Abstract

This study addresses the question about which groups journalists in 12 European and two Arab countries feel that they are accountable to. In their daily work, journalists do not only face dilemmas about conflicting values, but they also have to make decisions about whose interests they should protect in the first instance. Academic scholarship has developed well argued discourses on pressure groups and conflicting interests, as well as on the various incentives that influence journalists' loyalties. The present study aims to empirically analyze journalists' accountability perceptions and discuss what kinds of loyalty ideologies would be most widely disseminated by the professional community. Five profiles are constructed and analyzed based on a cluster analysis of responses from 1,215 journalists.