ABSTRACT
This chapter gives a comprehensive answer to the long-standing question of whether normative ideals translate into journalistic action, and how adequately journalists perceive discrepancies and interdependencies between professional norms and media practice. To this end, we examine the link between individual role conception, perceived role enactment, and average role performance both as a gap and as a relationship. Based on a sub-sample of nine European, Asian, and Latin American countries, we found no substantial relationships between ideals and performance with regards to public service-oriented roles. These findings were further substantiated by the overall largest gaps for these roles across all countries. In contrast, journalistic cultures differed substantially in public influence-oriented roles, such as the interventionist role and the loyal-facilitator role. Our analyses indicate that roles classically related to the public good appear to be most difficult for journalism to perform in actual news coverage. Journalists appear to be aware of such gaps, but seem to have developed internal strategies to rationalize ideal/practice discrepancies.
