Barbie Zelizer argues that the incorporation of tools of humanistic inquiry, for example, narrative and literary studies in the analysis of journalism, contributes to the examination of the journalism profession and how the authority of this profession is constructed in order to hold the members of its community together. Assuming that discourse both constitutes the social world and is in itself a constitution of other social practices, I shall seek to show how the news texts constitute the war event while simultaneously being reflections of journalistic identity and practices.

In particular, the following analysis will focus on the hybridity of roles and discourses as manifested in news texts taken from four émigré newspapers as examples of hybrid media. This is to illustrate the hybridity of roles (objective observer and reality interpreter). Throughout the news texts, reporters (or the news institution as a whole) serve as mediators between news sources and news audience. They also provide a means of mapping social reality, with the “collage of events” from various parts of the world assembled together in a shared routine. News texts, then, contribute to the upholding of the narrative of journalism as profession.