Sometimes journalistic professional autonomy is also called journalistic independence. It is a normative concept that assumes that journalists should be completely independent of external structures and power actors in their work. Journalistic professional autonomy is important for journalism to fulfil its democratic function and the means by which journalistic independence and professionalism are manifested. It affords a degree of independence and the opportunity for journalists to make their own decisions. If practitioners of journalism fail to maintain independence from those they cover or if they are unable to serve as independent monitors of power, the content they create ceases to be professional journalism. Journalistic autonomy can be determined by many factors: the character of ownership, level of democracy, nature of the media system, individual characteristics of journalists, or the editorial team’s management style. Henrik Örnebring and Michael Karlsson distinguish journalistic autonomy at three different analytical levels: (1) institutional, referring to the fact that journalists should be independent of other social institutions; (2) individual, referring to the fact that journalists should have the space to make decisions about their work based on their own deliberations; and (3) organizational, referring to the fact that individual decisions can be influenced by the nature of the processes in the newsroom.
