Commentary

• Date: 01 May 2018
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18765429
• Author: Rosalind Bresnahan
• Published date: 01 May 2018
• Subject Matter: Articles

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 220, Vol. 45 No. 3, May 2018, 103–106

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18765429

© 2018 Latin American Perspectives

103

Commentary

by

Rosalind Bresnahan

Becerra and Wagner analyze the intense conflicts over media reform from

2000 to 2015, especially where anti-neoliberal governments introduced legisla-

tion dramatically transforming the radio and television landscape. A common

thrust of these reforms has been to break the control of highly concentrated

media groups that support the political right and to diversify the public sphere

through expansion of state media and increased opportunities for excluded

and marginalized groups to obtain broadcast licenses.These comments will

address one of their central arguments: that these reforms and related conflicts

are best understood by analyzing these governments as populist rather than as

leftist (although they recogize that the governments that they consider most

populist are also those that would be considered radical, rather than moderate,

left). While I consider the arguments for ignoring the leftist dimension of media

reform unconvincing, my comments will primarily address the consequences

of this approach.

In my view, the focus on populism is a top-down, one-sided approach that

sees media reform almost exclusively as a response to the political needs of

leaders who use polarization and direct communication with supporters as a

political strategy. However, it does not recognize the right’s role in polarization,

does not give adequate weight to the destabilizing role of the old-guard media

as integral components of a “disloyal” right-wing opposition (one willing to

violate democratic norms in defense of its power), and fails to acknowledge the

demands for media democratization emanating from a wide range of civil soci-

ety forces on the left. I do not deny the value of examining the possible negative

effects of populism as a style of political leadership. Rather, I consider the anal-

ysis incomplete in ways that oversimplify the underlying conflicts and the cur-

rent issues related to media reform.

Political polarization and what Cerbino et al. (2014) call “the mediatization of

politics and politicization of the media” is at least as much a mobilization strat-

egy of the right as of populist leadership on the left. If the leftist/populist leader-

ship characterizes the right, including its media sector, as “enemies of the

people,” the right-wing media—fully integrated into the dominant power

bloc—portray the left as enemies of freedom and democracy, using “apocalyp-

tic” language to label these governments “ ‘authoritarian,’ ‘despotic,’ and even

‘dictatorial’” (Cerbino et al., 2014: 72). Demonization of the left has characterized

right-wing coverage, as Lupien (2013) documents for Bolivia and Venezuela,

where not only the government but its supporters and their redistributionist

Rosalind Bresnahan has a Ph.D. in mass media and communication and is a coordinating editor

of Latin American Perspectives.

765429LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X18765429Latin American PerspectivesBresnahan / COMMENTARY

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