The Social Roles of Journalism

Journalism is valued, contested, and sometimes attacked, because of the role it plays or potentially plays in society. Journalists collectively develop a sense of what social good they provide in the world, partly to provide direction in their daily work and partly to defend their authority in the face of competing visions of what journalism should be and do.

The Social Roles of Journalism explores how journalism’s place in the world is in near constant (re)creation, (re)interpretation, appr...