Populism och journalistik — stadigt sallskap eller tillfallig bekantskap?

摘要

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 news-worthiness of charismatic political leaders and their rhetoric. Sometimes scholars see an ideological kinship between populism and the journalistic ideology manifesting it-self in the so-called media logic. Mazzoleni calls this media populism. The main limi-tation 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-polit-ical systems with different characteristics depending on the political, economical, cul-tural 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.