Journalism Values & Roles 18
their views editors were more likely to say that the function was an important
one for the media Table
Editors also were more likely than reporters to believe the media should
concentrate on news that is of interest to the widest audience a statement that
measures the neutral journalist role And editors also were more likely to say that
the media should influence public opinion something that has been linked to a
belief in interpretive journalism Interestingly there were no significant
differences in the importance that editors and reporters assigned to statements
that corresponded with an adversarial role conception
Overall there were only a handful of correlations between the demographic
characteristics of those we surveyed and their responses to the questions that
assessed their role conceptions Among the role conception measures the belief
that news should be of interest to the widest audience a statement that
corresponds to a neutral role was the only role statement to be consistently
correlated to demographic variables It was positively correlated to a journalist s
age years on the job years at the newspaper years in journalism and years in the
community Table
It also was one of the statements that was more important
to editors than reporters which may be one of the reasons it also corresponds to
more years in journalism
Among demographic variables a journalist s years in journalism years in
the community and number of news organizations seemed to be more
Convention