Sympathy for the devil

Abstract

Although frequent debates about the impact of the Internet on news production and journalism have occurred in France, legal or institutional devices specific to online journalism have not been set up. The lack of regulation of online practices is just a continuation of the French history of media accounting systems (MAS), since very few instruments have ever existed for ‘traditional’ media. Practices of online journalists are not regulated any further than their offline colleagues. Since no formal regulation bodies or sets of rules exist, we focused on the actual practices of French online journalists in order to give an account of the unwritten rules and mechanisms that frame their daily work and, actually, prevent (most of the time) journalistic misbehaviours. The lack of institutionalised online MAS has not turned the French online media world into a journalistic ‘wild west’. Indeed, by studying the practices of these journalists, the aspects that appeared were: 1) opposing positions both in terms of practices and of legitimacy structuring the world of French online journalism; 2) continuity between offline and online journalistic practices; but also 3) changes that the Internet has introduced to journalism.