Determinants of Journalists’ Autonomy and Safety: Evidence from the Worlds of Journalism Study

The present study is an attempt to examine how objective structural political forces and subjective perception of political influences determine journalists’ autonomy and safety. The evidence is based on responses representing journalists from 65 countries, which adds to the cross-cultural robustness of the results that inform theory and that bear significant implications for efforts of journalists’ protection. The results reveal a strong positive correlation between press freedom and democracy in one hand and editorial autonomy and safety of journalists on the other. The results also show a strong negative correlation between journalists’ perception of political influences and editorial autonomy and safety. The correlation between journalists’ autonomy and safety was not as strong as expected.