Tradition with a Twist

Abstract

Modeled partly after American journalist surveys, this study taps Bangladeshi journalists’ perceptions of the importance of certain libertarian and development press functions as well as their actual practice of these functions. It also puts to empirical test ‘theoretic’ factors of libertarian and development functions suggested by Ramaprasad and Kelly to assess their reproducibility in Bangladesh. The study finds that Bangladeshi journalists consider libertarian functions more important than development functions and that there is a gap between perceived importance and actual practice for most functions. The ‘theoretic’ factors replicate quite well and where they are different they provide an opportunity to refine press theory.