Sallie Hughes

Rethinking professional autonomy: Autonomy to develop and to publish news in Mexico and Colombia

Professional autonomy has usually been defined in terms of journalists’ perceptions of their control over their work vis-à-vis organizational supervisors. Using surveys of journalists in Colombia and Mexico, we identify two dimensions of perceived autonomy: first, control over story development tasks (the traditional understanding of autonomy in empirical studies); second, the ability to actually publish news on a range of subjects associated with different levels of material or cultural power. We then identify predictors of both dimensions of autonomy. Physical threats, overlapping forms of inequality, and clientelism characterize pressures on autonomy in these two democracies. Journalists can carve out more space for autonomy by gaining professional experience or by creating new organizational arrangements and supporting analytical, change-oriented norms. By examining professional autonomy empirically in a broad range of contexts, we demonstrate that autonomy is more complex, situational, and historically contingent than previously believed.

Protest and Accountability without the Press The Press, Politicians, and Civil Society in Chile

We examine political news in Chilean newspapers after elections were reestablished, including a recent period of civic protests of policies linked to the authoritarian past. Data show that similar to journalism in Western democracies, throughout the twenty-one years under study, journalists relied upon official sources, allowed politicians to set the news agenda, and eschewed civil society in favor of representing citizens as voiceless individuals. However, news frames changed during the protest period in unexpected ways given current understandings of the press and civil society. During the protest period, the press framed a greater percentage of coverage as issues and offered contextualization while continuing to privilege official sources, defer agenda setting to politicians, and disregard collective organizations. Based on research elsewhere, issue frames and context may reorient causal attribution for social problems and encourage greater participation. Shortly after the study period, reform topped the political agenda, and disputed policies were overhauled. Connecting content to protests through time sequencing, findings suggest rethinking the relationship between civil society visibility in the press and processes of social accountability. They also provide an example of how legacies of authoritarianism may affect the press under democracy, helping advance theories of press performance beyond experiences in the West.

Expanding Influences Research to Insecure Democracies: How violence, public insecurity, economic inequality and uneven democratic performance shape journalists’ perceived work environments

Democracies with sharp violence and public insecurity have proliferated in recent decades, with many also featuring extreme economic inequality. These conditions have not been explicitly considered in comparative research on journalists’ work environments, an omission that may obscure important realities of contemporary journalism. We address this gap through analysis of journalist surveys in 62 countries. We confirm the existence of insecure democracies as an empirical phenomenon and begin to unravel their meaning for journalists. We find democracies with uneven democratic performance tend to have more journalist assassinations, which is the most extreme form of influence on work, and that levels of democratic performance, violence, public insecurity and economic inequality significantly shape how journalists perceive various influences in their work environment. Case studies of insecure democracies in Africa and Latin America address why these conditions sometimes (but not always) lead to journalist assassinations and other anti-press violence. They suggest anti-press violence is higher when sub-national state actors intensify criminal violence and when insecurity is geographically and topically proximate to journalists. How journalists’ perceive influences on work are therefore more complex and multidimensional than previous research has suggested. The study concludes by identifying areas for improvement in data collection.

Local-Level Authoritarianism, Democratic Normative Aspirations, and Antipress Harassment: Predictors of Threats to Journalists in Mexico:

Cross-national research has identified crime, corruption, and human rights abuses as explanations for threats against journalists in democracies and authoritarian hybrids plagued by antipress violence. In-depth studies additionally suggest gender or occupational characteristics such as risky newsbeats increase the likelihood of being threatened. We overcome data limitations in many of these studies by analyzing work-related threats reported by journalists in Mexico, a territorially uneven democracy. Findings confirm that contexts of criminal insecurity are the strongest predictor of threats but only for journalists who are frequently harassed. For the infrequently threatened, democratic normative commitments are a stronger predictor. Subnational government corruption is another important predictor of threat but operates counter to expectations. We believe this is because clientelism sufficiently controls journalists without the need for threat. Neither occupational traits nor gender were individually important predictors. Findings suggest future research should compare threat and harassment across lower and higher risk contexts, and measure public insecurity and clientelism at the local level where journalists actually work. Measurement improvements might better reveal the gender dynamics of threat. More broadly, comparative research and policy-making in democracies and authoritarian hybrids should focus on how local authoritarians limit journalists’ democratic normative aspirations.

Journalists in Mexico

The typical journalist in Mexico is male, in his late thirties and primarily holds a university degree in the field of media, communications or journalism. Of the 377 interviewed journalists, a little less than a third (n=120) were female, making for a proportion of 31.8 percent of the overall sample. On average, Mexican journalists were 38.41 years old (s=10.38), with 50% being 37 years old or younger. In fact, nearly a fourth (26.0%) of the respondents were between 21 and 30 years old. Journalists in Mexico tend to be university-educated: 75.1 percent of the respondents hold a Bachelor degree, while 4.5 percent undertook some university studies but did not complete them. Another 11.4 percent hold a postgraduate degree, mostly at the Masters level. Of those respondents who held a university degree, the majority (68.4%) specialized either in journalism, another communication field, or both, but 31.7 percent had specialized in a different field.

Post-Authoritarian Politics in Mexico: Beyond 2000, Elections and the Formal Political Arena

MEXICO’S MANDARINS: CRAFTING A POWER ELITE FOR THE TWENTYFIRST CENTURY. By Roderic Ai Camp. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Pp. 308.

The Barriers to Media Opening in Latin America

21.95 paper.) THE ROMANCE OF DEMOCRACY: COMPLIANT DEFIANCE IN CONTEMPORARY MEXICO. By Matthew C. Gutmann. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Pp. 289.

Newsrooms in Conflict: Journalism and the Democratization of Mexico

49.95 cloth,

Propaganda and Crony Capitalism: Partisan Bias in Mexican Television News

19.95 paper.) BUILDING THE FOURTH ESTATE: DEMOCRATIZATION AND THE RISE OF A FREE PRESS IN MEXICO. By Chappell Lawson. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Pp. 287.

Bureaucratic Compliance with Mexico's New Access to Information Law

50.00 cloth,