“I Know Which Devil I Write for” : Two Types of Autonomy Among Czech Journalists Remaining in and Leaving the Prime Minister's Newspapers
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216224%3A14230%2F23%3A00129927" target="_blank" >RIV/00216224:14230/23:00129927 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/19401612211045229" target="_blank" >https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/19401612211045229</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/19401612211045229" target="_blank" >10.1177/19401612211045229</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
“I Know Which Devil I Write for” : Two Types of Autonomy Among Czech Journalists Remaining in and Leaving the Prime Minister's Newspapers
Original language description
This paper examines two different understandings of professional autonomy among journalists currently and formerly working at Mafra, a Czech media house acquired in 2013 by Andrej Babiš, who in 2017 became the Czech Prime Minister. We build on existing research of local trends in media ownership and journalistic autonomy to ask the following questions: What differentiated the experience of journalists who exited the organization after the ownership change from that of those who stayed put? How did the two groups understand professional journalistic autonomy? Based on the thematic analysis of twenty semistructured interviews with ten journal- ists who stayed in the media house after Babiš’s acquisition and ten journalists who left, we argue that in the journalists’ narratives, the two decisions reflect two different notions of autonomy: autonomy-as-a-practice and autonomy-as-a-value. While our findings add to the scarce empirical research on journalists’ lived experiences of the region’s mediascape marked by growing comingling and concentration of political, economic and media power, we also suggest that the autonomy-as-a-practice and journalists’ agency should be further studied as a possible way how to perform and promote journalistic autonomy even in illiberalizing contexts—in Central and Eastern Europe and beyond.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
J<sub>imp</sub> - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
50801 - Journalism
Result continuities
Project
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Continuities
V - Vyzkumna aktivita podporovana z jinych verejnych zdroju
Others
Publication year
2023
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Name of the periodical
The International Journal of Press/Politics
ISSN
1940-1612
e-ISSN
1940-1620
Volume of the periodical
28
Issue of the periodical within the volume
1
Country of publishing house
US - UNITED STATES
Number of pages
19
Pages from-to
238-256
UT code for WoS article
000713263400001
EID of the result in the Scopus database
2-s2.0-85116874069