Public Debates over Europe in Britain: Exceptional and Conflict-Driven?

This article addresses `media performance' and European governance. It examines how newspaper journalists view different aspects of their practices and roles in this process. First, the study provides a general picture of how journalism has responded to the transformation of politics resulting from advancing European integration. Second, it examines whether, based on journalists' assessments, this has involved a transformation of the practices and norms of journalism. The sample consists of 110 interviews with journalists from newspapers in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland, plus four transnationals. We find a limited but emergent `Europeanization' of journalism, carried by transnational newspapers serving specialist audiences and to a limited extent by European correspondents on the national press. Regarding `performance', we consider that journalists would be able to adapt and `Europeanize' to a greater extent if politicians improved their own communication efforts and made European governance more relevant to citizens.