ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role professional identity plays in the negotiation of tensions between culture and commerce that result from this uneven power relationship between broadcasters and independent production companies. The chapter focuses on independents who specialize in serious factual and documentary programs. It illustrates a difference in degree with a slightly greater intensity of commercialization in the British system, which results in a more flexible interpretation of professional genre values in response to commercial pressures. The idea of social impact and critique as a constitutive value of documentary remains central for program makers. Therefore, a sufficient exploration of professional identities in media production should not only focus on supporting existing power structures but also on contributing to a bottom-up change-if not in action, then at least in attitude. The reinterpretation of the social aspects and objectives of documentary and serious factual programming allows workers to integrate the different sets of values and to dissolve the potential tension between them.
