممارسةِ الصّحافةِ الاستقصائيّةِ: (دراسةٌ ميدانيّةٌ)

The study aims to identify the motives of journalists' reluctance to practice investigative journalism. The researcher relies on the method of codified interview and questionnaire in order to identify the main motives that prevent journalists from practicing investigative journalism and to analyse the motives in depth after collecting sufficient information. The study uses the descriptive research method, which is concerned with studying the current facts related to the nature of a particular phenomenon, a specific situation, or a group of events. The method aims to obtain sufficient information and gives an accurate description of the phenomenon studied. The study population is the Palestinian journalists registered at the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) in the West Bank, and they totalled at (1200) journalists on 15 January 2020. The research sample was chosen randomly. The researcher could reach Journalists working in the West Bank. The total number of the distributed questionnaires was 126; 120 copies were collected, and 6 were excluded. The study showed that the different political trends in Palestinian society and the editorial policies pursued by the media are among the most prominent reasons that have led to the reluctance of journalists to practice investigative journalism. The study also found that the regulations and laws in force within press institutions, in addition to the lack of support and funding for institutions, have limited producing more investigations recently.

“George Orwell Invented Journalism Studies”

To inaugurate our series of conversations with scholars in journalism studies with a view to securing some useful insights into the history and practice of journalism education, Prof. Richard Lance Keeble appeared an obvious choice. Now an Honorary Professor at Liverpool Hope University, Prof. Keeble was first director of the International Journalism MA, then director of the Journalism and Social Science BA, at City University, London (1984-2003). He was then appointed Professor of Journalism (2003-present) at Lincoln University where he also became acting head of the Lincoln School of Journalism (2010-2013) and later a Visiting Professor at Liverpool Hope University (2015-2019). Prof. Keeble has been the recipient of prestigious and distinguished prizes, namely the National Teaching Fellowship Award (2011) and the Lifetime Achievement Award for services to journalism education (2014), the latter bestowed by the Association for Journalism Education in the UK. Parallel to his academic career, Prof. Keeble has always been a practising journalist. On completion of his studies in Modern History at Keble College, Oxford University (1967-70), he started a career in journalism, first as sub editor at the Nottingham Guardian Journal/Evening Post (1970-73) and then at the Cambridge Evening News (1973-77). He was deputy editor, then editor, of The Teacher, the weekly newspaper of the National Union of Teachers (1977-84). His dual pedigree in journalism, as a practitioner and a professor, led him to take on many editorial responsibilities. He is emeritus editor of Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication and Ethics and joint editor of George Orwell Studies and is also on the board of an impressive number of journals, among which are Journalism Studies, Digital Journalism, Journalism Education, International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, Media Ethics, Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, to name just a few. Prof. Keeble was also Chair of the Orwell Society1 (2013-2020) and has authored or edited no less than 44 books. They include Ethics for Journalists and The Newspapers Handbook,2 respectively on their second and fifth editions, as well as several volumes on George Orwell, investigative journalism, and the British media. It was an honour and privilege to talk to Prof. Keeble in a phone interview on March 25, 2021. The conversation was transcribed while some passages were edited for clarity. I hereby express my immense gratitude for his time, generosity, expertise, and humour. It is such a thrill to start our series of interviews in a way that only makes us want more such conversations.

Investigative Journalism in Lithuania 2015–2020

The article analyzes investigative journalism in Lithuania in 2015–2020 to determine the particularity of changes in investigative journalism. Until then, only one research on investigative journalism was conducted in Lithuania, indicating that in 2015 there was no investigative journalism as a type of media in Lithuania. Although, investigative journalism is a public control tool aimed at exposing corruption and possible criminal activity. And in 2015, the first research department was established in Lithuania as part of the structure of the media. The work aims to find out how investigative journalism has changed in Lithuania during the last years 2015-2020 and to single out the essential factors that would allow to evaluate the development of investigative journalism. The article presents the author‘s model of investigative journalism and the peculiarities of the change of investigative journalism in Lithuania. It has been established that the situation of investigative journalism in Lithuania is improving, however, compared to the media systems of Western countries, it remains underdeveloped. The perception of experts on investigative journalism is revealed, the reasons for the formation of structural structures of investigative journalism, Lithuania‘s role in international investigative journalism organizations, representatives of investigative journalism are singled out and their research is carried out, research topics, areas, applied research methods

The Threefold Selves in García Márquez’s Writing

This study examines the evolution and interaction of writerly, autobiographical, and testimonial selves in García Márquez’s work by concentrating on a select number of texts from 1955 to 2004. Three factors contribute to the role of these selves in his writing: (1) the author states in his memoir that he realized at an early age that he only wanted to be a writer; (2) From the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1967 to the end of his life, he remained universally loved by readers and critics; and (3) the use of the refrito, or follow-up story, in his investigative journalism for El Espectador in the 1950s in Bogotá became an integral part of his writing. Although the interplay of his writerly, autobiographical, and testimonial selves appears at different moments in his fiction as well as his nonfiction, he achieves the most intricate balance between the three in Chronicle of a Death Foretold. While his writerly self overshadows his autobiographical and testimonial selves, they nevertheless play a prominent and essential role in his writing, albeit in hybridized forms.

Investigative Journalism, Hugo de Burgh and Paul Lashmar (Eds) (2021)

Investigative Journalism, Hugo de Burgh and Paul Lashmar (Eds) (2021) London: Routledge, 316 pp., ISBN 978-0-36718-248-9, p/bk, £26.39, h/bk, £96.00

#MeToo in East Asia: The Politics of Speaking Out

The global diffusion of #MeToo has sparked case studies and scholarly discussions (Fileborn and Loney-Howes 2019; Lee and Murdie 2020; Noel and Oppenheimer 2020), but the East Asian experience remains understudied, especially from a comparative perspective within and outside the region. The internet hashtag movement emerged from quality investigative journalism, and the movement has done what the law could not (MacKinnon 2018). Examining tweets that include the English version of the hashtag, Lee and Murdie (2020) found that women are more likely to engage in #MeToo in countries where their political rights are better protected. This finding, however, does not seem to fit East Asia's experience. The region's earliest and longest democracy, Japan, had a much milder movement than neighboring South Korea. Many South Korean women publicly named their perpetrators, but Japanese women, when sharing their experience of being harassed, mostly remained anonymous (Hasunuma and Shin 2019). Moreover, Taiwan, arguably the most gender-equal country in this region—if measured by women's political representation (42% in the national legislature) or by policies toward sexual minorities (it was the first Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage)—has had virtually no #MeToo movement.