Ambivalent ambassadors and realistic reporters

Abstract

The European Union represents an emerging transnational political system for mainstream professional journalism. As a developing and enlarging system of power, expertise and a field of negotiation for compromises it provides a new horizon for journalism and journalists who have been strongly shaped by national discourses about politics, democracy and the public sphere. This article tackles this broad challenge in three steps. First, a synthetic analysis based on interviews with European journalists from 11 countries describes the dominant professional horizons of professional identities and relates them to EU news. Second, an interpretation of the generic forms of journalistic storytelling is suggested by linking the professional identities and trends into an idea about the dynamics of chronotropes of EU-journalism. Finally, a third layer of the discussion is provided by connecting the potentials and pitfalls of professional journalism to theorizations about transnational democracies and public spheres.

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