A writer for the French newspaper Libération declares flatly, “My opinion, my personal opinion, is my private business,” drawing a firm boundary between politics and journalism. Across the Atlantic, an editor at Fortune Magazine voices a strikingly similar sentiment, explaining that the media “need to be free of any kind of partisan or religious or parochial kinds of concerns.” In different ways, both journalists are articulating rules for professional life.

What does it mean to be a professional journalist? How do notions of journalistic professionalism differ across national contexts? This study is an exploration of how twenty-four French and American journalists from across the political spectrum talk about what it means to be a professional.

It is commonplace for media sociologists to contrast American journalism's emphasis on objectivity with European journalism's greater openness to the opinions of the reporter. This comparison is usually centered around the distinction between facts and values. While Americans are said to make a fetish of empirical “facts,” Europeans are more willing to allow for the intrusion of the reporter's own “values” into the story.