Media in third-wave democracies by Edited by Péter Bajomi-Lázár

Author:Edited by Péter Bajomi-Lázár [Bajomi-Lázár, Edited by Péter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Art & Architecture, Architecture, Design & Drafting, Computers, Advanced Computing, Programming, User Interfaces, General Computing
ISBN: 9783319733562
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Published: 2018-07-02T04:00:00+00:00

4.2. Self-regulation facing commercialisation and precariousness (1992-2008)

Self-regulation in an attempt to preserve professional quality and autonomy spread in the 1990s, and was largely motivated by the commercialisation of news boosted by the introduction of private television channels. During this period, the worsening of work conditions in a highly competitive labour market also motivated the adoption of the first collective labour agreement for journalists and a discussion on the regulation of the profession, which would not raise the consensus required.

The Catalan House of Journalists was the first to adopt a Code of Ethics for Journalists in 1992, one year before the Spanish Federation of Journalists Associations adopted its own. The code had been discussed for years, but the liberal approach hegemonic in the profession and especially among publishers, obstructed its approval. It was only when the sensationalism of news television programmes raised criticism and debates about the role of journalists that the code gained the support sufficient to be adopted.19 The code was also a self-regulatory effort in order to avoid the passing of the Law on Journalism proposed by the PSOE government (Pernau 2006).

The result, however, was soft regulation with limited results. Self-regulation was a response to conflicts between information and intimacy and honour rights rather than a response to problems related to journalistic independence, veracity or confusion of information and opinion that were the features of Spanish journalism since the transition (Ortega 2006). In addition to this, the body in charge of granting the code observance and sanctioning bad professional practices would not be created until 1996 in Catalonia and 2002 in Spain, mainly because of the opposition of the main media companies showing a lack of commitment to any regulation that could limit their strategies to increase audience figures and sales (Ramos 1998). Nevertheless, during this period, many newspapers and public broadcasters individually adopted statutes for their editorial staff that tried to ensure the quality and independence of newsrooms.

At the same time, however, during all these years there was a boom in communication and journalism studies, with as many as 15 universities offering such degrees in 2009 (Pestano et al. 2011) and around 900 graduates per year between 2000 and 2005 – nine times the demand coming from media (Delano et al. 2007). While expansion in television activities absorb part of this increasing labour supply, in the journalistic field it created an oversupply that pushed salaries down, in a framework of a labour market progressively liberalised by continuous reforms. As a response, unions in 2001 negotiated the first collective labour agreement for journalists in an attempt to secure decent conditions, although a big part of the profession, including many freelancers, were left out of the agreement. The worsening of work conditions led the Catalan House of Journalists to create a Commission against Precariousness which monitored the labour market and in 2008 presented a list of base rates for freelance workers, constituting the less protected segment of the profession.

So if innovation, political pressures and oversupply of opinionated journalism had

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