Reporting Europe in new markets : restrictions, challenges and opportunities for Baltic journalism

Abstract

This article gives an insight into European Union (EU) news reporting practices as performed by journalists in Lithuania and Estonia. In a qualitative study conducted within the 6 th Framework Program project “Adequate Information Management in Europe, AIM” (2004- 2007) over thirty journalists from the two Baltic countries were interviewed. The results obtained are interpreted in the light of constraints and conditions for the Europeanisation of the day-to-day political reporting practices in the Baltic media. According to the findings, very often, Baltic journalists experience strong pressures to nationalize (i.e. to “domesticate”) European news to fit the frames of national politics and, thus, to meet the expectations of national audience. In other words, European news is produced as a product to be sold to individual consumers, which leads to the emergence of “audience-driven” or so-called “secular” journalism. At the same time, journalists both in Lithuania and Estonia acknowledge that European reporting can be assessed as a challenge to improve media performance in their countries. European news is gaining importance in the Baltic States; journalists also feel that reporting about EU helps to re-orient the audience and to re-direct its attention from local political scandals (which very often tend to be a number one topic especially in the national press) to the matters of a more general – political and social – concern.