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This article outlines the extent to which journalists working in European minority-language media believe that their journalistic role within the community is strictly professional or alternatively should incorporate a complementary function as language supporters or activists. A weighted and reasonably representative survey of 230 journalists from 10 European minority-language communities (Basque, Catalan, Galician, Corsican, Breton, Frisian, Irish, Welsh, Scottish-Gaelic, and Sámi) indicates that journalists favour a journalistic professional activity which incorporates a role as language-backing actors. This may underlie the idea of a contextual approach to the concept of journalism.

This article studies and compares the current print and broadcast media and journalism structures in the Catalan, Galician and Basque linguistic communities, and also the degree of website development among traditional media organizations (press, radio, television). The media systems serving the three autochthonous languages are studied in terms of media type, ownership and circulation. Full-time journalists working in the monolingual minority-language media organizations were assessed in terms of numbers and profiles. The relative weight of the media systems in terms of the population of speakers was also evaluated and results showed that the Catalan and Basque systems were proportionately balanced, contrary to the Galician media, which had a negative relative weight.