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http://jmq.sagepub.com/content/77/2/243The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/107769900007700202

2000 77: 243Journalism & Mass Communication QuarterlyWolfram Peiser

Characteristics and from Media FactorsSetting the Journalist Agenda: Influences from Journalists' Individual

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SETTINGTHE J OURNAL I STAGENDA:INFLUENCESROM J OURNAL I STS INDIVIDUALCHARACTERISTICSND FROM M E D I AACTORSBy WolframPeiser

The journalist agenda (issues ournalists consider personally important)has received no attention in research about agenda setting and mediacontent creation. However, the discussion about diversity in newsroomsseems to imply that journalists differ in their personal agendas and thatthese agendas influence media content. DrawingondatafromGermany,this study investigated how the agendas of journalists depended onindividual and media factors. Some systematic variations were foundamong journalists working in different media and departments, andbetween men and women.As journalistsagendasprobably have relevanceto their news judgments, results seem important to newsroom-diversityissues and media agenda-setting research.Inprevious research on agenda setting, three different agendas havebeen studied: the media agenda, the public agenda, and the policy agenda.lWhile research about influences by the mass media on the public agenda(public agenda setting) and research about influences on the policy agenda(policy agenda setting, also called agenda building) have a comparativelyrich tradition, influences on the media agenda (media agendasetting)havereceived much less attention? Although a arge number of factors actually orpotentially influencing media content-i.e., the media agenda-have beenidentifiedsofar, it seems that the questionof what issues journalists them-selves consider important has been largely overlooked? These personalagendas of journalists might well have some impact on the media agenda.Taken together, they may be termed the journalist agenda. It is the purposeof this study to investigate the journalist agenda more closely, looking at anumber of factors that potentially influence personal issue-importance or

issue-salience (and that also account for differencesamong various groups ofjournalists).

Basic Considerations.Surveys of journalists in many countries haveinvestigated backgrounds and demographic characteristics, working condi-tions, and professionalvalues of this Implicitly or explicitly,thislineof research derives its importance from potential effects of journalistscharacteristics on media content and on audiences.AsWeaver puts it in theintroduction tohiscollectionof findings from studies of journalists n twenty-one countries: The major assumption is that journalists backgrounds and

I nfluenceson J ournalistsNewsJ udgments

Wolfram Peiser is an assistant professor at the Institut fdr Publizistik, University ofMainz, Germany. The author wishes to thank Klaus Schonbach (University ofAmsterdam, The Netherlands) or making the data used in this study available to him.J 6MC QuarterlyVOl.77,No. 2smmer2000281-257t32000AElMC

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ideas have some relationship to what is reported (and how it is covered)nthevarious news media around the world, in spite of various societal andorganizational constraints, and that this news coverage matters in terms ofworld public opinion and policie~.~Inkeeping withthisassumption, research has examined several back-ground characteristics of journalists. Ingeneral, two issues arise. First, doindividual characteristics of journalists influence their news decisions andthus the medias news content? Second, do journalists (as a group) deviatefrom the general public with respect to characteristicsthat are influential inthe abovesense? If the answer to both questionsisyes, then news contentmight be regarded as biased, at least if judged against the values andopinions of the general public. While little research has been done that isdirectly linked to journalists personal issue-importance, a number ofstudies have investigated somewhat related subjects. In the internationalliterature, the discussion centers on journalists deological position, cohortmembership (or age), and gender.

I deol ogi cal Position. Journalists differ from the population in theirideological values and political leaning. In many countries, research hasfound that journalists are somewhat more liberal and more likely to lean tothe left than to the right, and that they tend to support leftist rather thanconservativepolitical parties, as compared to the general public? Journalistsalso seem to perceive themselves as more liberal than their news audience.In a recent study, Raabe found that German journalists differed systemati-cally from the general population with respect to their backgrounds. Inparticular, journalists were far more likely to belong to the liberal andpostmodern milieus? All these deviations may have important mplicationsfor media content. There s some evidence that ournalistsown opinions andideological positions are relevant to their news decisions? Although this linkhas not been investigated by a sufficient number of studies, it appears to beat least plausible.OCohortMembership.Whether a specific event or issue is considerednewsworthy may also depend on ournalists cohort membership. Incross-sectional studies, cohort membership (or generation, a term used inter-changeably nthiscontext) sindicated by chronological age, and surveys ofjournalists in many countries have shown that this professional group isyounger on average than the general public.12Thus, ournalists tend to belongto more recent birth cohorts (or generations). The question arises, then,whether cohort membership bears upon news decisions. There is reason tobelieve t does. Earlier born and more recently born generations of journalistsappear to have unlike collective memories and may thus differ in their newsjudgments.13For example, journalists born before World War I1 might considerthe reunification of Germany more important because they personallyexperienced the period before Germany was divided. Compared with theyoungest journalists, even those born in the postwar years might viewGermanys reunification as more significantbecause they, too, witnessed theconstructionof the Berlin Wall in 1961 (which consolidated the division ofGermany). ndeed, ntheir 1989surveyof West German ournalists,Lang andhiscolleagues found that 82percent of journalists born in 1950 or earlierremembered the construction of the Berlin Wall as a significantevent; in fact,that event was one of the most important from a list of thirty-four historicalevents that occurred between 1940 and 1986. n contrast, ournalists who wereborn after 1950 were more likely to remember ecological disasters as signifi-



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cant events." Thi ssuggests that journalists' personal agendas probably alsovary according to their cohort membership (and thus differ by ageincross-sectional data).Gender.Communicationscholars as well as news people have arguedthat news content reflects the demographic structure of the newsroom staff.15Thi s problem has been discussed in particular with respect to women and-at least n the United States-to ethnic minorities. Although their proportionhas been rising more or less steadily, women arestill underrepresentedinMany people in communication science and in journalismbelieve that media content will change according to thechanginggendercomposition of newsrooms. Much of the discussion in thisarea seems toimply that the issues journalists consider personally important are relevantto their news decisions.Asfar as genderisconcerned, the following reason-ing applies: Women journalists (in some cases) assign importance to otherissues than their male colleagues. They introduce these issues into theirnewsrooms and thus ultimately nto the news or other media content. Inthisway, the media concerned will become more interesting to the female part ofthe population and thus more likely to adequately perform their functioninsociety. The implicationseem tobethat women journalists represent theperspective or the agenda of the female audience, ust as one might argue thatmale journalists tend to put more emphasis on men's issues.Considering the importance of these points, the amount of researchdone in thisarea seems rather limited. While several studies have investi-gated systematically if women journalists select and report differently, ascompared to their male colleagues, the results tended to be somewhatinconcl~sive.~~here appears to be no direct evidence as far as personalissue-importance s concerned. It is true that there are numerous examples

showing that women journalists have indeed transformed news inUS.media, and in particular have introduced new issues.l8Soone might arguethat differential ssue-importancemust play some role. Only one study seemsto have addressedthisquestion more directly. ntheir analysis of journalists'selfselected examples of their "best work," Weaver and Wilhoit found thatwomen used more female sources on average than men did.Asto the specificmedia roles evident in the stories, women journalists put less emphasis ongetting the story to the public quickly. Most important to the present study,there was also some evidence that female and male journalists differ withrespect to the issues they are concerned about. Women journalists' storieswere more likely to deal with social problems and protests, as compared withthe stories of male journalist ' However, more research s certainly neededto establish the existence of such gender differences more clearly.I ndividual and Media-Related F actors. Insum, journalists deviate tosome extent from the general public with regard to demographic andideological characteristics.Moreover, there is reason to believe that some oftheir characteristics (backgrounds, world views, opinions, etc.) influencetheir news judgments and hence manifest themselves in news content.AsGist puts it: "Whether the issue is race, cultural diversity, gender, age, sexualorientation, economic class, or religion, thedeterminationof what is news ishighly subjective. Thus news judgment inevitably reflects the perceptualbiases and interests of those making the judgment."" However, there are anumber of factors working toward a homogeneity of news decisions, nclud-i ngnewsroom socialization, organizationalroutines, and other constraints.21These factors may be stronger than the effects of journalists' individualcharacteristics on news content.22Still, influences from journalists' back-k l 7 N C H E ~ o u R N A u s T ~ E N D A 245



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grounds and values probably do exist, and perhaps they also pertain tojournalists personal agendas.However, it seems appropriate to consider organizational or mediafactors as well. They, too, may be useful in understanding and explainingindividual differences among journalists. Research has shown that journal-ists characteristicsvary considerably among media sect0rs.2~For example,German journalists in public-service radio or television differ from thoseworking in commercial stationsin their backgrounds and in their profes-sional val~es.2~he various media are geared to audiences that disagree intheir values and interests. Therefore, ournalistsnews decisions may also beto some extent unlike in different types of media. By similar reasoning,journalists working in different departments (each serving particular audi-ence nterests: politics, business, sports, etc.) might also diverge n their newsjudgments.Finally, the position a journalist occupies within a media organizationwould seem important, too. ournalists are not equal regarding their editorialinfluence. Obviously, upper-level managers (with potentially divergingpersonal views or judgments) will have more influence on the news thanjournalists in lower positions.Inparticular, the questioniswho has a say inthe general determination of content, that is, who decideswhat is covered.=Given the probably greater media agenda-setting power of journalists withmanagerial responsibilities, it would be interesting to know whether andhow far positionisrelated to personal issue-importance.Inconclusion, then, both individual background characteristics andmedia-related factors seem relevant to the journalist agenda. However, weshould not expect to find too much variation among ournalists. After all, intheir role as members of the media audience (the public), ournalists will besubject to public agenda-setting effects, too (whether the media agendareflects real-world developments and events or not).Onthe other hand, itseems highly plausible that a journalists personal agenda is influenced byh s or her professional role; also, some differences among journalists fromvarious backgrounds might seem expectable. Thus, it remains an empiricalquestion to what extent such influences or differences exist, a question thatisimportant to the issue of pluralism in the newsroom andisalso relevant tothe discussion about external versus internal media diversity?6So far, research has not undertaken a detailed examination of theagenda of journalists (inparticular with regard to differences betweenvariousgroups of journalists).While Schneider,Schonbach, and Stiirzebechermeasured the journalists agendaintheir comprehensive survey of Germanjournalists, they only looked at aggregated data of journalists working inEast Gerrnan~?~t is the purpose of this study to investigate systematicallyhow far journalists from different backgrounds, but also from differentmedia or departments, disagree in their personal issue-importance.Particu-lar attention was devoted to the question of whether women journalistsdiffered in their agendas from their male colleagues.

M ethod Sample.The empirical investigation was carried out using data fromSchneider, Schonbach, and Stiirzebechers comprehensive survey of WestGerman journalists?* For this representative survey, 983 journalists wereinterviewed by telephone between29July and29September1992.Agenda Measurement. The agenda of the journalists was measured246 J O U Q N A I I S M ~ ~ ~ SOMh fUN ICm i ONQ~



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using an open-ended question. First, respondentswere asked about the mostimportant issues they thought occupied their audience: What do you think:What are the most important issues preoccupying the population and thepoliticians in the Federal Republic at present? Please mention everythingthat occurs to you. Journalists were then asked about their own agenda:And what preoccupies you personally n particular?Responses to the atterquestion were coded in twenty-seven categories. For the purpose of thisstudy, some of these were combined into broader categories (e.g., economy).Furthermore, those issues that were cited by very few journalists and couldnot be combined with others in a meaningful way were assigned to a residualcategory.Inthe end, fourteen issue categories remained:German unity (reunification),East Germanys pastCriticism of the Federal GovernmentNational budgetGeneral economic situation, prices/inflation, unemploymentPensions, pension policyEcological policyPersons seeking (political)asylum, government policy on foreignersViolence against foreignersForeign pokyEurope (European Union, European integration)Yugoslavia (civil war, independence of former Yugoslavian repub-lics)Third WorldOccupation, school, education, incomeSports issues

Predictor Variables.A number of variables were used inthisstudy toanalyze variations between the agendas of specific groups of journalists.First, two categorical variables pertained to journalists working environ-ment type of medium and department. The ournalists were from five majormedia sectors (news agency, newspaper, magazine, radio, and television),with newspaper, radio, and television subdivided further, yielding a total often categories. Inparticular, public and private radio and television weredistinguished. Unfortunately, rather few journalists worked in private tele-vision stations. However, the distinctions between radio and televisionjournalists and between journalists working in public-service and in privatebroadcasting organizations were both considered important; thus, small cellsizes had to be accepted. The journalists in the sample worked in five majordepartments roughly corresponding to the sections of newspapers (news/politics, local news, business/economic news, culture/arts/features, andsports). Inaddition, there was a group of journalists working in no specificdepartment (including editors-in-chief);and journalists from other depart-ments were combined in a residual category. In all, then, the departmentvariable had seven categories.Other respondent characteristics included position, age, gender,education, degree of leftism, and image of audience. The journalistsposition within the media organization was coded as a 6-point variableranging from trainee(1)to editor-in-chief (6). While age was measured inyears, education was also a &point measure, ranging from junior highschool (1) to university degree (6). Leftism was operationalized usingrespondents assessment of two political parties. The journalists were askedSET~NGTHEJ OWML ISTAGENDA 247



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what they thought of each of the German parties, using an 11-point ratingscale, with the extreme categories namedthinknothing at allof that party(-5)and thinka lot of that party(+5).The answers for the Social DemocraticParty and the Green Party (both n opposition at the time of the survey)werecombined into a summary scale indicating the degree of political leftism(a=.62)F9Image of audience was a summary index of 17characteristics of theaudience as rated by the journalists on a 2-point scale (applies-notapplies).Most of the characteristicswere positive (e.g., critical, interestedin politics, tolerant).Anumber of items indicating a negative mage (e.g.,indifferent, narrow-minded) were reversed before constructing he scale.A principal component analysis showed that the first factor (before rotation)was a general factor, with positive loadings for the positive items, andnegative loadings for the negative items. Therefore, a summary scale of all17items was created, indicating the degree to which the image of the audiencewas positive( a=. n).

Results In the total sample of 983journalists, the responses concentrated onrelatively few issues. Therefore, only those seven ssues that were mentionedmost frequently were included in the tables below.Ina first step, the agendaof the journalists was broken down by some variables that seemed particu-larly well suited to indicate links between personal issue-importanceon theone hand and journalists individual characteristics and their professionalroles on the other. These variables were gender, medium, and department(Tables1-3).Before proceeding with the findings, it is important to note that thejournalists were allowed to provide more than one answer to the agendaquestion. Percentages n the following cross tabulations were always calcu-lated based on the number of responses; using thenumber of journalists as thebase would have yielded biased comparisons of percentages between differ-ent groups of journalists because some groups of journalists generallymentioned more issues than others.Asa consequence, these tables are basedon observations that are not totally independent of each other, which pre-cluded testing the association n each table for statistical significance.Still, toprovide at least an indication of whether these findings may be generalized,chi-square tests based on the number of journalists (thus probably somewhatbiased) were conducted for each issue. Judging by these tests, most of thosedifferences between groups that are mentioned below were statisticallysignificant.While the priorities of male and female journalists were not toodissimilar, a number of differences did emerge (Table 1. For example,women tended to mention Yugoslavia and violence against foreigners morefrequently than men, while they regarded the Germanunityand Europe essoftenas mportant ssues. Taken together, the differences found would seemto suggest that women journalists tended to emphasize issues involvinghumanity and human destiny, and to assign somewhat less importance toabstract political issues and to institutions, as compared to their male col-leagues.Inparticular, they appeared to care less about the German reunifi-cation.30There were also a number of systematicdifferencesbetween the mediaand, more important, between types of newspapersorbroadcastingorgani-

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TABLE 2Most lmportant IssuesofMaleandFemale J ournalists(Percentof Responses)

All J ournal i sts M en Women

Yugoslavia (Civil War)GermanUnty (Reunification),East Germanys PastEcological PolicyAsylum-Seekers (PersonsSeekingPolitical Asylum)Violence against ForeignersEuropeEconomc Situation, Prices/Inflation, Unemployment

Other I ssues

17121111744

34

16131211554

34

2089

101123

37

n 1,428 1,067 361

Note: Percentagesineach columnpertai n to all responses, not to all journalists.

zations (Table2).Journalistsworking for popular papers apparently tendedto put more weighton issues that preoccupied arge parts of thepopulation(e.g., Yugoslavia, Germanuni ty, asylum-seekers). n contrast, press ournal-ists from qualitypaperstended to put less emphasis on these issues; theyassigned about the same importance to violence against foreigners, to eco-nomic issues, and toEurope. As far as the electronic media are concerned,differencesbetween public and private (commercial)organizations seemedmore pronounced than those between radio and television. Although thenumber of cases was very small for journalists working for private televisionstations, t appears that privatebroadcasting ournaliststended to assign essimportance o social and human problems (asylum-seekers,violence againstforeigners) while they emphasized ecology, as compared to their colleaguesworkinginpublic-serviceorgani~ations.~~The agenda also vaned to some extentby journalists opical specializa-tion (Table3).nparticular, business/economy ournalists tended to empha-size economic issues, while they cared less about the problem of asylum-seekersthantheother ournalists. Si ar l y,sports ournalistsput much moreemphasis on sports issues (which were not among the top seven showninthe tables) than journalists workinginother departments; and they seemedto assign less importance to some of the hard-news issues (violence againstforeigners, Europe, economy). Obviously, as these two groups ofjournalists are more specialized and homogeneousthanthe others, we mayexpect to find more clearly profiled agendas here. Overall, though, theagendas of journalists from different departments were not that dissimilar.The same was true for the comparison between journalists from differentmedia (see Table2). Thus, organizational or media factors appear to havesomebut not necessarily much-influence on which issues journalistsS m RE ~OURNAUSTACE NDA 249



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TABLE 2Most Important Issues of J ournalists in Different Media(Percentof Responses)News Daily Newspaper Maga-Agency zine(Wire Small Larger National Popular (General

Service) Regional Regional Quality (Tabloid) Interest)YugoslaviaGerman UnityEcologyAsylum-SeekersViolenceEuropeEconomyOther Issues

119

177272

45

15111113853

34

23121410443

30

1113101110118

26

22197

17622

25

219119715

37n 46 279 280 61 54 222

Radio Station Television StationAll Public Private All Public Private

Yugoslavia 13 14 13 7 6 21German Unity 13 14 11 15 14 21Ecology 7 5 11 13 12 21Asylum-Seekers 10 14 6 12 13 -Violence 6 12 - 9 10 -Europe 4 5 3 6 7Economy 5 4 7 7 8

--

Other Issues 42 32 49 31 30 37n 277 155 122 162 143 19

Note: Percentages n each column pertain to all responses, not to all journalists.

regard as important. So there remains scope for influencesfromindividualcharacteristics.To further investigate the effectsof different factors on journalists'agendas, logistic regression analyses were carried out forthetop seven issues(Table4).Multivariate analysis seemed particularly important because jour-nalists' relevant characteristics are interrelated among one another. Forexample, gender is related to media sector, to department, and to position:

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TABLE 3Most Important Issuesof J ournalists in Different Departments(Percentof Responses)NoSpec. News Local Business Culture Sports Other

Yugoslavia 9 17 20 15 15 23 16Germanunity 15 12 11 14 11 10 11Ecology 11 8 13 12 15 13 12Asylum-Seekers 9 12 11 7 11 11 10Europe 4 6 4 2 3 2 4Economy 8 4 3 12 4 3Violence 4 9 6 7 7 2 7

-Other Issues 40 32 32 31 34 39 37

n 157 384 415 59 71 61 277Note: Percentages in each column pertain to all responses, not to all journalists.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~~

Women journalists are less likely to work for news agencies, they are morelikely to work for magazines, they are underrepresented in the upper-levelpositions, e t ~ . ~ ~n each of the regressions, the dependent variable was adichotomy indicating whether the respective ssue was mentioned(1)or notmentioned (0).Thisvariable may be regarded as an indicator of personalissue-importance. Besides gender, medium, and department, predictorsincluded position, age, education, leftism, and image of audience (whichwere all treated as metric variables). In addition, the number of issuesmentioned by each journalist was controlled because it was correlated withsome of the predictor variables (eg., department), and it wasalsorelated tothe dependent variable (if a journalist mentions a larger number of issues,each single ssue s more ikely to be mentioned by that ournalist). The effectsof this control variable (which were throughout positive and significant, aswould be expected) will not be given further attention.The results indicate that both media factors and journalists' individualcharacteristics contributed to personal issue-importance.However, only fort wo of the seven issues differences among media and among departmentswere statistically significant. Some of the discrepancies that were alreadymentioned played a role here, too, an examplebeing the importance assignedto economic issues by business as opposed to sports journalists. Of theremaining predictors, the majority was important at least to some issues(education and leftism were throughout not significant). ournalistsrankinghigher within their media organization put comparativelymore emphasisonGermany's unity, but assigned less importance to the problem of asylum-seekers.Aswould be expected, older journalists mentioned the German unitysignificantlymore often than did those who were born more recently. They%G T H E J OURNALISTAGENDA 251



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TABLE 4Predictors of Most FrequentlyMentioned Issues(LogisticRegression Analyses)Yugoslavia UNty Ecology Asylum Violence Europe Economy

Number of I ssuesPositionMediumDepartmentGender (Female)EducationLeftismImageof Audience

Age

PseudoR2

.52***.01*****

-.oo. 22-.11- .M.01.08

&&*** a***.14* -.02n.s. ns.n.s. n.s..02** -.01

-.50** -39-.04 .06.02 . 03.01 -.05*.09 .09

.75**'-.w**n.s.n.s.-.02-.37.12

-.01.M*'.14

Q***-.15n.s.n.s.

-.03**a***-.08.06

-.oo.14

. go*** . 83***-.lo -.05ns. n.s.n.s..02 .03*- BY* -.17.ll . 02.03 -.03.05 -.02

w

.21 .19

Note: * p


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ists; and they mentioned ecological issues less frequently.While thereisnoready explanation for the whole pattern, journalists having a positiveattitude toward their audience might be more humanitarian in general andtherefore tend to be more concerned about the problems facing persons whoseek asyluminGermany. There were also some rather unexpected negativefindings. For example, political eftism had throughout no effect on personalissue-importance,not even for issues as the German unity or ecology.

This study found that West German journalists partly disagreedregarding the issues they considered personally important. Although therewere many similaritiesas well, journalistsdid not appear to share a commonagenda.Thisstudy did not investigate whether and how far journalistspersonal agendas translate into their news decisions and thus into mediacontent. But,assumingthislinkexists (andwe have reason to believe t does),the findings of thisstudy provide further indications that the composition(demographic and other) of newsrooms matters.The results of thisstudy suggest that there are influences from mediafactors.Tosome extent, the variations among media appear to parallel bothaudience structureand media content. t seems that ournalists end to assignsignificance to those issues that are most important to them in their dailywork. Several of the differences among departments also point in thsdirection. I n effect, then, some of the same factors (news sources, socialreality) that influencethe media agenda apparentlyal socontributetosettingthe individual ournalists agenda.%Depending on their area of specializa-tion, some ournalistsare exposed to more or less specific influences (events,news sources, etc.).Ultimately, though, differencesamong departmentsor types of mediaremain difficult to interpret.Onthe one hand, they may be taken to indicatethat journalistspersonal agendas depend on their professional role, on theirarea of specialization,and on external nfluences rom that area.Onthe otherhand, it is possible that these differences still reflect journalists personalissue-importance.After all, if a journalist specializes n a specific area, self-selection is involved to a considerable degree. For example, many sportsjournalistsprobably have been particularly nterestedinsports before start-ing their careers n j~urnalism?~learly, a much more refined survey wouldbe needed to separate these potential influences from one another.Not only because of these problems of interpretation, differencesbetween journalists that are due to individual characteristics seem moreinteresting than those associated with media factors. Compared to theaudience, ournaliststend to be younger and better educated; and they tendto support iberal ratherthanconservative values. Moreover, n journalismthe proportion of women is lower than in the general population. Thus, ifjournalists personal agendas have some impact on their news decisions,media content may become biased, reflecting to a stronger degree the viewsheld by young, liberal males. The results of this study indicate that thejournalist agenda may indeed reflect journalists backgrounds to someextent.As implied in much of the discussion about diversity in newsrooms,women journalists appear to differ in part from their male colleagues withrespect to personal issue-importance. The overall pattern found suggeststhat women assign somewhat more importance to social or humanitarianissues than men. This seems to be consistent with Weaver and Wilhoits

Discussion



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f i ndi ng that women journalists stories were more frequently about socialproblems and protests than those of male journalists.%The gender differ-ences observed in the present study are particularlynoteworthy because theydo not pertain to classic womens issues such as equal rights or abortion.Hence, a higher proportion of women in newsrooms could lead to morefundamental changes n overall news udgments and media content than onemight gather from the discussion of this topic (which has often tended tocenter around typical womens issues).The finding that political leaning (leftism) had no effect on whatjournalists mentioned as personally important issues is somewhat surpris-ing, at least at first sight. nparticular, one would have expected a correlationbetween eftism and the importanceattached to the German unity. Tradition-ally, reunification has always been more important to older Germans and tothose who tend to the right side of the political spectrum. While olderjournalists ndeed assigned more importance to Germanys unity, there wasno such effect by political leaning. However, leftism may be relevant notsomuch to the question of whether or not people consider a specific issueimportant (even f it is controversial) but rather to the question of which sidethey takeorwhich policy they support concerning that i~sue.3~The results of this study are subject to a number of general limitations.First, the journalists mentioned only few issues on average, and their re-sponses concentrated on a relatively small number of issues. Hence, only thetop seven issues were analyzed in some detail. Second, differencesbetweenspecific groups of journalistswere statisticallysignificantonlyfor some of theissues (which may also be due to the limited size of the sample, particularlyin the case of the categorical predictors). Third, it is possible that at the timeof the survey, differences among groups of journalists were less (ore more)marked than during other periods. For these reasons, the generalizationsoffered above remain somewhat tentative.Conclusion While agenda-setting studies have mostly dealt with public agendasetting (effects of the media agenda on the public agenda), research hasincreasingly focused on explaining the media agenda itself. Based on theresults of the present study, there is at least some reason to believe that thejournalists agenda-and the agendas of particular groups of journalists-may contribute to our understanding of the media agenda. And perhaps

differences between journalists and the population in terms of issues re-garded as important can explain deviations between the media agenda andthe public agenda. In thisway, research on journalists personal agendascould provide justification for applying the agenda-setting concept to re-search on media content creation (media agenda setting), justificationwhich Becker, in critically commenting on Reeses move in this direction,found Further research is needed to explore the links between thejournalist agenda and traditional lines of agenda-setting research.

NOTES1.See JamesW. Dearing and EverettM.Rogers,Agenda-Setting ( Thou-sand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996); Everett M. Rogers and JamesW. Dearing,Agenda-Setting Research Where Has It Been, Where Is It Going?, inCommunicationYearbook1 ,ed. amesA.Anderson (NewburyPark,C ASage,

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1988), 555-594.2. Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw, The Evolution ofAgenda-Setting Research: Twenty-Five Years in the Marketplace of Ideas,J ournalof Communication43(spring1993): 58-67;Stephen D. Reese, Settingthe Medias Agenda: A Power Balance Perspective, nCommunication Year-book 24, ed. James A. Anderson (Newbury Park, CA Sage, 1991), 309-340;Everett M. Rogers, James W. Dearing, and Dorine Bregman, The Anatomyof Agenda-Setting Research, ournalof Communication43(spring1993):68-84. 3. For a detailed account of the various influences on media content, seePamela .Shoemakerand Stephen D. Reese,Mediating theMessage. TheoriesofinfluencesonMassMedia Content,2d ed. (White Plains, NY: Longman,1996).4. David H. Weaver, ed., with the assistance of Wei Wu, The GlobalJ ournalist.NewsPeople Around the World(Cresskill,NJ:Hampton Press,1998).5. David Weaver, Introduction, in The Global J ournalist,ed. Weaverwith Wu,2.

6. WolfgangDonsbach, Journalismusversus ournalism-einvergleichzum VerMltnis von Medien und PolitikinDeutschland und in den USA, inBeziehungsspiele-Medien und Politik in der ofentlichen Diskussion. Fallstudienund Analysen (Giitersloh,Germany: Verlag Bertelsmann Stiftung,1993), 283-315; John Henningham, Ideological Differences Between Australian Jour-nalists and Their Public,Press/Politics3(winter1998):92-101;Weaver,TheGlobal J ournalist;David H. Weaver andG. Cleveland Wilhoit,TheAmericanJ ournalist in the 2990s. US. News People at the End of an Era (Mahwah, NJ:Erlbaum,1996).7. Thomas E. Patterson and Wolfgang Donsbach, News Decisions:Journalistsas Partisan Actors,Political Communication 13(October-Decem-ber 1996): 455-68.8. Johannes Raabe, Journalistenaus dem Outer Space? Zur Verortungjournalistischer Akteure in der Gesellschaft(paper presented at the annualmeetingof the Deutsche Gesellschaft fiir Publizistik- und Kommunikation-swissenschaft, Utrecht, The Netherlands,1999).9. E.g., Ruth C. Flegel and Steven H. Chaffee, Influences of Editors,Readers, and Personal Opinions on Reporters, J ournalism Quarterly 48(winter1971): 645-51;Patterson and Donsbach, News Decisions; see alsoWolfgang Donsbach, JournalismResearch, inThe German CommunicationYearbook,ed. Hans-Bend Brosius and Christina Holtz-Bacha (Cresskill, NJ:Hampton Press,1999), 159-80.10.Henningham, IdeologicalDifferences.11. For a general discussion of the cohort dimensions relevance tojournalists and to journalism as a whole, see Kazuto Kojima, GenerationalChange and Journalism-Methodology and Tentative Analysis,Studies ofBroadcasting22 (1986): 79-105.12. Weaver,The Global J ournalist.13.MarilynE.Gist,Throughthe Looking Glass. Diversity and ReflectedAppraisalsof the Self in Mass Media, in Women in Mass Communication,2ded., ed. PamelaJ . Creedon (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1993), 104-117;KurtLang, Gladys Engel Lang, Hans-Mathias Kepplinger, and Shone Ehmig,Collective Memory and Political Generations:A Survey of German Journal-ists, Political Communication10(July-September1993):211-29.14. Lang et al., Collective Memory.15. See,e.g., Gist, Through the Looking Glass.16. Weaver,The Global J ournalist.S ~ n n v ~JOURNUSTAGENDA 255



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17. E.g., Carol M. Liebler and Susan . Smith, Tracking Gender Differ-ences: A Comparative Analysis of Network Correspondents and TheirSources, J ournal of Broadcasting b Electronic Media 41 (winter 1997):58-68;SigmanL. Splichal and Bruce Garrison, GenderAsa Factor in NewsroomManagers Views on Covering The Private Livesof Politicians, Mass CommReview22 (1&2,1995): 101-108.18. Kay Mills, What Difference Do Women Journalists Make?, inWomen, Media, and Politics,ed. Pippa Norris (NY:Oxford University Press,1997), 41-55.19. Weaver and Wilhoit,TheAmerican J ournalist.20. Gist,Throughthe Looking Glass,109.21. Shoemaker and Reese,Mediating the Message.22. David Weaver, Women as Journalists, in Women, Media, andPolitics,ed.Pippa Norris(NY:Oxford University Press,1997), 21-40.23. Beate Schneider, Klaus Schonbach, and Dieter Stiirzebecher,Joumalisten mvereinigten Deutschland. Strukturen, Arbeitsweisen undEi nstel l ungeni mOst -West -Vergl ei ch, ublizistik38(3,1993):353-82;Weaverand Wilhoit,The American J ournalist.24. Schneider,Schonbach, and Stiirzebecher,Joumalisten m vereinigtenDeutschland.25. For a broader discussion of power aspects,see Reese, Setting theMedias Agenda.26. SeeDonsbach, Journalismusversus journalism; Denis McQuail,Media Performance.MassCommunication and the Public Interest (London: Sage,1992).27. Beate Schneider, Klaus Schonbach, and Dieter Sturzebecher,Ergebnisse einer Reprasentativbefragg zur Struktur, sozialen Lage undzu den Einstellungen von Journalisten in den neuen Bundeslhdern, inJ ournalismus n den neuen L iindern,ed. Frank Bijckelmann, Claudia Mast, andBeate Schneider (Konstanz, Germany: Universitatsverlag Konstanz, 1994),

28. Beate Schneider, Klaus Schonbach, and Dieter Sturzebecher,Westdeutsche ournalisten im Vergleichjung,professionell und mit Spa@an der ArbeitPublizistik 38 (1, 1993): 5-30; for anEnglish summary, seeKlaus Schoenbach, Dieter Stuerzebecher, and Beate Schneider, GermanJoumalistsin the Early 1990s:East and West, in The Global J ournalist,ed.Weaver with Wu,213-27.29. While the reliability of this summary scale was not satisfying, thescale was regarded as acceptable for the purpose of thi s analysis. Given theavailable survey data, there were only few possible ways of choosing orconstructing an appropriate ndicator of respondents political position. Thethird leftist party, the post-communistPDS(Party of Democratic Socialism)plays a special role in the German party system and was therefore notincludedinthe index. However, two other measures were looked into. First,only the rating of the Social Democratsmightbe used. Second, a principalcomponent analysis of the ratings of all parties was conducted. One of thefactors of the 3-factor solution appeared to measure leftism, the ratings of allthree eft-wing partiesloading highly-and with the same sign-on t.Ontheother hand, the ratingsof the right-wing parties did not load appreciably onthis factor, thus making it a bit suspect. The decision which of the threemeasures to choose did not matter much, however, because the index thatwas eventually used correlatedhighlywith both the single rating(r=.85)andthe PCA factor ( I =.91).

143-230.

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30. For the summarizing interpretation of these and the followingbivariate results, the overall pattern among the other seven issues from theabove list of fourteen ssues was also taken into account.31. However,thsseems to be inconsistentwith the pattern observed forpopular press ournalistssince privatebroadcasting ournalists, too, mightbeexpected to pay more attention to popular issues.32. See Schneider, Schonbach, and Sturzebecher, "WestdeutscheJournalisten"; Schneider, Schonbach, and Stiirzebecher, "Journalisten imvereinigten Deutschland; Weaver and Wilhoit,The American lournulist.33. There are indications that, at the beginning of the199os, youngerGerman journalists had a rather pragmatic professional orientation; theysubscribed ess to idealistic motives, and were ess nterested n communicat-ing theirown deasto the public seeSchneider,SchLinbach,andStiirzebecher,"Westdeutsche ournalisten").The overall trend among allGermanjoumal-ists pointed in a similar direction. Compared with earlier studies, politicalmotivations were somewhat less important in the early 199os, probably

because the diverging values of the fresh cohort of journalists that hadentered the profession in the 1980s (see Schneider, Schonbach, andStiirzebecher, "Westdeutsche Journalisten"; Schneider, Schhbach, andStiirzebecher,"Journalisten im vereinigten Deutschland).34. For influences on the media agenda that have been investigated nprevious research,seeDearing and Rogers,Agenda-Setting; Reese, "Settingthe Media's Agenda."35. A similar sort of self-selectionoccurs in news media with a strongpolitical leaning. For example, leftist journalistswill seek positions in left-wing or liberal rather than right-wing newspapers.36. Weaver and Wilhoit, The American lournulist.37. This s related to the discussion n the agenda-setting iteratureaboutthe limited usefulness of studying ssues n thesenseof topics, free of contentor controversy.SeeLeeB.Becker, "Reflecting on Metaphors," inCommunica-tionYearbook14,ed. amesA. Anderson (NewburyPark,C A Sage,1991), 341-46; Gerald M. Kosicki, "Problems and Opportunities in Agenda-SettingResearch," J ournal of Communication 43 (spring1993): 100-127; D. CharlesWhitney, "Agenda-Setting: Power and Contingency," in CommunicationYearbook14,ed. amesA. Anderson (NewburyPark, CA Sage,1991), 347-56.38. Becker, "Reflecting on Metaphors"; Reese, "Setting the Media's

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