In the last few years, a new practice known as semi-investigative reporting has appeared in Slovenian journalism. This article presents a study of the strategies used by reporters to construct an ...image of investigative reporting and of reporters' own interpretations of this practice. A critical discourse analysis of reports of institutional scandals in the Slovenian quality daily press during a four-year period is combined with in-depth interviews with reporters. Textual analysis revealed four strategies used in the majority of reports: factism; extensive citing of authoritative official sources; reliance on faceless (secret) sources; and appealing to common knowledge and common sense. The interviewees justified semi-investigative reporting via the changes in contemporary journalism, the tastes and desires of their readers, and market-driven pressures from editors. Semi-investigative reporters do not uncover failures in society's systems of regulation, but in truth they stabilize relations of power within society. In the long term, this practice is harmful to the readers who are exposed to the agendas and frames of official sources under the veil of investigative reporting, which diminishes the credibility of quality media, which are supposed to make those holding power accountable.
The practice of so-called mobi journalism at a commercial television station, which has been promoting itself as the first case of citizen journalism in Slovenia, is explored by text analysis ...combined with an analysis of discourse processes using ethnographic methods. The article examines whether the television station actually follows the purposes of this model of audience participation. The analysis reveals that it is, in fact, a market-driven quasi-citizen journalism practice, abusing the term "citizen journalism" and exploiting new media technologies for commercial purposes. In the news published on the website and in the television programme, it is the media producers who covertly make key decisions, defining the content and the structure of the news; while the audience members' activity is reduced to "spying" (searching for and taking photos of alleged offences or irregularities by lower public officials) and denunciating (sending such photos to a television station). The success of this practice results from an unusual connection between the past socialist and contemporary profits-oriented journalistic practices and behaviour patterns.
The paradox of Slovenia Merljak Zdovc, Sonja; Kovačič, Melita Poler
Journalism (London, England),
10/2007, Volume:
8, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Discusses the nature of Slovenian investigative reporting during the socialist & postsocialist periods, focusing on the latter. Attention is given to pseudo-investigative journalism & sensationalism ...during the 1990s, & the persisting prospect of violence against journalists. References. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright 2007.
This article provides an in-depth analysis of public service broadcasters in seven countries of the Western Balkans from the perspective of capture by political and market forces. A lack of editorial ...independence, reflected in politically biased, pro-government news content, is the main problem of public service broadcasting in the region. Another factor is the commercialization of programs, reflected in the neglect of public interest content in favor of entertainment formats, and the introduction of sponsored content and product placement. Financial difficulties, small fragmented markets, minor languages, weak economies, market pressures from commercial broadcasters, inefficient license fee collection, pressure and interference from political elites, as well as characteristics of local political and journalistic culture are among the reasons that public service broadcasters in these post-communist countries currently display similar characteristics.
The article's goal is to present media representation of the new regime of the Slovenian borders, introduced in December 2007. Critical discourse analysis of news items, published by all major ...Slovenian media between the beginning of December 2007 and the end of January 2008, reveals that there was no single homogeneous representation of the border included by all the media. Instead, there are four discourses: discourse of borderlessness, discourse of the Iron Curtain, discourse of the Schengen fortress, and discourse of everyday life problems. All discourses are fragmented, neglecting political and social contexts, but only the last one, which appeared in the regional media only, critically represented the new regime on the Schengen border. The elite Slovenian media also have thoroughly changed the dominant representation of the Slovenian borders. What used to be "an Iron Curtain" was reconfigured into "borderlessness", and what used to be "borderlessness" was reconfigured into "a fortress" and "a problematic border". They also reproduced a clear division, with Europe/Europeans and Slovenia/Slovenians on one side and the region and people behind the southern Schengen border on the other. Adapted from the source document.
This essay reviews a number of issues regarding self-regulation and professional ethics which journalists across Europe might face in the scaling down of national borders. The dilemma of whether a ...pan-European ideal standards code of ethics can help journalists when working across borders and encountering other traditions is explored by referring to Slovenia, one of the new European Union (EU) members. Presenting a critique of the traditional professionalization concept, cogent arguments are found for rejecting a universal code of ethics. By acknowledging the limitations and even deficiencies of such codified morality, a journalist's responsibility is emphasized and a different concept of ethics is indicated. Ethical journalists in this international context must focus on responsibility, positive tolerance, and empathy that transcends mere obedience to a code. The EU citizen's ethics rather than EU professional ethics should be advanced, based on universal principles and grounded in personal responsibility.
This paper identifies the main issues of public service broadcasters (PSBs) in six countries of the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, the Former Yugoslav Republic of ...Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia) in the period between 2010 and 2017, using a traditional literature review approach and document analysis. The analysis confirmed that PSBs in the region share the following (largely intertwined) issues: substantial financial problems; attempts to solve their difficult financial situations by competing with private commercial broadcasters, resulting in extensive broadcasting of entertainment content at the expense of public interest content; continuous pressure from state and political elites, resulting in editorial dependence and politically biased news content; problems adjusting to the new technological environment and delays in digitalization. These issues arise (also) from some common characteristics of the wider media and social context in the region, such as small advertising markets and potential, a lack of tradition in terms of independent countries and democracies, and positive perceptions of market forces and deregulation compared to political interference.
Health product advertising through news in lifestyle magazines Background: In addition to doctors, the mass media are the key source of information about health issues. It is therefore very important ...what kind of messages they produce and convey. Some media researchers called attention to paid-for health-related texts, published as editorial content without being labelled as advertisements (now commonly referred to as advertorials). There is a lack of studies investigating the practice of such messages production. Methods: The aim of the study is to fill the gap in this research field by identifying characteristics of unlabelled health-related advertorials and thus give the readers the mechanisms they need to recognise them. Textual analysis of unlabelled health-related advertorials published by three Slovenian lifestyle magazines was combined with an ethnographic study. Results: Textual analysis indicated that readers can recognise advertorials by the partial and positive-only presentation of health-related products/services, which are described and promoted by using synonyms of effectiveness. Observation and in-depth interviews showed that the key actors in the production process are advertisers and newspaper marketing agents. Advertisers want to have control over texts presenting their products/services. Marketing agents stress poor financial situation of their magazines. News producers claim that they carry out orders given by advertisers and marketing agents. Conclusion: By publishing unlabelled advertorials, lifestyle magazines privilege a pharmaceutical-commercial attitude to health. They promote the pharmaceutical industry by presenting it one-sidedly and in a simplified way, and by ascribing to it the capacity to solve health problems of people in a non-problematic way. A more complex social view of health issues, however, is neglected.
The literature on journalism ethics and law contains no generally shared defi nition of what constitutes the public interest. The goal of this article is to establish the positions on the public ...interest taken by three courts – that is, the European Court of Human Rights, the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia, and the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia – in order to discern whether case law has provided more specifi c guidelines for understanding what journalism in the public interest actually means. Based on our analysis, we propose a broad defi nition whereby information in the public interest refers to data so objectively important to society that the public’s right to be informed about such data outweighs a human right or freedom, or a private or public interest, which would otherwise demand that the data not be disclosed to the public. Information in the public interest can be part of political, economic, social, religious, or any other contexts. The essence of the public interest is that it concerns an important matter, the importance of which can only be evaluated on a caseby-case basis, taking into account all of the circumstances of a particular case.
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