Olivier Baisnée

The European Public Sphere Does Not Exist (At Least It's Worth Wondering...):

■ This article argues that most research conducted on the topic of the European public sphere (EPS) has been heavily influenced by a definition of the public sphere that has been historically promoted by the European Union institutions themselves. Communication and, later on, public opinion have been considered by EU pioneers as ways to overcome the limited competences of the European institutions. By doing so, they heavily influenced later theories of the European public sphere by promoting a conception of the latter based on two major assumptions: the EPS relies on the availability of information about the EU in national media and all EU citizens are members of the EPS. This article proposes alternative research paths about the EPS. The EPS should probably not be thought of in terms of the national media of the member states, nor should it be conceived as including all EU citizens. Rather, the EPS appears as sectoral, heavily selective and including actors from various professional and policy areas that have, in common, a strong interest in EU matters. ■

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

How effective is media self-regulation? Results from a comparative survey of European journalists

This article presents key results of a comparative journalists’ survey on media accountability, for which 1762 journalists in 14 countries had been interrogated online. The article explores how European journalists perceive the impact of old versus new media accountability instruments on professional journalistic standards – established instruments like press councils, ethics codes, ombudsmen and media criticism, but also more recent online instruments like newsroom blogs and criticism via social media. Thus, the study also adds empirical data to the current debate about the future of media self-regulation in Europe, ignited by the Leveson Inquiry in the United Kingdom as well as the European Commission’s High-Level Group on Media Freedom and Pluralism.