ABSTRACT
Politics, art, and culture have since the introduction of newspapers in Western societies been covered side-by-side by various and more or less critical writers, of which journalists were just one variety. However, journalism research has a long tradition of prioritising political journalism and news media, primarily as a political public sphere. Likewise, political journalism increasingly came to set the agenda in the newsrooms and in journalism education during the twentieth century. This political leaning in both research and practice is closely linked to the professional and normative ideal or ideology of Western journalism, an ideal that stipulates an autonomous, objective, and versatile press, performing the role of society’s watchdog and addressing urgent events and issues of societal importance as a constituent element of democracy (e.g., Curran 2011; Deuze 2005). Thus in many ways the political bias is fully justified.
