The Rise of Independent and Critical Journalism in Times of Crisis”
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MAGISTERARBEIT Titel der Masterarbeit „The Rise of Independent and Critical Journalism in Times of Crisis” Case Study on the Spanish, Greek and Romanian Media Landscape Verfasserin Patricia Ştefania Smolean, bakk. phil. angestrebter akademischer Grad Magistra der Philosophie (Mag.phil.) Wien, 2015 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt A 066 841 Studienrichtung lt. Studienblatt Magisterstudium Publizistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft Betreuerin der Magisterarbeit Univ. Prof. Dr. Katharine Sarikakis "Slow is beautiful" Keibo Oiwa Contents 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1 2 Literature Review .................................................................................................................... 4 2.1. Media Governance .............................................................................................................. 5 2.2. Press Freedom ................................................................................................................... 10 2.3. Journalism and Neoliberalism ........................................................................................... 12 2.5. The crisis of the mainstream press ................................................................................... 16 2.5.1. Structural problems of the private institutionalizing of media ........................... 18 2.5.2. Media organizations and ownership types ........................................................... 21 2.6. Crisis as an opportunity to change .................................................................................... 24 2.7. Theories for different types of journalism........................................................................ 26 2.7.1. Alternative Journalism ................................................................................................ 28 2.7.2. Counter-Information Journalism ................................................................................ 29 2.7.3. Public Journalism ........................................................................................................ 29 2.7.4. Investigative Journalism ............................................................................................. 30 2.7.5. Data Journalism ........................................................................................................... 31 2.7.6. Advocacy journalism ................................................................................................... 31 2.7.7. Slow Journalism Movement ....................................................................................... 31 3. Methodology ......................................................................................................................... 34 3.1. Research Design ................................................................................................................. 34 4 Findings .................................................................................................................................. 40 4.1. Media Context – Spain....................................................................................................... 42 4.2. Analysis of the Spanish journalistic initiatives .................................................................. 46 4.3. Media Context - Greece .................................................................................................... 61 4.4. Analysis of the Greek journalistic initiatives ..................................................................... 65 4.5. Media Context - Romania .................................................................................................. 73 4.6. Analysis of the Romanian journalistic initiatives .............................................................. 81 5 Discussions and Conclusions ................................................................................................ 95 6 References ...............................................................................................................................102 Appendix......................................................................................................................................113 Interview Questions ............................................................................................................... 113 Interviews from Spain ............................................................................................................ 114 Critic, Sergi Picazo............................................................................................................... 114 El Diario, Victor Saura ......................................................................................................... 118 La Marea, Thilo Schaefer .................................................................................................... 130 Diagonal, Gonzalo Gárate Prieto ....................................................................................... 139 La Directa, Jesus Rodriguez ................................................................................................ 147 Interviews from Greece ......................................................................................................... 156 Info War, Aris Chatzistefanou ............................................................................................ 156 Press Project International, Dimitris Bounias ................................................................... 163 Efimerida ton Syntakton, Nicholas Voulelis ...................................................................... 172 Prof. Emmanouil Heretakis ................................................................................................ 174 Interviews from Romania ....................................................................................................... 180 Romania Curata, Mihai Gotiu............................................................................................. 180 Casa Jurnalistului, Vlad Ursulean ....................................................................................... 206 Decat o Revista, Cristian Lupsa .......................................................................................... 215 Curriculum Vitae ........................................................................................................................ 223 ABSTRACT (English) .................................................................................................................... 225 ABSTRACT (Deutsch) .................................................................................................................. 226 Acknowledgments I would like to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation to my academic advisor, Univ. Prof. Katharine Sarikakis, for showing me the light at the end of the tunnel each time when I needed it the most! You were during my writing process a source of inspiration, not only professional buy also personal! You have made this difficult phase much more enjoyable! Thank you for your time, encouragement, inspiration, trust and kindness! I am so grateful for having such beautiful and supportive parents! I was definitely born under a lucky star! Thank you for your unconditional love, patience and support during my whole studies! I hope that at some point I will be able to give you somehow back everything that you both offered me! And last but not least, thank you, Florian, for the beautiful times we’ve had and for the ones to come! I’ve learned so much about myself in this rollercoaster of ours! Thank you for the inspirational moments, for your patience, your trust, and your love! The field work for this thesis was partly financed by the KWA grant of University of Vienna. 1 Introduction Rationale and social relevance of the proposed study Europe is going nowadays through tough times. The crisis in Europe is portrayed by daily news circling around the world. Symptoms of the crisis are among the affected countries precarity, disorganization of labor, unemployment, poor social rights, cuts to the social wage, extreme cuts to welfare and labor. These symptoms caused the uprising of societies searching and asking for a change. The European crisis is a crisis of Europe which we share, but in different ways as it affects different systems. The one this thesis will emphasize is mainly the crisis of the so called fourth estate of democracy – the media. In Europe freedom of the press and independent media systems are rather taken as granted. All the EU–members have in their constitution and judicial systems guarantees of the press freedom. However, the crisis has also big repercussions in the public sphere. Economically and socially conditions have a big impact on media independence and on its ability to fulfill its societal functions: the closure of the public TV station ERT in Greece due to austerity measures is one of the best examples of repercussions of the European crisis on the media sector. According to Freedom House (2013), the European Economic Crisis has therefore coincided with a decline in press freedom in the EU: “The year 2012 featured a notable deterioration in Greece and more moderate declines in Spain and other nations (…)”. Freedom House (2013) also reports that Europe’s media environment Fig. 1: Average Press Freedom Scores in the EU, 2008–2012 (Freedom House, 2013) includes manifold cozy relationships 1 between the field of economy,