The Discipline-Autonomy Paradox: How U.S. Journalism Textbooks Construct Reporters’ Freedom Just to Tear it Down

Abstract

This study foregrounds the paradox in U.S. journalism culture whereby journalists are taught both that they have substantial freedom of judgment and that they must constrain such judgment to meet the narrow common-sense expectations of their peers and other social groups. Through the lens of Foucault’s concept of discipline and Bourdieu’s habitus, I analyze this contradictory discourse in 75 U.S. introductory journalism textbooks spanning the birth of formal journalism education at the turn of the twentieth century through the present era. A key implication is that journalism discourse disciplines reporters and editors to subvert their autonomous authority to describe the world as they see it – thereby narrowing their audiences’ available perspectives – even as this discourse rationalizes journalists’ self-subjugation as the exercise of independent, critical judgment. Highlighting this paradox offers a means to transform it.

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