Protecting democracy or conspiring against it? Media and politics in Latin America: A glimpse from Brazil

Abstract

Political communication researchers often take for granted that a free press is one of the most important pillars of a solid democracy. Based on the western Fourth Estate model, they suppose that a free press naturally acts as an accountability agent, by protecting the interests of common citizens against government corruption and political abuses. Like many other nonwestern regions of the world, studies about the relationship between media and politics in Latin America usually adopt a ‘transition to democracy’ approach, by evaluating them more or less positively in reference to their degree of conformity to western examples. Typically, these studies describe advances of Latin American media toward a more democratic model or point to the obstacles preventing this from happening. However, these studies rarely explore a third possibility: What about cases in which the free press seemingly conspire against the democratic order? The 2016 parliamentary coup that overthrew President Dilma Rousseff in Brazil provides a vivid example of such a possibility. Based on this case, this article contends that analyses about the press/politics relations in Latin American societies must consider other factors, such as those related to their postcolonial nature. In particular, I argue that Latin American elites and their media portray themselves as a westernized minority endowed with a civilizing mission regarding their societies as a whole, and manipulate the Fourth Estate discourse toward their own benefit, as a means for securing and legitimizing their own privilege.

Limits and paradox of TeleSUR: the media as a political agent of regional (dis)integration

“…Television politics in Latin America legitimized narratives anchored in the ideals of modernity and, more recently, of a global culture (Featherstone 1999). It therefore reproduced a dynamic routine in the center-periphery relationship, as it co-constituted the identity-difference relationship, and operated according to a political transnational parallelism (Hallin and Mancini 2004;Chakrabarty 2000;Albuquerque 2017).…”

Which Crimes Make the News? An Analysis of Discursive Matrices Permeating Brazilian Investigative Reporting

“…In a recent article analyzing the Brazilian situation after the 2016 19 coup, Albuquerque (2017) indicates the need for a postcolonial approach to the relation between the press and politics in Brazil. According to the author, the Western model of the Fourth Estate-according to which freedom of the press naturally acts in favor of accountability, protecting citizens' common interest from corrupt governments-cannot be taken as a universal rule.…”

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“…In taped conversations, political leaders mentioned a "national pact" to "staunch the blood flow" by ousting Rousseff and naming Vice President Michel Temer as the new president (Valente 2016). The industry sector and the mainstream media also did their part to unseat Rousseff (Albuquerque 2017).…”