Class, nationalism and news: The BBC's reporting of Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian revolution

Abstract

This article analyses BBC News Online's reporting of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, using a sample from a broader selection of 304 articles published on BBC News Online between 1998 and 2008. Against the BBC's stated commitment to professional values, we find that the BBC's organizational culture is underpinned by a liberal nationalist worldview, which limits its interpretive capacities. The analysis notes that the liberal nationalism underpinning BBC News Online's reporting limits the interpretive capacities of journalists. The ideologically dominant national history of Venezuela (the exceptionalism thesis) forms an interpretive framework, which synchs with the BBC's general conceptualization of the forms and function of a nation state and thus prevents adequate understanding of the present. Consequently, the coverage of contemporary Venezuelan politics masks the underlying class conflict, instead identifying Chavez, who has emerged seemingly from nowhere, as the key agent of political crisis. The BBC's reliance on a narrative of the disruption of national unity allows it to take sides in the conflict whilst apparently remaining neutral.

Framing the cuts: An analysis of the BBC’s discursive framing of the ConDem cuts agenda

“…Following Billig (1995) and Salter and Weltman (2012), we argue that as an institution, the BBC is ingrained into the cultural fabric of the British state and is structured through the constitutional framework of liberal capitalism, and a class-based liberal nationalism upon which the former rests. During the General Strike of 1926, John Reith, the then Director-General of the BBC, announced: ‘Assuming the BBC is for the people, and that the government is for the people, then the BBC must be for the government in this crisis’ (in Williams, 1998: 100).…”

Class struggle in the era of post-politics: Representing the Swedish port conflict in the news media

“…The hegemonic workings of the media are to integrate deviant perspectives, which, however, are absorbed by the dominant view (Allan, 1998;Gitlin, 2003). Media research on the representation of class issues has shown that a nationalist framework in the media can absorb class-related problems by pointing to national well-being, which is made to cohere with the interests of the elite (Kumar, 2007;Salter & Weltman, 2011). In this way, the media can take a "neutral" stance, include critical voices, and in the end, promote the status quo.…”

Meeting the Good Other: Proper Distance and the Representation of José Mujica in Swedish Feature Journalism

“…Interviews with journalists also reveal that an anti-Chavista sentiment is present in some newsrooms. Salter and Weltman's (2011) analysis of BBC News Online's coverage of Venezuela shows that the liberal nationalism that permeates the reporting overlooks class conflict in Venezuelan politics, leading to constructing Chávez as the source of crisis. Moreover, in studies of the international coverage of Venezuela, Abalo (2015) has shown that news media can relativize democratic principles in the ascription of political legitimacy, that the linking of Chávez to populism and power concentration constructs discourses of an illegitimate democracy, and that discursive differences in how government supporters and opponents are constructed in relation to political rationality and violence serve to construct legitimacy but also othering.…”