Conflicts in the professional roles of journalists in Spain: Ideals and practice

Abstract

Based on a survey of 122 journalists from four Spanish newspapers carried out from 2015 to 2016, this paper analyses to what extent these professionals perceive a disconnection –a gap– between their role conception and their perceived role enactment, that is between their professional ideals and their journalistic practice, and which are the most “conflicting” roles in a Polarized Pluralist media system. According to the perceptions of the professionals surveyed, journalists in Spain hold a role conflict when they work in a newspaper. The findings show significant differences between the role conception and the perceived role enactment in six of the seven professional roles. The biggest divergences are located in the watchdog, civic and disseminator roles. The conflict between the professional ideals and their implementation in the news is always resolved in favor of the media organizations. Our results are consistent and support the previous studies that have defined the Polarized Pluralist media system as a media ecosystem where journalists accumulate little power compared to the media organizations, which are in financial debt and dependent on political and economic powers. Results are discussed according to the literature review as well as the context in which the study was developed.