Dominique Marchetti

The economy of just-in-time television newscasting Journalistic production and professional excellence at Euronews

Since the 1990s, 24-hour national and especially transnational television news channels (BBC World, CNN International, CNBC, etc.) have imposed themselves as models for nonstop news production in Western Europe and have propagated a new model of professional excellence. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted at the pan-European channel Euronews, this article discusses the characteristics of the concrete organization of the new division of journalistic work such as its designs for processing and producing just-in-time news, and how it tailors its product for a transnational audience. The functioning of Euronews is a living laboratory for studying the constraints that bear on all-news networks, including the relentless reduction in production costs, the effects of temporal compression (spot assignments that are unpredictable, ‘live’ broadcasts, etc.), and the development of sedentary or ‘sit-down journalism’. This article offers a rare ethnographic window into the workaday universe of 24-hour news broadcasting

The revelations of investigative journalism in France

Since the 1970s and 1980s, national newspapers in France, both general and political, have regularly praised ‘investigative journalism’ and its role in unveiling ‘scandals’. To gain an understanding of how this new model of professional excellence arose, even though it concerns only a small number of journalists, we need to show the extent to which it is first of all largely symptomatic of a series of changes that have occurred outside the field of journalism, especially in the political and legal worlds, and in the relationships these spaces maintain with one another. In particular it is important to show that the media space has become highly strategic, notwithstanding its relative lack of autonomy. What is covered by the media is largely the outcome of power relations within different social spaces that are then translated in accordance with media processes. Thus ‘investigative journalism’ is often based less on journalists’ own investigations than on state-sponsored studies: reports, inquests, etc. The present article endeavours to show how and why these ‘scandals’ have been exposed only where such external changes have also found an echo in the field of general and political media nationally, in particular among a group of politicized journalists who constitute a new specialist field within the profession. The rise of ‘investigative journalism’ and its successful profile in the discourse of the profession both result from and reveal transformations affecting the whole space of journalism.

The media in Morocco: a highly political economy, the case of the paper and on-line press since the early 1990s

This article intends to analyse the Moroccan journalistic field since the 1990s using a relational sociology looking at its news businesses and showing their strong dependence on the economic and political fields. This initial analysis of the paper and electronic non-specialised press (and its managers) is based on five main issues. The first issue summarises the history of the nonpartisan press and the social and political protest issues within it since independence. The second shows how the explosive multiplication of the volume of news supplied by the paper press since the 1990s, and by the electronic press (notably since 2011) should not hide the historical features of this universe: very limited coverage, a journalistic world highly dominated by the state media and a partisan press, and very important inequalities (social, linguistic, etc.). The third issue is trying to describe the market where the press companies operate and which occupies a positional continuum located between two poles: the hanout (the shop) and the press group (and the careers of their senior executives). This also explains that the sustainability of publications depends on a balance based on political and economic parameters and certain uncrossable “red lines” (Monarchy, Sahara, and Islam). The fourth issue describes the very direct impact which the advertising and supply and distribution oligopoly, connected to the main powers in place, has on the working of the press companies. Lastly, the Moroccan social space transformations and the unique features of its consumption modes enable us to understand better why the Moroccan press is facing difficulties when trying to increase its audience.

Les ajustements du marché scolaire au marché du travail journalistique

A partir d’une enquete collective menee essentiellement par entretiens, cet article analyse la « professionnalisation » croissante de l’espace des formations au journalisme en France, notamment des ecoles agreees. Apres avoir decrit rapidement ses raisons, il montre comment ce mouvement ne peut etre considere comme un simple accroissement de l’autonomie du champ journalistique a travers par exemple le renforcement de savoir-faire specifiques mais aussi comme un ajustement a l’egard du marche du travail, qui a connu une expansion sans precedent durant les deux dernieres decennies. Cette « professionnalisation » est etudiee a travers, d’une part, les transformations des enseignements, et, d’autre part, le renforcement des relations que ces formations entretiennent avec les entreprises mediatiques.

L’inégale transnationalisation de l’information « turque »: le cas de la médiatisation de la Turquie en France

Cet article se propose d’etudier les processus contemporains de production et de circulation transnationale des news, a partir d’une etude de l’« actualite turque » presente dans des grands medias generalistes francais. Apres avoir caracterise grossierement la position intermediaire de la Turquie sur les espaces nationaux et internationaux tres concurrentiels de production de l’information transnationale, le premier volet etudie la geopolitique de ce marche en montrant comment, a travers l’etude de la population des correspondants des medias etrangers en Turquie, celui-ci est domine par quelques medias et surtout quelques pays, qui fournissent aujourd’hui l’essentiel de la matiere premiere de l’information. Le deuxieme volet, qui porte sur la presence des medias francais en Turquie, montre sa relative faiblesse mais aussi le fait que ceux-ci s’adressent essentiellement aux groupes sociaux fortement dotes en capitaux culturels et/ou economiques. Enfin, le troisieme fait apparaitre, a partir d’une etude de corpus, l’homogeneite globale des productions journalistiques sur la Turquie autour de quelques themes recurrents (droits de l’homme, Islam, etc.) tout en esquissant un espace social de ces productions et des clivages qui le traversent. Cet article s’appuie sur une enquete par entretiens et observations en Turquie ainsi qu’une etude du corpus des productions de la presse ecrite et audiovisuelle en France entre les annees 1980 et la decennie 2000. mots-cles : journalisme, information internationale, medias, Turquie, France