5 - Making Europe News

Summary

Media performance is often held responsible for the European Union's perceived democratic deficit and its lack of visibility, resonance, and legitimacy in the hearts and minds of citizens. Politicians are never slow to blame the media when their EU integrationist attempts stall. Likewise, some academics claim that a supposedly Eurosceptic press is influential when EU projects fail to gain public support, but they seldom mention the media as a causal factor in cases when integration advances (for an example, see Taylor 2008). For their part, EU elites consider that better quality coverage in national media would be the best way to improve their own public legitimacy (Michailidou 2007). Thus, a link is often made between the European Union's perceived “deficit” and mass media performance. In this chapter, we address an important aspect of media performance, that is, the role of journalists, the actors who supply the information about Europe to the public domain. The first aim is to provide a general picture of how journalism has responded to the transformation of politics resulting from advancing European integration. The second is to examine whether, based on journalists' own assessments, this has involved a transformation of political journalism, and, if so, in what ways.