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Modernización a la mexicana: presiones internas y externas determinan al periodismo nacional y local
Abstract
La historia reciente de México ha estado marcada por un constante esfuerzo para instaurar y consolidar un modelo democrático, que permitiera dejar atrás los tiempos de la hegemonía del Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) y abriera la puerta a otros actores que se sumaran a la construcción de una nación más incluyente. La llamada transición a la democracia dio inicio en la década de los ochenta del siglo pasado, cuando el Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) comenzó a ganar elecciones a nivel municipal y estatal; esfuerzo que se vio coronado en el 2000 con el arribo a Los Pinos del primer presidente emanado de la oposición. Las transformaciones experimentadas por el sistema político estuvieron acompañadas de una reestructuración del sistema mediático; o al menos esa era la percepción generalizada de periodistas y académicos internacionales. Sin embargo, hacia el interior, la visión no era tan halagüeña dado que, en el ámbito local -y en especial en las regiones menos desarrolladas- aún permanecian casi intactos muchos rasgos distintivos de los setenta años anteriores a la alternancia partidista.
Con base en lo anterior, el objetivo de este capítulo es proponer un modelo que permita explicar la coexistencia de aspectos liberales
y autoritarios en la prensa mexicana.
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Research on journalists working in contexts of risk has examined either war correspondents on temporary assignments or the psychological effects of covering traumatic events, usually after the events have ended. Although these studies are important, they fail to account for the growing importance of ongoing violence in insecure democracies and its possible consequences for national journalistic practice. We address these issues by examining journalists' risk-reduction practices in Mexico, including self-censorship, following company censorship policies, curtailing street reporting, and concealing sensitive information. Using logistic regressions, we tested occupational, organizational, normative, and contextual conditions as predictors of engagement in these practices. Findings reveal the pervasiveness of risk-reduction practices in Mexico and the complexity of conditions prompting their use, including conditions related to antipress violence, dangerous newsbeats, and the economic insecurity of media firms but also voicing greater support for assertive professional norms. The research sets a baseline for future comparative research that includes greater attention to subnational conditions, dangerous newsbeats, and how violence and uneven state capacity may undermine the economic conditions of media firms.
Los reportes emitidos sobre diversas entidades de la república mexicana confirman que, a pesar de que se efectúan elecciones competitivas en todos los estados, la intervención de los gobiernos estatales en los medios locales sigue siendo la norma. Los periodistas cuentan con contratos muy precarios y el gobierno del estado tiene mayor oportunidad de cooptar su línea editorial a cambio de recursos económicos. Esta investigación muestra cómo los periodistas de medios locales siguen desarrollando una línea editorial oficialista, igual que en la época del autoritarismo, y analiza su situación a partir de las variables “profesionalización de los periodistas” e “intervención de los gobiernos estatales en los medios de comunicación locales”. Para esta investigación se elaboró un estudio de caso sobre el estado de Querétaro; se entrevistó a periodistas y a exfuncionarios de gobierno; se realizó un análisis de contenido y se recopilaron fuentes secundarias que describen las relaciones entre los gobernadores y los medios locales de México. El análisis de los datos sugiere que el estado de Querétaro puede ser un ejemplo del control que ejercen los gobernadores sobre los medios locales.
Broadcast television is the main medium of communication in Mexico, but its news programmes offer biased information regarding political issues, as they tend to privilege governmental sources of information to the detriment of non-official sources. In order to prove this hypothesis, the contents of the two most-watched TV news programmes in Mexico were analysed to identify the political actors that appeared the most, the diversity of sources, and the frequency of appearance. The obtained data were subjected to the regular statistical analyses used in content analysis, while the Gini index, which is a measure of statistical dispersion, was used to establish the degree of imbalance in the representation of the different political actors in news programmes. The findings indicate that the main sources of information included in the TV news programmes were members of Mexico‟s Federal Government and, to a lesser extent, the legislative power and the state governments. Furthermore, of the different political parties operating in Mexico, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the current ruling party, is the most represented in TV news programmes. Unsurprisingly, the main issues addressed in TV news programmes were economy, security and politics, which are precisely also the main issues included in the agenda of the political actors. The empirical evidence confirms the lack of modernisation in Mexican journalism, which is characterised, among other aspects, by the absence of investigative journalism and its adherence to the agenda of the government, particularly the federal administration.
The aim of this paper is to analyze the state of the investigative journalism in Mexico, especially the one practiced at the local level in the provinces. That is, rather than considering the so-called national press – located in Mexico City-which might not offer an accurate picture of the country as a whole, this study is based upon a case study conducted in Morelia, the capital city of the state of Michoacán. The empirical evidence will show that there is an evident divergence regarding the practice of the investigative journalism: on the one hand, journalists are aware of what this concept involves and they consider that they practice it on a regular basis; but, on the other, the content analysis prove otherwise. In other words, the account of what is actually printed significantly differs from the news workers' perceptions, because the former shows a poorly developed journalistic investigation practice. Furthermore, this is also the opinion of their sources, who argue that local press lacks of investigative stories and shows an evident " press release dependence ". As a result of this situation, this paper argues that journalism in Morelia is instrumentalized by the political power, which is also a reflection of the Mexican media system. In sum, the Morelia case will demonstrate that the investigative journalism in the provinces of Mexico oscillates between ideals and realities. As a result, reporters show low levels of professionalization.
Resumen: Este artículo sienta las bases de lo que llamaremos " modelo liberal capturado " , un concepto teórico que ayuda a explicar que la falta de efectividad en la aplicación de las normas, el ejercicio pragmático del poder, la configuración de alianzas de conveniencia y la complicidad entre las clases mediáticas y las políticas explican en conjunto el tipo de desarrollo y la concentración mediática en la región. El modelo sirve para explicar las dos tendencias en la región: por un lado la intensificación del poder corporativo de los medios y por otro, el reposicionamiento de los Estados Nacionales –y del poder ejecutivo en específico– en la definición de políticas de comunicación en abierto antagonismo con los medios privados, pero no necesariamente en defensa del interés público. Habría dos aspectos clave que se discuten en cada uno de los casos presentados para explicar la captura: a) " el grado de (in)eficiencia regulatoria " y b) el (limitado) papel de vigilante de los medios. Este trabajo condensa los postulados, argumentos y hallazgos contenidos en el libro de 1 reciente publicación: Guerrero, Manuel Alejandro y M. Márquez-Ramírez (2014) " Media Systems and Communication Policies in Latin America , Londres: Palgrave, Macmillan.
In this article we review research published since the publication of Comparing Media Systems which seeks to operationalize concepts discussed in that work and to test the framework proposed there or to put forward alternatives or revisions. We focus on works that deal with the original 18 countries covered in Comparing Media Systems, and consider the progress made in developing quantitative measures across these cases for key variables, research testing the grouping of cases in Comparing Media Systems, research extending the comparative analysis of Western media systems to new media, and research on convergence toward the Liberal Model. In the final section, we focus on limitations of the research produced during the 10 years following the publication of Comparing Media Systems, particularly the heavy emphasis on quantitative operationalization, and some of the difficulties in using quantitative analysis to investigate complex, dynamic systems.
Building on a survey of media institutions in eighteen West European and North American democracies, Hallin and Mancini identify the principal dimensions of variation in media systems and the political variables which have shaped their evolution. They go on to identify three major models of media system development (the Polarized Pluralist, Democratic Corporatist and Liberal models) to explain why the media have played a different role in politics in each of these systems, and to explore the forces of change that are currently transforming them. It provides a key theoretical statement about the relation between media and political systems, a key statement about the methodology of comparative analysis in political communication and a clear overview of the variety of media institutions that have developed in the West, understood within their political and historical context.