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Paper short abstract:

The communication intends to identify how the media discourse reflects the positioning of Ivorian journalists in their society, through the analysis of articles from two private newspapers and from the public-service daily.

Paper long abstract:

We intend to identify how the media discourse reflects the positioning of Ivorian journalists in their society, through the analysis of articles from two private newspapers and from the public-service daily.

We analyze how the Ivorian journalists perceive their professional identity and build a certain image of it by looking at the journalistic metadiscourses, more specifically at the articles related to the journalists of Le Nouveau Courrier jailed for theft of official documents.

The defense of the jailed journalists generates a professional mobilization that gathers colleagues of all political affiliations. This situation contrasts with the antagonism of views usually expressed by each newspaper, according to the political line advocated by its owner.

However, the case of the jailed journalists also shows the constraints linked to the practice of journalism in Ivory Coast. It highlights how journalism continues to be affected by the socio-historical context in which it was born during the "spring of the press". Nowadays, the Ivorian press remains a partisan press.

Thus, beyond the unanimous mobilization of all the journalists, differences are visible. The opposition newspaper accuses the President to be responsible for the imprisonment of the journalists; the newspaper close to the government does not join the critical point of view expressed by the professional associations; and the public-service daily avoids entering the debate.

The corpus is put into perspective by numerous interviews with journalists, conducted during fieldworks (2010 and 2012).