Ethnography of News Policy Translation in Newsroom of IRIB’s TV Channel 1 Evening News (21:00)

One of the oldest discussions among newsroom researchers is the social control of newsrooms in order to maintain the news policy in the process of converting it to massage. In organizations, social control is tied up to the concept of policy implementation. The concept has different dimensions the most important of which is the translation and interpretation of policy for the implementers with the aim of creating shared understanding between the decision-maker and the implementer. With due attention to the nature of media, the importance of this fact in media organizations is more than the other organizations considering the nature of media act as a creative action and transferring news as an extremely variable act in terms of decision-making. Therefore, the present study examines the process of news policies’ translation for the newsroom of IRIB’s TV channel 1 evening news (21:00), through ethnography. In order to answer the main question, the research will evaluate three levels of the political service, TV news broadcasting administration, and within the evening news’ newsroom. At each of these levels, methods like oral interpretation (via meetings, phone or face-to-face communication) and written (via proceedings or the messengers) in the form, and declaring practices (imperative or persuasive) or participatory approaches have been identified for vertical and horizontal translations and were analyzed according to journalists (including manager, editor-in-chief or editor). This research suggests increasing the transparency of policies through making them closer to the decisions, reducing intermediaries in translation, explaining the reasons during translation and the necessity of having more confidence in journalists to the IRIB’s managers.