Original scientific paper
The Role of the News Media in the Construction of the European Identity: Informing, Educating, Promoting?
Melita Poler Kovačič
; docentica Fakulteta za društvene znanosti, Katedra za novinarstvo Ljubljana, Slovenija
Abstract
The author examines the role of the news media in the formation of European
identity, presuming that they are expected to play a crucial role in both the perception
and the construction of the emerging European identity as well as in the
preserving and the developing of the national identity. One of the main problems
at covering the EU-related issues is setting the boundaries between informing the
public and promoting specific ideas leading to the construction of the EU identity.
Providing the public with true, verified, accurate, relevant, unbiased, diverse and
balanced information is the primary journalistic goal, in one way or another defined
by the ethical codes of all the EU states, while one-sided promotion in the
sense of supplying the citizens with selective truth and biased publicity should not
be considered as part of any quality news discourse, even though it is occurring
under the label of identity building. The author’s thesis is that the news media are
assigned an important role of informing the citizens about the relevant EU issues,
without having a special task of promoting the EU. A critical distance should be
established towards the information obtained from the Government and other
public relations sources. Journalistic questions should be asked. To be able to implement
their task, journalists need to be equipped with the knowledge and skills
to cover the EU politics, they should aspire to follow the standards of the classical
paradigm of journalism as the public service, and maintain the professional ethical
attitude in all phases of the communication process.
Keywords
European identity; national identity; media roles; journalistic ethics
Hrčak ID:
26395
URI
Publication date:
18.12.2005.
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