Populism och journalistik - stadigt sällskap eller tillfällig bekantskap?

Abstract

Populism and journalism – going steady or chance acquaintance?

The purpose is to discuss the relationship between populism and journalism at three different levels: populism as an invective, populism as news criteria and populism as news ideology. Sometimes populism is used pejoratively by scholars in line with its general use in the media as synonym of opportunism, demagogy and overzealous search for popularity. Sometimes populism in the media is mainly linked to the newsworthiness of charismatic political leaders and their rhetoric. Sometimes scholars see an ideological kinship between populism and the journalistic ideology manifesting itself in the so-called media logic. Mazzoleni calls this media populism. The main limitation of the media populism approach is its normative starting point. This also ignores the fact that both populism and media logic are part of different media-political systems with different characteristics depending on the political, economical, cultural and historical background. A historical-political approach to the relation between populism and journalism in different media systems, as defined by Hallin & Mancini seems to be more fruitful.