Several studies argue that journalism can facilitate and shape democratic backsliding when news organizations are captured by business and political elites. Under these conditions, journalists will likely fail to hold political actors to account and provide information essential for public deliberation. Gradually, news outlets devolve to provide unfair representations based on private interests instead of news coverage guided by public interest. However, research still lacks a systematic and detailed analysis of practices in news production that could be capable of damaging democracy. Not only is evidence very scarce, but it is also limited to the content analysis of news outputs and editorials. Using forty semistructured interviews and three case studies, this research investigates how journalists from the most influential outlets in Brazil covered key political events within a period of constant decline in the quality of democracy (2016–2021). Then, I build on the results to propose a new typology of de-democratizing journalistic practices: soft steering (recommendations pretending concern with standards, including partisan interpretations of balance), hard steering (direct orders, including internal censorship or entirely pre-defined stories), and anticipatory steering (reporters and editors act on their own based on perceptions and previous instructions). Moreover, this research offers evidence that de-democratizing journalistic practices can be internalized by news practitioners and, over time, replace democratic norms. Finally, it suggests a dynamic relationship between censorship and self-censorship in which control not only inhibits actions but also compels journalists to perform in specific ways.

中文翻译：

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“它迫使你发表一些狗屎”：走向去民主化新闻实践的分类


一些研究认为，当新闻机构被商业和政治精英占领时，新闻业可能会促进和塑造民主倒退。在这种情况下，记者可能无法追究政治行为者的责任，也无法提供公众审议所必需的信息。新闻媒体逐渐转向基于私人利益提供不公平的报道，而不是以公共利益为指导的新闻报道。然而，研究仍然缺乏对可能损害民主的新闻制作实践的系统和详细的分析。不仅证据非常稀缺，而且也仅限于新闻产出和社论的内容分析。本研究利用四十次半结构化访谈和三个案例研究，调查了巴西最有影响力媒体的记者如何在民主质量不断下降的时期（2016-2021 年）报道关键政治事件。然后，我在研究结果的基础上提出了一种新的去民主化新闻实践类型：软指导（假装关心标准的建议，包括对平衡的党派解释）、硬指导（直接命令，包括内部审查或完全预先定义的故事） ）和预期指导（记者和编辑根据感知和先前的指示自行采取行动）。此外，这项研究提供的证据表明，去民主化的新闻实践可以被新闻从业者内化，并随着时间的推移取代民主规范。最后，它提出了审查制度和自我审查制度之间的动态关系，其中控制不仅抑制行动，而且迫使记者以特定的方式行事。