A study took an inside look at communicators from Russia and the United States to identify some of the factors that may influence journalists from both countries. Through joint efforts of researchers from both countries, two comparable nationwide surveys were conducted almost simultaneously in the summer and fall of 1992. The study was designed to answer the following research questions: Which roles are rated more or less important by 1,000 Russian and 1,156 U.S. journalists?; What are the major predictors of these ratings of various professional roles by Russian and U.S. journalists?; and Do they differ? If yes, how? In terms of method, the study is a secondary analysis of data collected in the two surveys. Besides frequencies and crosstab analyses to examine different groups' perceptions of professional roles, the study also tried to identify statistically significant predictors of journalists' perceptions of their roles in both countries. Results, show that Russian journalists rank their role as political agenda-setter 12 times as high as do American journalists, whereas American journalists rank the role of government investigator much higher than do Russian journalists. Further, neither Russian nor American journalists see themselves as adversarial, arrogant, or meddlesome. Also, feedback from audience is an important determinant of what roles journalists cast themselves in in both countries. (Contains 5 tables of data and 43 references.) (TB)