Populism and Institutional Culture Of Journalism: Trump's Attack on the Media

Abstract

The digital media ecosystem, in which weakened professional journalism is facing a growing number of right-wing media platforms and an increasing role of social media in public communications, is a fertile ground for the development of populism, which neoliberal policies and media mediatization have paved the way for. The commercial media logic, in the case of Donald Trump, proved to be a weak point of the American media system because the public interest was left behind the interests of media organizations whose primary goal is to make a profit. Professional media, labeled fake news, have tried to restore the lost reputation in society and re-establish the social significance of professional journalism. However, numerous analyzes indicate that it will not be enough just to reaffirm existing concepts and values, but that it is necessary to build new professional cultures. Trump's legacy concerning established media and professional journalism has not brought any special news to the media and journalists in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) who have been operating in a very unfavorable environment for the past30 years, in which populism is a modus operandi of political action. However, the transformations of journalism that are announced as a result of the relationship between the media and authoritarian populists in democratic societies need not go unnoticed in BiH because the existing weak institutional culture of journalism could be used as a tool to further empower populists.