86

This paper discusses the professional legitimacies and illegitimacies within a specific subgroup of the social world of French journalism, that of media students in the most prestigious schools. The questionnaire-based survey, completed by interviews of graduates, show how permanent some hierarchies are. These hierarchies can also be found in many other cultural fields following these oppositions: internal/external, national/local, mainstream/specialized. It also demonstrates the relative decline in prestige of the section on “Politics” against the consecration of the “Society” section, thereby revealing the importance of economic rationales to the detriment of partisan considerations, the open rejection and denial of its commercial aspect, as well as a predominantly left-wing political orientation. The Schools of Journalism themselves contribute to the differentiated internalization of such professional legitimacies by the students, but these turn out to be essentially forms of social legitimacies in a broad sense. On the one hand, these hierarchies in journalism vary depending on the students’ social backgrounds, academic capital, as well as gender. On the other hand, they are determined by the social status the students aim to achieve and, following the principle of homology, by the status of the audiences they wish to address, namely, for the most part, the dominant subgroups of the social space.