Abstract
In the same way that a person can have a political or a personal ideology, professional identities
and how a craft or occupation is practiced may be influenced by what can be labelled as a
“professional ideology”. Through interviews with producers of the Afrikaans radio
programmes Monitor, Spektrum, and Naweek-Aktueel, this research shows that there is indeed
such a thing as a “journalism ideology”. The interviews focused on how “internal influences”
such as a journalist’s background and training, newsroom routines and “external influences”
such as the audience influenced the decisions they made in choosing news stories and
producing content. This “journalism ideology” influences the producers and in turn the news
content of these current affairs programmes that are listened to daily by almost two million
listeners. The conclusion drawn from the study is that, although the participants’ “journalism
ideology” largely determines the news stories for their programmes, structural forces,
newsroom routines and organisational constraints often dictate their actions. Finally, although
all the participants saw themselves as “watchdogs of democracy” internal pressures within the
SABC could endanger that role.