Professionalism, Financial Compulsion, or Addiction? The Working Conditions and Professional Self-Image of Hungarian Journalists from Romania
摘要
This chapter focuses on the working conditions and professional self-image of Hungarian journalists from Romania, discussing the change of some demographical features of Hungarian journalist population from the country, how journalists perceive their work, and how their work is shaped by being in a minority status. It presents how the number, gender distribution, average age of the journalists have changed since the fall of communism in December of 1989, a time period when online media, commercial radio stations, and TV channels have appeared in the market. It also presents a conflict of Hungarian journalists of Romania: a conflict between professionalism and the protection of the Hungarian minority community. This dichotomy influences media management, media discourse, professional standards of journalists, and leads to features that frame journalistic work, and in the end the professional self-image of journalists. The paper is a review of existing literature data on the Hungarian media from Romania written by Hungarian researchers from Romania, from the last three decades. I found it important to systematically overview this literature, and to present how some characteristics of Hungarian journalist society have changed, and how the professional self-image is still influenced by 70–80-year-old features, adding some of my updates as well.