The fable and necessity of the free press

This paper addresses the highly contested area of political journalism. It outlines influential theories developed in the 1970s and recent critiques about their limitations and effect on public perceptions of the fourth estate. It shows that the vast body of literature generated by theorising about political journalism often lacked the balance of perspectives and analyses from political journalists themselves. Recent literature and empirical data collected from journalists shows that the imbalance contributed to over simplifications that place political journalists somewhere between watchdogs on behalf of the public or lapdogs on behalf of ruling elites (Bowman and McIllwaine, 2004; Neveu and Kuhn, 2002:1-3). Earlier media theorising made a pioneering contribution to public/audience literacy. Chief amongst them were those that exposed how the use of different mediums impacted on perceptions about their messages and the way media workers can be conduits for this process. At the same time these insights characteristically cast journalists as actors on a stage constructed by others and overlooked their more active role both in constructing the stage and their interplay with other political actors. A more integrated approach takes account of first-hand journalists’ perspectives and provides a clearer picture of the more complex interdependencies at work in the parliamentary round. This paper adopts this approach by exploring empirical data from interviews with Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery journalists in 2003-2004ii by examining a range of layers of interaction and power plays at work in the parliamentary round.