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JOU0010.1177/1464884917738376Journalismde Albuquerque

Original Article

Journalism

Protecting democracy or
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DOI: 10.1177/1464884917738376
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A glimpse from Brazil

Afonso de Albuquerque
Fluminense Federal University, 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.

Keywords
Brazil, democracy, Fourth Estate, journalism, Latin America, postcolonial

Corresponding author:
Afonso de Albuquerque, Fluminense Federal University, Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro 24210-590, Brazil.
Email: afonsoal@uol.com.br
2 Journalism 00(0)

On 31 August 2016, Dilma Rousseff’s second government ended prematurely, after a

process of impeachment, which political analysts have described as a parliamentary coup
(Santos, 2017; Santos and Guarnieri, 2016; Souza, 2016; Van Dijk, 2017). This was a
surprising outcome, given that the Brazilian democracy was considered more solid than
most others in South America. Brazil was praised for developing a web of accountability
system, involving institutions operating within the three branches of government, the
Ministério Público (Prosecutors’ Office), the media, and organizations from the civil soci-
ety (Praça and Taylor, 2012). In particular, it has been noted as a positive evolution of the
Brazilian news media toward a more autonomous and investigative behavior (Porto,
2011). Yet, the most tantalized aspect of the coup is that it does not happen in spite of, but
with the active participation of accountability institutions (Santos and Guarnieri, 2016),
and, particularly important here, the mainstream news media, which adopted a strong
negative bias against Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party, hereafter PT) govern-
ments, and presented them as a threat to democracy (Albuquerque, 2016; Azevedo, 2017;
Goldstein, 2017; Van Dijk, 2017).
The impeachment followed a huge judicial process targeting political corruption
(Operação Lava Jato), but no direct charges were made against the president herself – a
sine qua nonrequisite for justifying an impeachment process, according to the Brazilian
law (Santos, 2017) – apart from minor financial irregularities known as pedaladas fis-
cais. Indeed, only two days after Rousseff’s impeachment, the Senado Federal approved
a law establishing that pedaladas fiscais were not a crime (IG São Paulo, 2016).
Interesting enough, Vice President Michel Temer, who succeeded Rousseff, and many
deputados federais (federal representatives) as well as senators voting for her impeach-
ment were accused of involvement in corruption schemas. Indeed, evidences suggest that
some members of the Brazilian Congress perceived Rousseff’s impeachment as an
opportunity to end Lava Jato’s investigations in their own interest (Alessi, 2016). Other
institutions involved in the impeachment process obtained particular benefits from this,
too. For instance, in August, the president of the Brazilian Supreme Court (Supremo
Tribunal Federal, thereafter STF), Justice Ricardo Lewandowski negotiated with provi-
sional president Michel Temer and leaders of the Congress a huge salary increase, which
Rousseff had vetoed (Cruz and Uribe, 2016). Mainstream media also obtained an expres-
sive increase in the government advertising budget (Antunes, 2016). What does all this
mean?
This article contends that the prevailing ‘transition to democracy’ framework – which
analyzes Latin American societies in function of their greater or lesser willing or ability
of emulating western examples (Albuquerque, 2005) – is unable to cope with the self-
interested behavior of the Brazilian so-called accountability institutions behind the 2016
coup. Otherwise, it is argued that the postcolonial and peripheral nature of these societies
provide a promising angle of analysis on this regard. Latin American societies remain
defining their identity in a relational manner, as an inferior version of Europe or even the
United States (Mignolo, 2005). Still more importantly, they experience the ‘West versus
the Rest’ divide as an internal question, as their elites perceive themselves as the dis-
placed bastions of western civilization, surrounded by people whose culture and prac-
tices are, ultimately, incompatible with it. Given that the deference to foreign models is
a core element of their self-legitimacy discourse (Whitehead, 2006), elites controlling
de Albuquerque 3

the mainstream media and other accountability institutions often justify their authority
claims based on a rationale closer to an internal colonialism model (as civilizing agents)
than a democratic one, deriving from the people’s will (Albuquerque, 2016).
Tensions arise in these societies when elected governments do not conform to the
elites’ criteria of what democracy should be. This kind of dilemma became common
across the region, in the wake of the ‘left turn’ that took place in a large number of Latin
American governments in the 2000s (Castañeda, 2006; Kitzberger, 2012). In these cir-
cumstances, the media and other accountability institutions can undermine democracy, at
the same time they claim to defend it, under the argument that it is necessary to protect
democracy against people’s bad choices. Arguably, this happened in Venezuela, in 2002
(Lugo-Ocando and Santamaria, 2015), and Brazil, in 2016.

A distorted mirror? Latin American media in the light of

political communication studies
In a general manner, political communication studies take for granted the traditional
model center/periphery relations and, accordingly, picture Latin America as a sort of
distorted mirror of the West. Based on this, they describe Latin American societies in
function of their corresponding conformity to western standards relatively to media
democracy. These studies adopt two basic approaches to the issue: They either describe
advances of Latin American media toward a more democratic model (media opening) or
point to the obstacles preventing it from happening. Both approaches can be used in a
complementary manner.

Obstacles to media democracy

Along the last decade, a rich body of literature emerged to explain why Latin American
societies were not able to develop a consistent Fourth Estate, compatible with the require-
ments of an established democracy. Most of these studies explore the idea that there are
barriers hampering the development of a truly democratic media (Hughes and Lawson,
2005; Porto, 2015).
Some of these barriers refer to particular characteristics of the economic foundations
of the media system in Latin American societies. In most of them, public service media
have been fragile or nonexistent (Matos, 2012; Porto, 2015), and the media property is
concentrated in the hands of few family-owned organizations (Boas, 2013; Sinclair,
2002). Media concentration fosters a hostile environment to political diversity, and pro-
vides media organizations with incentives to perceive themselves as political agents in
their own right. The absence of a solid media regulatory framework contributes to
increase the political influence of these powerful media organizations, at the same time
it reduces its accountability duties (Matos, 2012; Porto, 2015). In fact, as it will be dis-
cussed further, efforts for regulating the media have been often received by mainstream
media groups with mistrust and even open hostility, as attempts of limiting the freedom
of the press, and as potential threats to democracy (Macrory, 2013).
The second group of obstacles to media democracy refers to a variegated set of factors
limiting the professional autonomy of journalists or the freedom of the press, as a whole.
4 Journalism 00(0)

They include censorship (Smith, 1997), economic pressures and political and legal har-
assment of media organizations (Kellam and Stein, 2016), and even violence against jour-
nalists (Alves, 2005). These intimidating, repressive practices have been usually associated
to the authoritarian – and in most cases military – regimes that preceded democratization
(Alves, 2005; Boas, 2013; Lawson, 2002). They also have been identified in neo-authori-
tarian regimes, as the Fujimori government in Peru, in the 1990s (Conagham, 2002), and
associated to populist leftwing regimes existing in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and
Argentina, in the 2000s and 2010s (Macrory, 2013; Waisbord, 2013).
Finally, the third group of obstacles includes social and cultural factors opposing the
full implementation of the rule of the law in Latin American societies. Some of them
associate these obstacles to specific historical circumstances fostering them, as for
instance the survival of collusive patterns of relationship between private media owners
and the state, inherited from the period of authoritarian rule (Boas, 2013; Fox and
Waisbord, 2002; Matos, 2012). Other authors envisage more diffused patterns affecting
the political culture in the region. Some of them refer to problems existing everywhere,
for instance corruption (Alves, 2005) and clientelism (Hallin and Papathanossopoulos,
2002), which, arguably, are particularly influent in Latin America. Others refer to
arrangements characteristic of Latin America, as for instance the ‘Captured Liberal’
media system model, which, according to Guerrero (2014) defines the peculiar charac-
teristics of media systems in Latin America. This model is Liberal only to a certain
measure: Although the media are predominantly commercial, the full development of the
characteristics associated to the Liberal model have been undermined by their ‘late
development under historical circumstances that made dependent on governments and
public funding’ (Guerrero, 2014: 59), which results in a low quality of regulatory effi-
ciency and a high degree of interference in media and journalism that inhibits the exer-
cise of their watchdog role.

Media opening
This approach looks to the issue on its bright side, since the problems described in the
previous section are supposed to be on their way to being solved, or at least attenuated.
Taylor Boas presents a particularly optimistic version of this argument. According to
him, ‘collusion between national executives and mass media in Latin America is
largely a thing of the past’ given that ‘the political scenario underlying these cozy rela-
tions has definitely been transformed’ (Boas, 2013: 70–71). In a similar manner, Alves
(2005) sustains that, in the last decades, ‘journalism has evolved throughout the region
toward an independent and aggressive style, more attuned with the role of the free
press as a fundamental tool with the checks and balance necessary for a working
democracy’ (p. 181).
Many studies on media opening in Latin America accentuate the role that market
competition plays on this respect. According to Lawson (2002), market competition is
the key factor for explaining the emergence of a Fourth Estate in Mexico, given it ‘stimu-
lated media outlets to take into account the demands of their audiences, rather than the
preferences of official censors’ (p. 6). Similar arguments were raised by Silvio Waisbord
(2000) for explaining the development of investigative journalism in South America.
de Albuquerque 5

From distortion to transition?

Taken on their own, the studies mentioned above describe adequately significant aspects
of the relationship between media and politics in Latin America. However, the transition
to democracy (or democratization) framework (Voltmer, 2013), which lies beneath both
the ideas of media opening and obstacles to media democracy presents some limits that
are worth mentioning. In short, they consider Latin American media and societies from
outside, in reference to a teleological narrative that supposes that societies around the
world tend to converge toward the western advanced democracies’ model.
Research on political transition gained ground in the wake of the so-called third wave of
democracy (Huntington, 1991), and the collapse of the communist regimes in the Soviet
Union and the Eastern/Central Europe. Initially, these events raised the expectations about
the possibility of a western-style Liberal Democracy model to triumph worldwide. Soon, it
became clear these expectations were exaggerated and, as the result, the focus of the
research shifted emphasizing the distance, rather than the similarities existing between the
old democracies and the ‘transitional’ societies, which were classified according to a scale
of failure. With the exception of a few cases, they were mostly classified as ‘second class,’
or ‘defective’ (Merkel, 2004) democracies or, worse, as proto-authoritarian societies –
‘hybrid’ or ‘gray zone’ regimes (Diamond, 2002). Recently, a number of scholars have
raised questions about the centrality of the concept of democracy in journalism research
and the teleological narrative structured around it. Zelizer (2013) and Josephi (2013)
argued that the emphasis of literature on the normative nexus between journalism and
democracy inhibit their ability to understand how journalism is practiced in different socie-
ties around the world. Roudakova (2012) also noted the scarcity of research on historical
processes that does not fit the liberal ‘media and democratization’ narrative (p. 262).
The resilience of this model does not happen by chance. Rather, it is closely associated
to a political, ‘democracy promotion’ agenda that, in the last decades, has been fostered
by sectors associated to the US government, international financial institutions as the
World Bank (Kramarz and Momani, 2013), and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
and think tanks closely associated to them, as the Freedom House (Giannone, 2010), and
the Transparency International (Bukovansky, 2015). This agenda privileges the efficiency
of political institutions over the dimension of people’s participation in the government. As
this will be further discussed, this is not without consequences for our subject of analysis.
By defending that accountability institutions – the free press, in special – are the core pil-
lars of democracy, they contribute to empower the sectors of Latin American elites con-
trolling them over the people.

Unity in diversity: The postcolonial identity in Latin

America
An alternative approach focuses on the postcolonial and peripheral character of Latin
American societies in order to discuss media/politics relations. Contrary to the ‘transi-
tion to democracy’ approach, the postcolonial perspective does not take the western
centrality for granted, but perceives it as resulting from asymmetrical patterns of rela-
tionship historically established, resulting from the colonial process and imperialism
6 Journalism 00(0)

(Appadurai, 1996; Chaturvedi, 2000), which allowed western societies to allege cham-
pioning universal values – a phenomenon that Wallerstein (2006) named European
Universalism. However, given that colonial experiences were not alike everywhere, it
is reasonable to suppose that the problems experienced by the diverse postcolonial
societies differ significantly. Most postcolonial studies refer to societies that became
independent countries after World War II, and many of them highlight the manners in
which the European thought and institutions were imposed and marginalized – as less
civilized or as relics from the past – those previously in nonwestern societies (e.g.
Chakrabarty, 2000; Said, 1978).
The postcolonial experience in Latin America differs sharply from this model
(Bortoluci and Jansen, 2013). Unlike Middle East and Eastern Asian societies, which
were able to preserve their own ‘ageless’ traditions and religions (Ortiz, 2000; Whitehead,
2006) – providing them with a barrier against a fuller western influence – the colonial
process in the Americas erased much of the cultural heritage of the previous indigenous
societies. In consequence, American societies share language and much of the culture of
their former colonizers (Anderson, 1983). On the other hand, Latin America opposes
Anglo America (the United States, in particular), which successfully challenged its colo-
nial burden to become the core of the Western world. Therefore, the Latin American
identity is defined by a double negative and diminutive relationship with reference to
Europe – as second-class Europeans – and the United States – as an inferior version of
the (original) America (Mignolo, 2005).
The self-perception as peripheral remained a perennial trait of Latin American iden-
tity, even after two centuries of independent rule. They are neither ‘western’ nor ‘non-
western’ (Mignolo, 2005; Whitehead, 2006), but define themselves essentially in terms
of their subordinated relationship with the West. This arrangement has some conse-
quences that are worthy to note. First, Latin American societies – and their elites in
particular – are strongly oriented toward external models. At the same time, Latin
American elites ‘aspire to enhance their authority by presenting themselves as bearers
of internationally approved standards of modernity’ (Whitehead, 2006: 9–10), they
radically adapt these models to their interests and the circumstances prevailing in the
societies they live in. A second, complementary aspect refers to how this outward ori-
entation affects the internal dynamics of Latin American societies. Here, the concept
of internal colonialism (Baysha, 2016; González-Casanova, 1965; Mignolo, 1998) has
a role to play. In particular, Mignolo (1998) has emphasized the role played by the
intellectuals from colonized areas in fighting ‘the barbarism’ of their culture by pro-
moting the European civilization (p. 33). Arguably, Latin America’s ‘accountability
institutions’, and mainstream media in particular behave in a similar manner (e.g. de la
Torre, 2015)

Lessons from the 2016 coup in Brazil

The 2016 coup is still too recent for a more definitive explanation about why and how
it happened. For the purposes of this article, it is sufficient to say that the institutions
integrating the so-called web of accountability – the Federal Judiciary, the Ministério
Público, the Federal Police, and the mainstream media – played a pivotal role
de Albuquerque 7

throughout the entire process, leading to a growing criminalization of political activity

(Avritzer, 2016; Engelmann, 2016; Santos, 2016). According to Engelmann (2016),
‘successive leaks of judicial inquiries and processes to the mainstream media contrib-
uted to legitimize the image of a generalized corruption in the government and the
Workers’ Party’ (p. 12; see also Santos and Guarnieri, 2016). The most dramatic case
occurred in March 2016, when judge Sergio Moro, who was ahead of Lava Jato inves-
tigations, released to the press wiretaped phone calls between the former president
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and other political leaders, including President Rousseff
herself, which were supposed to be under judicial secrecy. In particular, the main-
stream media framed the conversations between Rousseff and Lula as an unquestion-
able evidence that the core motivation for his appointment to a ministerial position was
to protect Lula from prosecution (Douglas, 2016).
Corruption charges against Lula and PT as a whole had a very important role in the
process leading to Rousseff’s impeachment. To be sure, corruption scandals have been
endemic in the period succeeding the transition to democracy, in 1985 (Power and Taylor,
2011); therefore, corruption occurring during the PT governments was hardly an excep-
tional case. Although politicians belonging to almost all political parties have been men-
tioned as taking part in corruption schemas, the bulk of the attention has been dedicated
to PT governments and its allies (Santos and Szwako, 2016; Van Dijk, 2017). As Avritzer
(2016) observes, ‘the Judiciary Branch placed the Executive on the defensive with ques-
tionable political practices (…) aimed at destabilizing the political field’ (p. 116). Indeed,
in March 2016, STF Justice Gilmar Mendes, a harsh critic of PT governments, met in
Portugal with the Vice President Michel Temer, oppositionist senators José Serra and
Aécio Neves, STF Justice José Antonio Dias Toffoli, and Paulo Skaf, the president of
FIESP (Federation of the Industries of the State of São Paulo) to discuss the impeach-
ment process (Lima, 2016).

Sowing the seeds of the coup: The Brazilian mainstream media

On 29 March 2016, a huge, 14-page advertising piece calling for Rousseff’s Impeachment
Now (Impeachment Já) was published in four prestigious Brazilian newspapers: Folha
de S. Paulo, O Globo, Estado de São Paulo, and Correio Brasiliense (Figure 1). Albeit
this was paid content (FIESP, 2016), the selection of these specific newspapers did not
happen by chance. Besides their political influence, they actively engaged in the cam-
paign to impeach President Rousseff, as a means for solving the Brazilian political and
economic crisis. Early in the same month, two columnists suggested in O Globo that a
military intervention could provide a way out of the crisis (Noblat, 2016; Pereira, 2016).
In their editorials, O Estado de São Paulo argued that the impeachment was the best
solution, as Folha de S. Paulo asked President Rousseff to step down. On 20 April, 3
days after the Câmara dos Deputados (House of Representatives) vote for the impeach-
ment process, O Globo sustained, in an editorial that the claims the impeachment was
really a coup were in fact ‘agitation and propaganda’. According to it, ‘The Lulopetista
government follows the Bolivariano regimes’ model still present in the continent, which,
when facing the first evidences that the opposition is strengthening – in accordance to the
Law – denounces a coup’ (O Globo, 2016).
8 Journalism 00(0)

Figure 1.  FIESP’s impeachment ad (FIESP, 2016).

Relations between the mainstream news media and PT have been uneasy even before
2003, when the PT-led governments’ era began, due to the party’s socialist positions. As
PT ‘normalized’, and moved from socialism to social democracy (Hunter, 2010; Samuels,
2004), these relations ameliorated. Indeed, in 2002, some authors observed this is was
the first time that the mainstream media did not adopt an anti-PT bias in a presidential
election (Miguel, 2006). This was also the last time, too, because these relations deterio-
rated steadily after the outbreak of the Mensalão scandal – a cash-for-vote schema led by
PT politicians – in 2005, during Lula’s first presidential term. Despite losing much of its
prestige among middle class voters, his government’s social policies allowed Lula to
conquer a large support from the poorest voters, and allowed him to obtain a comfortable
victory in the 2006 reelection bid (Hunter and Power, 2007), despite the mainstream
biased coverage against him and PT (Azevedo, 2017; Mundim, 2014).
More than corruption itself, Lula and PT’s political resilience seem to have exerted a
particularly disturbing effect on the mainstream media. The day after Lula’s victory in
2006, Rede Globo’s journalist Alexandre Garcia declared that ‘the people voted against
the public opinion’ (Albuquerque, 2016). As PT managed to win one election after the
other, the mainstream press felt growingly uncomfortable. Echoing these worries, the
de Albuquerque 9

president of the Brazilian National Newspapers Association, Maria Judith Brito sus-
tained that the media have a moral duty to work as a de facto opposition party, in face of
the weakness of the formal political opposition (Farah, 2010). Mensalão persisted as a
permanent topic of the mainstream media for almost a decade (Biroli and Mantovani,
2014; Miguel and Coutinho, 2007), and the negative tone dominated the mainstream
media coverage of Rousseff’s government (Mont’Alverne and Marques, 2013). Besides
corruption, mainstream media’s criticism against PT governments focused on three
aspects: populism, close relationship with authoritarian regimes, and media harassment
(Albuquerque, 2016; Biroli and Mantovani, 2014; Pires, 2007).
The use of the label ‘populist’ for describing Lula or his supposed influence on
Rousseff’s government may be surprising at first sight. Indeed, authors such as
Castañeda (2006) and Seligson (2007) described Lula’s Brazil as an example of a
‘good’, social democratic left, in addition to countries like Chile and Uruguay, as
opposed to the ‘bad’, populist left, represented by Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia.
Concretely, accusations of populism have been related to other factors, as Lula’s cha-
risma, his popular, working-class origins – in particular Lula was often criticized
because he did not hold a university degree – and some of his government policies were
aimed to the poorest sectors of Brazilian society, as for instance the Bolsa Família
(Hunter and Power, 2007). The mainstream press coined a peculiar term – Lulopetismo
– for describing Lula’s government as a populist regime (Van Dijk, 2017). Writing in
Folha de S. Paulo, Clovis Rossi was one of the first journalists to employ systematically
the expression, during Lula’s first presidential term: ‘Lulopetismo became accustomed
to furiously attacking the facts, when they embarrass it. Against evidences, it appeals to
the “elites/media plot” mantra’ (Rossi, 2006).
It was only in the 2010s that the use of Lulopetismo as a means for describing PT
governments spread around in Brazilian mainstream media, signaling a radicalization of
their position against it. The lasting effect resulting from this was picturing PT govern-
ments as a native version of some of Brazil’s troublemaking neighbors, particularly
Chavista Venezuela, and the Bolivariano regimes in South America, and therefore sug-
gesting that PT governments had an authoritarian nature, too.
Indeed, it was not the first time that the Brazilian mainstream media recurred to
derogatory comparisons with ‘populist’ neighbors as a means for raising suspicion about
the democratic credentials of a Brazilian president. Goldstein (2017) points to strong
similarities existing between O Globo’s and O Estado de São Paulo’s newspaper cover-
ages of Lula and Rousseff governments with Getúlio Vargas government, in the early
1950s. As Vargas was accused of emulating Argentinian Peronismo, the petista govern-
ments were blamed for their closeness to Venezuelan Chavista politics. According to
O’Shaughnessy (2007), during the Cold War era, elites and mainstream media opposing
social reforms presented changes in the status quo as Communist inspired and against the
interest of the West (p. 67). Evidences suggest this still may be the case nowadays.
An interesting example of this general rule refers to how Brazilian mainstream media
reacted against perceived threats of their interests, by denouncing them as attempts of
curbing the freedom of the press. During the PT governments’ era, this happened in two
types of circumstances: proposals of media regulation and criticism. As discussed above,
Latin America (and Brazil, in particular) provides an example of a very weakly regulated
10 Journalism 00(0)

media (Matos, 2012; Porto, 2015). In 2004, President Lula proposed to the Congress a
law creating the Conselho Federal de Jornalismo (Journalism Federal Council) as a
means of providing some regulating framework for Brazilian media. The mainstream
media denounced this move: As Folha de S. Paulo argued in an editorial piece that it was
inspired in ‘authoritarian centralizing concepts’, O Globo claimed that ‘the only legiti-
mate judge of the press is public opinion’ (Pires, 2007). The mainstream media also
reacted bitterly to critiques directed to them by government officials and PT leaders,
mainly those accusing them of working as a political opposition, portraying them as a
direct attack against the freedom of the press (O Estado de São Paulo, 2014). This sug-
gests that the Fourth Estate provides a rhetoric that grants the Brazilian mainstream
media with a sort of ‘legitimacy shield’, as it allows them to perform an active political
role, inspired in the example of ‘advanced western democracies’ (The United States and
the United Kingdom), at the same time as they behave in an entirely different manner.

A postcolonial approach to media/politics relations

Most political communication studies take for granted that the media tend to behave in
these societies as pillars of the democratic order, working as accountability institutions,
in a similar manner as they do in the West. If they fail to do so, this must be due to the
influence of external factors – barriers to media opening. However, this analytical per-
spective fails in explaining how the Brazilian mainstream media helped to nurture the
2016 Coup that overthrew President Rousseff, and, in particular, how they recurred to a
westernized Fourth Estate rhetoric in order to justify their actions. Indeed, episodes like
this one may be more common than it appears to be at a first glance. Something similar
seemed to have happened in Egypt, whose private media enjoyed an unprecedented
degree of freedom during the Muslim Brotherhood government, but used their new capa-
bility for demonizing their political adversaries – particularly the Islamists – and, ulti-
mately, contributing to undermine democracy, fostering a military coup in 2014 (El
Issawi and Cammaerts, 2016).
This happens because the mainstream view focuses almost exclusively on the transi-
tion to democracy – either this is well succeeded or not – and leaves outside other pos-
sibilities, such as movements toward authoritarianism (Roudakova, 2012). Otherwise,
this article contends that a postcolonial approach can handle much more adequately with
episodes like these. Taken from this perspective, the media work as internal colonization
agents, who define their basic commitment as promoters of western civilization values in
their societies. When the will of the people clashes with their views, they may find a way
to ‘correct these mistakes’ by undermining democratic institutions. Next, this article
sheds light on some theoretical consequences resulting from this approach.

Center and peripheries

The center-periphery dynamics plays a very important role both in the ‘transition to
democracy’ and ‘postcolonial’ approaches, but whereas ‘transition to democracy’ takes
the West as a natural normative center for the rest of the world, the ‘postcolonial’
approach perceives the western centrality as a historical construct, rather than a result of
de Albuquerque 11

its intrinsic merit. Therefore, the peripheral condition provides a particular angle to dis-
cuss global issues, which is as important as that emanating from the western center.
Indeed, it can be considered richer than the central angle in certain aspects. This happens
for two motives. On the one hand, peripheries include the center as a part of their very
identity: Peripheries are not failed versions of an original center; instead, they actively
adapt models from the center to their own necessities (Albuquerque, 2011). On the other
hand, the peripheral condition is much more representative of societies existing in the
world than the central one. As discussed above, Latin American societies offer a particu-
larly fertile ground for discussing this issue, given that their self-perception as peripher-
ies of the West constitutes a core aspect of their identity (see also Araya, 2014).
Center–periphery relations do not apply only to those between different societies,
but also affect the ones taking place inside societies. In fact, both internal and external
relations interact, as some sectors of society claim to exert moral and political authority
based on their greater similarity or affinity with virtuous foreign models, practices, or
institutions. These sectors are in a much better position to represent the enlightened
universal values of democracy against their adversaries. A recent article by Kellam and
Stein’s (2016) provides a vivid example on how this logic works in practical terms.
Departing from data indicating that, between 2002 and 2013, a group of 12 Latin
American countries declined 10 points or more in Freedom House’s Freedom of the
Press Index, they propose to investigate the circumstances that favor presidents curbing
media freedom. In short, their answer is that as leftist presidents put in danger media
freedom, particularly when they win elections by landslide, rightist presidents improve
media freedom (Kellam and Stein, 2016: 62). The logical consequence of this argument
is deeming the popular choice as the weakest link of democracy – as the option for left-
ist presidents puts it in danger – at the same time they take for granted media commit-
ment with it.

A politically active media

Western theories on media/politics relations usually perceive the media in a relatively
passive manner. This is supposed to happen in two different ways, expressed through the
political parallelism and the independent journalism models. In the political parallelism
model, the media is supposed to take sides in politics, but this behavior can be considered
passive, because party media is supposed to voice positions endorsed by the particular
political parties or factions they are associated with (Hallin and Mancini, 2004; Seymour-
Ure, 1974). On the other hand, dubbing the independent journalism ‘passive’ may appear
paradoxical, at a first sight. The point to emphasize, however, is that in this model inde-
pendence comes with a price. As Cook (1998) observed, journalists are essentially politi-
cal actors, but their political influence may occur ‘not in spite of, but because of, their
principled adherence to norms of objectivity, deference by factuality and authority, and a
let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may distance from the political and social consequences of
their coverage’ (p. 85).
Media organizations present much more active patterns of behavior beyond the limits
of the western world, as they are not constrained either by the political parallelism logic
or professional codes of ethics (Albuquerque, 2013; McCargo, 2012). In these
12 Journalism 00(0)

circumstances, media organizations claim to have legitimacy on their own to intervene

in political disputes. There are two basic options on this regard: They may pretend to
exert a role in government, or being a part of the opposition, according to the circum-
stances. Immediately after the end of the military regime, the Brazilian mainstream
media took advantage of the fragility of the new democratic institutions, performing a
Fourth Branch role, but they interpret it in light of the Brazilian political culture tradition
of the Poder Moderador (Albuquerque, 2005). However, when PT conquered the
Brazilian presidency in 2003, the mainstream media adopted a different approach, and
claimed to exert a leading role in the opposition to the government, in face of the inabil-
ity of the oppositional political parties to accomplish this task (Albuquerque, 2016).
These behaviors are hardly a unique characteristic of Brazil. Indeed, mainstream media
have been committed with the systematic opposition to governments in many Left Turn
Latin American countries in the 2000s (Kitzberger, 2012; Lugo-Ocando and Santamaria,
2015), and in South Africa, too (Wasserman, 2010). The activist role of the media has
been identified also in Southeast Asia – particularly in Thailand, Indonesia, and the
Philippines (McCargo, 2012), and, as mentioned above, in Egypt (El Issawi and
Cammaerts, 2016).

The global shift and its discontents

Relations between center and peripheries are dynamic, and for this motive, changes are
not only possible, but in some degree, they are expected to happen. As seen above, Latin
American societies – mainly their elites – have historically defined their identity in refer-
ence to the West, as second-class western societies. In these circumstances, it is fair to
suppose that the political identities and the balance of power existing inside those socie-
ties depend strongly on the stability of the western-centered global order. But what hap-
pens if this order is challenged? In recent years, a growing number of scholars have
pointed to the weakening of the West as the unquestionable center of the world, or the
rise of alternative centers of power located outside the West, which together have been
sometimes referred as a Global Shift (Aouragh and Chakravartty, 2016; Zhao, 2014).
The creation of the BRICS group, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South
Africa around the common agenda of questioning western ‘exorbitant privileges’ in the
international arena provides an illustrative example on this respect (Nordenstreng and
Thussu, 2015).
On a regional level, the turn of a number of Latin American countries to the left also
illustrates an effort for redefining their common identity in an alternative manner to the
West, as illustrated by the reinforcement of the ties between these countries, in the eco-
nomic bloc Mercosur/Mercosul and the political/defense alliance Unasur/Unasul. Hugo
Chavez’s Venezuela was particularly active in the promotion of an anti-western agenda,
as illustrated by its protagonist role in fostering the ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the
People of Our America), and, still more important for our analysis, the creation of
TeleSUR, in 2005, which, was inspired by the example of Al Jazeera, intended to pro-
vide a pan-Latin American alternative to the neoliberal global order (Zweig, 2017). In
many South American countries, the mainstream press reacted to this, by portraying
Chavez’s influence as a major threat to the Western Civilization. In fact, they proved able
de Albuquerque 13

to coordinate efforts, and even coining a common rhetoric for describing the changes in
the political landscape in the region. A particularly interesting case refers to the role per-
formed by Grupo de Diarios America (thereafter GDA) – a consortium of newspapers
from 11 countries in Latin America, whose headquarter is located in Miami, Florida – in
coordinating conservative news media in the region. Created in 1991, GDA adopted a
more active political stance, along the 2000s, particularly by denouncing the expansion
of Chavismo in Latin America and the danger it represented for the freedom of the press
in the region. GDA even articulated the joint publishing of news series as ‘This is how
Chavismo spread throughout Latin America’ (Grupo de Diarios America, 2007).

Conclusion
International political communication studies often take for granted that western democ-
racies provide an absolute referential for evaluating all the other societies. Yet, this
approach presents some analytical limitations that are worthy to note. In a general man-
ner, western centrality is a matter of power, rather than intrinsic merit – Wallerstein
(2006) called this European Universalism. Being a product of history, there is no guaran-
tees that the balance of power that provides the basis for this approach will last forever.
In fact, some evidences suggest that the centrality of the West in the global order may
experience serious challenges at the present (Aouragh and Chakravartty, 2016; Zhao,
2014). Therefore, it is highly recommended to keep an open mind on other possibilities.
More specifically, it is argued that the western ‘central’ angle is unable to cope with some
problems experienced by peripheral societies, as for instance, the active engagement of
institutions supposed to guarantee democracy, and particularly the free press in under-
mining it, as demonstrated by the 2016 coup in Brazil.
Otherwise, this article proposes that a postcolonial approach may offer valuable
insights in discussing the media/politics relations in peripheral societies. Taken from
this view, the influence exerted by western models in peripheral societies is a part of
the problem to be analyzed, rather than a normative solution to it. Postcolonial socie-
ties experience a ‘West versus the Rest’ divide inside them, as their elites present
themselves as westernized enclaves living in barbarous, nonwestern societies, and
call upon themselves the duty of civilizing everyone else. Therefore, the reference to
western values often rewards more some sectors of the society over others. A second
point to emphasize is that these elites usually reinterpret Western values in order to
adequate them to the particular culture and social conditions of their societies, and
their particular interests. A notably interesting example refers to democracy, which is
radically reinterpreted from a system promoting popular sovereignty to a western
institution, which must be protected from bad popular decisions by elite-dominated
accountability institutions, including the mainstream media, presenting themselves as
a virtuous Fourth Estate.
Peripheries have been opposed to the center as the particular/local opposes to universal
characteristics. Otherwise, this article contends that the peripheral condition is as univer-
sal as the central one, if we take it as a theoretical principle, and much more representative
than it, given that from an empirical viewpoint, it can be said that the peripheries are much
more common (and therefore more ‘normal’) than the center. In particular, it is argued that
14 Journalism 00(0)

Latin American societies provide a particularly fertile ground for discussing problems
related to the peripheral condition, since the very radical character of their colonization –
which erased much of the cultural influence of previous existent societies – lead them to
perceive being peripheral as an essential trait of their cultural identities. Understanding
the dilemmas that result from Latin America’s historical burden is the first step to allow
them to build themselves as something different in a changing world.

Funding
TThe author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by CNPq, National Council for
Scientific and Technological Development – Brazil.

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Author biography
Afonso de Albuquerque is a full professor in the Media and Cultural Studies, at Fluminense Federal
University, Brazil. His research interests include political communication, journalism studies, and
international comparative media studies. His previous articles appeared in Journalism, The
International Journal of Press/Politics, Media, Culture & Society, Journalism Studies and
International Journal of Communication.