In this article, we suggest that the ideological cultural forces explain the differences in journalism practices in Western and Muslim majority countries (MMC). It is argued that the norms, values, and the deep political culture of the West and MMC have been materialized leading to different types of journalism practices. The statistical analysis of 11,246 interviews from twenty four Western and MMC conducted as part of the second wave of Worlds of Journalism Study demonstrates that journalists’ perception of influences, editorial autonomy, and journalistic roles reflect clear varied patterns, which resemble the overall cultural lines that shape their journalistic ideology. This article, we argue, has extended the hierarchical model of influences to embrace the wider regional cultural lines that avoid the trap of national media systems—centrism. Furthermore, it refutes the dominance of a global Western monoculture and, in turn, a singular global journalism practice.

This article introduces and examines a hierarchical model of influences that identifies the variables affecting the watchdog role of journalists at three levels: the societal (press freedom and democracy), the organizational (media ownership), and the individual (editorial autonomy and perceived influences) on a global scale. Using data from 27,567 journalists in 6403 media organizations across 67 countries, the model's validity is confirmed. The findings reveal that variations in journalists’ perception of their role are more pronounced at the societal level compared to the organizational and individual levels. Furthermore, journalists tend to assume a watchdog role more prominently within public media as opposed to private or state-run outlets. Surprisingly, press freedom and democracy have a weak and insignificant impact on watchdog journalism, challenging established norms in the literature, a result that we critically discussed.

Killings, as the most extreme form of violence against journalists, receive considerable attention, but journalists experience a variety of threats from surveillance to gendered cyber targeting and hate speech, or even the intentional deprivation of their financial basis. This article provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary framework of journalists' safety, summarized in a conceptual model. The aim is to advance the study of journalists' safety and improve safety practices, journalism education, advocacy, and policy making - vital as press freedom and fundamental human rights face multifaceted challenges, compromising journalists' ability to serve their societies. Journalists' occupational safety comprises personal (physical, psychological) and infrastructural (digital, financial) dimensions. Safety can be objective and subjective by operating on material and perceptional levels. It is moderated by individual (micro), organizational/institutional (meso), and systemic (macro) risk factors, rooted in power dynamics defining boundaries for journalists' work, which, if crossed, result in threats and create work-related stress. Stress requires coping, ideally resulting in resilience and resistance, and manifested in journalists' continued role performance with autonomy. Compromised safety has personal and social consequences as threats might affect role performance and even lead to an exit from the profession, thus also affecting journalism's wider function as a key institution.

Scholars have repeatedly expressed concern about the societal consequences of negative media coverage toward public institutions and political actors. Yet, there remains a lack of systemic understanding about the determinants of this cynical attitude. To examine this issue, we combine aggregate data on political and economic performance with Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS) survey data on journalists' institutional trust, watchdog and loyalty roles, editorial autonomy, professional experience, and news media ownership. Derived from interviews with 27, 657 journalists from 67 countries included in the second wave of the WJS (2012-2016), results show that democracy and press freedom are negatively correlated with journalists' institutional trust. Quite notably, autonomous and watchdog journalists are less trusting than loyal journalists. The findings also suggest that corruption levels, annual economic growth, and type of media ownership are essential determinants in this regard.

Despite the various attempts to de-Westernise journalism studies and profession, the dominance of Western theories and practices remains absolute. This article seeks to develop a hybrid Islamic/Western worldview that represents a comprehensive, flexible and multicultural paradigm that emphasises sharing rather than imposing one's heritage and view. The article particularly reflects on resolving the existing ontological, epistemological and methodological issues as a crucial task in overcoming obstacles and stagnation related to the hybridisation of theory-building efforts. This article demonstrates how the proposed normative paradigm can be grounded in the realistic context of journalistic practice by examining two research issues: media and democratisation and the globalisation of journalism ethics.

The present study is an attempt to examine how objective structural political forces and subjective perception of political influences determine journalists' autonomy and safety. The evidence is based on responses representing journalists from 65 countries, which adds to the cross-cultural robustness of the results that inform theory and that bear significant implications for efforts of journalists' protection. The results reveal a strong positive correlation between press freedom and democracy in one hand and editorial autonomy and safety of journalists on the other. The results also show a strong negative correlation between journalists' perception of political influences and editorial autonomy and safety. The correlation between journalists' autonomy and safety was not as strong as expected.

Are countries with a free press less corrupt than countries where the press is partly or completely unfree? Our empirical investigation finds evidence of a significant relationship between higher levels of press freedom and lower levels of corruption with other variables being equal. Furthermore, we provide evidence that while democracy deters corruption only in countries that enjoy press freedom, rule of law reduces corruption whether the press is free or unfree. Press freedom and democracy are complements rather than substitutes in the fight against corruption.

The purpose of this article is to empirically test the effect of press freedom on political instability in a sample of fifteen Arab countries for the 2006–15 period. Statistical analysis offers a significant effect of press freedom on political instability. However, when democracy, GDP annual growth and GDP per capita annual growth are taken into account, a fragile mixed positive and negative effect exists. Yet, the findings emphasize a significant interaction effect of press freedom and freedom on political instability. An interesting result is that Arab Spring has not positively affected the relationship between press freedom and political instability.

This book provides a new theoretical framework of determinants that interact together in five hierarchical levels to restrain or produce corruption. The theory suggests a multilevel analysis that tests hypotheses regarding the relations of journalism and corruption within each level and across levels in international comparative research designs. Corruption as the abuse of power for private gain is built into the journalistic, economic, political, and cultural structures of any society and is affected by its interaction within the international system. The important questions of how differences in corruption across countries can be explained or what makes it more or less in a particular society and how press freedom and social media contribute to the fight against corruption are still unanswered. This book represents a significant contribution on the way to answer these critical questions. It discusses a variety of journalism-corruption experiences that provide a wealth of results and analyses. The cases it examines extend from Cuba to Algeria, India, Saudi Arabia, Sub-Saharan African, Gulf Cooperation Countries, Arab World, and Japan. The primary contribution of this book is both theoretical and empirical. Its details as well as the general theoretical frameworks make it a useful book for scholars, academics, undergraduate and graduate students, journalists, and policy makers.

This chapter concludes the book. The chapter starts by describing the background for the new model of the influencing factors of journalism, including some of its shortcomings, and then discusses the ways in which this and other new models that have been presented in this book can assist researchers, lecturers and practitioners – both those in newsrooms and those in classrooms. Ultimately, this new model of the influencing factors of journalism is not only a reminder to researchers, educators and the daily practitioners of journalism of the forces that can restrict and enable journalists but also an inspiration for us to think more concretely about what journalism is, and who journalists are, here in the 21st century, where new technologies have made it easier for other professions and organizations to produce, publish and distribute something that resembles journalism. These are questions related to identity and …

Social media are growing drastically representing a further step in the ongoing deteriora- tion of journalism profession and ethics. The lines between professional journalists and amateurs have been blurred; consequently, the structure of news media has substantially changed affecting the core traits of the profession and its ethics. This phenomenon has challenged the already disputed concepts of journalism as profession and journalists as professionals. While this challenge is tremendous, research on its implications to journalism identity and ethics is scant. The existing literature focuses on new or digital media usage, newsgathering, production, dissemination, and consumption, with little emphasis on journalism ethics or the profession itself. This chapter seeks to examine how social media contribute to the ethical dilemmas off and online journalism encounter and how this transformation puts the profession at risk.

This paper looks at the extent to which journalistic culture in Muslim-majority countries is shaped by a distinctive Islamic worldview. We identified four principles of an Islamic perspective to journalism: truth and truth-telling (siddiq and haqq), pedagogy (tabligh), seeking the best for the public interest (maslahah), and moderation (wasatiyyah). A survey of working journalists in Africa (Egypt, Sierra Leone, and Sudan), Asia (Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Oman, Qatar, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates), and Europe (Albania and Kosovo) found manifestations of these roles in the investigated countries. The results point to the strong importance of an interventionist approach to journalism—as embodied in the maslahah principle—in most societies. Overall, however, journalists’ roles in Muslim-majority countries are not so much shaped by a distinctively Islamic worldview as they were by the political, economic, and socio-cultural contexts.

There seems to be an internationally shared consensus that search for a universal journalism ethic has often ended with the attempt to import traditional and underlying Western free-press values, such as objectivity and an adversarial platform forged in Enlightenment philosophy. There is also a universally shared consensus on the dilemma of how to invent a universal journalism ethical framework that sustains the universal solidarity of human being and recognises cultural, religious and ideological differences. The central argument of this article is that the Islamic worldview offers a modern journalism ethical model that both protects and limits universal pluralism in a multi-cultural society. It favours pluralism to the extent that it does not threaten unity of the universe or create the state of anarchy. It, therefore, establishes universal values that human beings share without transcending local cultures. The suggested model is based on four guiding principles: respecting pluralism and cultural diversity, freedom of expression, justice and moderation.

Central within the current debate on the impact of the information and communication technologies are the theories of the “global culture” and “cultural clashes”, or global village and clash of civilizations. According to the first theory (ICTs) will generate global culture or American culture and homogenous religious patterns; the cultural dimension of globalization. On the other hand, theory of cultural clashes claims that ICTs intensifies awareness of cultural differences that ultimately lead to cultural clashes. From the Islamic intercultural communication perspective, Islamic world communication values provide a “Third Way” based on peaceful and democratic coexistence among different global cultures. The “Third Way” also opposes the principles of both global culture and cultural clashes. To use the words of Ali Izetbegovich, the Muslim President of Bosnia: ... As Islam in the past was the intermediary between the ancient cultures and the West, it must again today, in a time of dramatic dilemmas and alternatives, shoulder its role as intermediary nation in a divided world (Braibanti, 1999). By the same token, I argue that the universal intercultural communication values of Islam could solve all the problems related to and generated by the dominant global and homogenous culture perspective, and those of the clash of cultures perspective. And definitely, this is the meaning of the Third Way, the Islamic way. In this paper, I also think that theories of global culture and clash of cultures threaten the democratic intercultural communication and undermine the potentials of the Islamic intercultural communication.

The Global Journalist in the 21st Century systematically assesses the demographics, education, socialization, professional attitudes and working conditions of journalists in various countries around the world. This book updates the original Global Journalist (1998) volume with new data, adding more than a dozen countries, and provides material on comparative research about journalists that will be useful to those interested in doing their own studies. The editors put together this collection working under the assumption that journalists' backgrounds, working conditions and ideas are related to what is reported (and how it is covered) in the various news media round the world, in spite of societal and organizational constraints, and that this news coverage matters in terms of world public opinion and policies. Outstanding features include: Coverage of 33 nations located around the globe, based on recent surveys conducted among representative samples of local journalists ; Comprehensive analyses by well-known media scholars from each country ; A section on comparative studies of journalists ; An appendix with a collection of survey questions used in various nations to question journalists. As the most comprehensive and reliable source on journalists around the world, The Global Journalist will serve as the primary source for evaluating the state of journalism. As such, it promises to become a standard reference among journalism, media, and communication students and researchers around the world. [Book Synopsis]

This article reports key findings from a comparative survey of the role perceptions, epistemological orientations and ethical views of 1800 journalists from 18 countries. The results show that detachment, non-involvement, providing political information and monitoring the government are considered essential journalistic functions around the globe. Impartiality, the reliability and factualness of information, as well as adherence to universal ethical principles are also valued worldwide, though their perceived importance varies across countries. Various aspects of interventionism, objectivism and the importance of separating facts from opinion, on the other hand, seem to play out differently around the globe. Western journalists are generally less supportive of any active promotion of particular values, ideas and social change, and they adhere more to universal principles in their ethical decisions. Journalists from non-western contexts, on the other hand, tend to be more interventionist in their role perceptions and more flexible in their ethical views.

This article reports key findings from a comparative survey of the role perceptions, epistemological orientations and ethical views of 1800 journalists from 18 countries. The results show that detachment, non-involvement, providing political information and monitoring the government are considered essential journalistic functions around the globe. Impartiality, the reliability and factualness of information, as well as adherence to universal ethical principles are also valued worldwide, though their perceived importance varies across countries. Various aspects of interventionism, objectivism and the importance of separating facts from opinion, on the other hand, seem to play out differently around the globe. Western journalists are generally less supportive of any active promotion of particular values, ideas and social change, and they adhere more to universal principles in their ethical decisions. Journalists from non-western contexts, on the other hand, tend to be more interventionist in their role perceptions and more flexible in their ethical views.