Professional Freedom and Satisfaction of Young Journalists in Kerala, India

In the last three decades, precisely since 1990s, media in Asia is transformed a lot with the profound impact of digitization, corporatization, monopolization, and religious and political trends, all implicating the journalistic profession, particularly professional freedom and job satisfaction enjoyed by journalists. This paper explores the professional freedom and satisfaction enjoyed by young journalists who entered the profession in the 21st century. In this study, professional freedom (PF) is conceived as a combination of external and internal freedoms which are ensured with the absence of both external (social) and internal (organizational/personal) factors that curb a journalist’s professional autonomy. A journalist enjoys external professional freedom (EPF) when living in a society that guarantees the absence of physical threats, extra-constitutional interventions, economic and political pressures and threats from religious sources. Internal professional freedom (IPF) guarantees freedom from personalized pressures, freedom from organizational pressures, freedom from work level pressures, freedom from owner level pressures, and freedom from supervisor level pressures. In a similar fashion, Professional Satisfaction (PS) is also conceptualized as a mix of External Professional Satisfaction (EPS) and Internal Professional Satisfaction (IPS). The factors that contribute to internal professional satisfaction (IPS) include work itself, personal growth & advancement, individual responsibility, professional status and work-family relation. Pay and working conditions, organizational morale, organizational support, supervision and co-worker relation constitute the extrinsic factors of professional satisfaction (EPS). A survey of 201 young journalists (below 30 years) in Kerala, a state in India, reveals that young journalists enjoy moderate level of professional freedom and satisfaction. They feel that their professional freedom is curbed more by internal (organizational/personal) pressures than by external /social pressures. Also they report that they get more job satisfaction from internal (organizational/personal) factors than from external / social factors. And, these trends are consistent across many demographic and professional variables like gender, political affiliation, and religious affiliation, media education, type of media, professional experience, salary range, and field of work of journalists.

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