News Reporting about Genetically Modified Organisms in the Context of Different Journalistic Ideologies

The aim of this article is to research how Slovenian journalists carry out the professional ideology of objectivity, which is prevalently founded on the Anglo-American model of journalism and demands that journalists devote the same amount of space or time to all actors involved in an event. The study was performed on a case of news reporting about one of the most controversial biotechnological topics, i.e., the introduction of the cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). All previous studies about news reporting on this topic in European media showed that journalists were mostly constructing the anti-GMOs discourse, based on sources which put the risks of GMOs at the forefront. Because these studies used only quantitative methods and analysed only the elite press, our study combines methods and includes diverse media in the sample. Both quantitative analysis (content analysis) and qualitative analysis (critical discourse analysis) of news items about GMOs, published in the Slovenian press, television programs and the press agency in 2009 and 2010 revealed that journalists predominantly cited sources which opposed the introduction of the cultivation of GMOs, and they explicitly expressed their own opinions, which were against GMOs. Journalists of tabloids were particularly negative in their views; they tried to mobilize the audience to boycott GMOproducts. The research indicated that journalists did not follow the American tradition of equally citing different opinions about the topic and not express-