Abstract
Historically, Latin American media systems have been loosely regulated by political elites leading to media capture by economic elites who, in turn, have supported right-wing regimes in a quid pro quo relationship. Such a relationship between political and economic elites has largely survived transitions to democratic societies. This has been so because of the weakness of advertising markets meaning that political allocation of advertising is important; close linkages, often based on familial ties, between political parties and media corporations; media deregulation that led to greater concentration rather than competition; and weak rule of law and continuing pattern of clientelism. The editors develop the concept of a ‘captured liberal’ model of media to describe this situation where the media are controlled by alliances of political and economic elites. While some of these tendencies might be thought of as ‘globalization’, this risks overlooking the specifics of national cases and the importance of local and regional actors, policies, cultures and so on. This book aims to put that right. Of importance here also is the rise of a ‘left-wing populism’ or ‘progressive’ governments in a number of countries and their competitive, antagonistic relationship with media organisations and the reinvention of state intervention, which has not necessarily led to greater pluralism, higher quality journalism and more independent, democratic media systems. What we are witnessing in Latin America, therefore, is either a situation of ‘captured liberal’ media or one of competition between captured liberal media and state-captured media. In both scenarios, there is little space for independent, ‘objective’ or critical media that hold the economically and politically powerful to account. How the Internet and social media (extremely popular in Latin America) might affect this is picked up in the final pages of this book and is a topic clearly worthy of another comparative volume.