The Media System as Starting Point. The Frente Amplio Governments and the Media in Uruguay

Abstract

The relationship between the South American leftist governments and the large national media groups at the beginning of the 21st century was characterized by a public confrontation. Unlike what happened in other countries, in Uruguay the governments of Frente Amplio —by Tabaré Vázquez (2005-2010) and José Mujica (2010-2015) — managed to negotiate the media scenes with the established media players in ways that turned out to be beneficial. They achieved that without the need to modify the rules of the game, because the most preponderant media players sought to ingratiate themselves with these governments.

This article supports that a key factor to explain this link (and the difference with other countries) is in the Uruguayan national media system, which allows us to show that the power of governments is greater on a relative scale to define media scenes. This article proposes an own model to characterize the history of the national media systems of Latin America, in this case applied to Uruguay, through two central dimensions. One, the structure of the political field: the relative weight of the State over the media and the centrality of party mediation. Two, the structure of the media field: the configuration of the main media companies as well as the dominant culture of political journalism.