Why bite the hand that feeds you? Politicians’ and journalists’ perceptions of common conflicts

Abstract

The conflicts between politicians and journalists might prejudice the culture of democratic discourse, even though their relationship is not always conflictual. Although some studies have touched upon the topic, we know little about why these conflicts arise concretely. To fill this gap, this article first approaches such common conflicts from the perspective of Bourdieu’s field theory, which has been argued to entail expectations of conflicts because it explicates the ways in which agents can enhance their personal symbolic capital by playing in the respective neighboring field while following distinct professional doxas. Methodologically, our argument relies on the responses of political and journalistic elites (n = 862) who were surveyed in Germany, Austria, and France. The countries represent diverging media systems and journalistic cultures within the Western model that potentially influence the type of conflicts in the relationship. Based on qualitative and quantitative analyses of the 599 reasons for conflict expressed by the respondents, the article identifies two main types of conflict. One pertains to the journalistic doxa, as it involves the overruling of political norms by journalistic standards in reporting, and the other pertains to the political doxa when overruling journalistic values. We evaluate the theoretical contribution of Bourdieu’s approach to making sense of conflict in the politician–journalist relations.