Internally restricted and externally free: Professional freedom of journalists in Kerala

The professional freedom (PF) journalists enjoy in their field has got the capacity to decide the quality of content they produce. The freedom of journalists evolved as an independent area of research only in the last decades of the twentieth century. The present study seeks to map the PF of journalists in Kerala, a state in India, well known for its high development indices, 100 per cent literacy and high rate of media penetration. The Professional Freedom Index is developed taking cues from Chomsky’s propaganda model, Shoemaker and Reese and Hanitzsch’s ideas along with the World Press Freedom Index indicators. The PF is conceived to have two components: internal professional freedom (IPF) and external professional freedom (EPF) with five contributing factors each. The scales for PF, along with its components and corresponding factors, were validated by Cronbach’s alpha values. A survey of 541 journalists across the state shows that they are restricted more by self-regulating organizations than by the external factors as they enjoy more EPF.