Ideology of objectivity in political journalism. Attitudes, values and beliefs around truth as a possible horizon?

Abstract

From a critical-discursive approach, automatic and reflexive contents are analyzed around “objectivity”, as a stylistic-normative code and cultural device with mythical contours, shared by journalists and audience of political information. Based on interviews to professionals from different mass media in Córdoba-Argentina — conducted under an ethnographic approach between 2012 and 2014 —, firstly the self-perception of their contemporary role and the conditions of their daily link with sources and events are discussed. Given the inter-subjective nature of the phenomenon, in a second moment the contrast between the journalistic perspectives and the perceptions of local audiences, gathered in simultaneous experimental sessions, is included. Through an analytical triangulation strategy, a significant circularity link between professional definitions and consumption expectations is noticed.