Feigning Indignance, Reinstating Power: Paradigm Repair and the Publishing of Ingrid Escamilla’s Murdered Body in the Mexican Press

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study sheds light on the media controversy in Mexico surrounding the publishing of photos of Ingrid Escamilla’s murdered body. Using a theoretical lens that integrates paradigm repair and decolonial feminist thought, we interrogate how four of Mexico’s most read news publications, namely Reforma, El Universal, Excelsior, and Milenio, attempted to reify their journalistic paradigm in the midst of high threat. Through a multimodal critical discourse analysis of 71 news articles, we identified four different processes of paradigm repair that are deeply tied to larger hegemony-building processes. These include diverting responsibility away from media and unto others; making explicit a boundary between “low-tier” tabloid-style newspapers that leaked the photos and “respectable” media that ascribe to Western tenets; sanitizing gore to uphold the paradigm; and an overt focus on a new law proposed by the Mexican state as the “solution” to this “anomalous act.” The study elucidates how these instances of metajournalistic reflection - beyond reinstating journalistic legitimacy and hegemony - produce and reinforce a binary between valid and invalid forms of knowledge and reinforce the media’s institutional alliances to the state.