Primetime consociation: Portuguese punditry in between media independence and political patronage

Abstract

In this study, I use punditry as an indicator of the struggle between journalists and politicians over the shaping of the political news and of the public perception in Portugal. I will focus empirically on the use of pundits in primetime newscasts of the Portuguese broadcasting and cable news networks from 2000 to 2015. I use the concept of mediatisation of politics to guide the empirical research. However, adopting this concept as an analytical tool does not mean ignoring the existing debate around it. The article argues that Portuguese primetime punditry is a manifestation of consociation between media and politics and that news media independence and political patronage are both explanatory factors for the way Portuguese primetime punditry has evolved over time. These results challenge the media-centric vision which prevails in mediatisation theory, by highlighting that the process of mediatisation of politics and the process of politicisation of the media can both evolve in parallel, thus expanding on the unilateral conception suggested by the mediatisation of politics along all four dimensions.