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News Cultures or “Epistemic Cultures”?

In order to gain an understanding of journalists’ conceptions of what being factual means, the present work supplements the existing insights of journalism studies and the sociology of knowledge and philosophy with data about journalists’ beliefs regarding the importance of detached observation and reporting things as they are, spanning 62 countries (N = 18,248). In essence, our goal is to contribute to a future theoretical account of why journalists possess the beliefs that they do vis-à-vis truth-seeking and knowledge-acquisition. Data point to a significant relationship between reporters’ level of freedom and their conceptions of knowledge and reality. We discuss the implications of these findings for the debate about the possibilities of universality and context-dependence of journalistic fact-finding.