Truth and conditions of practicing the profession of online journalist
Vérité et conditions d'exercice du métier de journaliste en ligne
Résumé
This article questions the relations between journalists, truth and reality. It is based on data collected through a qualitative research on the professional identity of French and Brazilian online journalists. Based on sociological approach of their discourse on work conditions, it points out how hard it became to apply what they considered the ideal proceedings to gatherer, treat and verify the information on the daily practice of online newsrooms. Through in-depth interviews, it discusses the strategies employed by journalists to justify the non-attendance of the normative injunction to produce "truthfully" information in both countries. These strategies are based on a critical discourse about some central elements of online journalism news production (temporality, polyvalence and work dispersion) that results on a major constraint to journalists" work.