The Intertwining of the Covid-19 Pandemic with Democracy Backlash: Making Sense of Journalism in Crisis

ABSTRACT

This article explores how the combination of the public health crisis and the authoritarian government of Janez Janša’s Slovenian Democratic Party, along with its tendency to politically instrumentalize and economically devastate the media, impacted journalism during the Covid-19 pandemic. Of central concern are how journalists understand their roles in communication relating to Covid-19 and how these roles are shaped when the pandemic and trends towards democratic backsliding coincide in time. The analysis is conducted in the theoretical frameworks of crisis communication, authoritarian influences on the media, and journalistic roles, while methodologically it is based on individual interviews in which journalists reflect on their professionalism amidst the pandemic and rising authoritarian control over media. The findings show that the facilitative role revealed in existing research of media functioning during a public health crisis may be interwoven with a watchdog role challenged by authoritarian tendencies. Indeed, interviews suggested the coexistence of general journalistic roles at a time of dual crisis, when the sense of responsibility to facilitate measures to confine the spread of the disease is coupled with critical monitoring, (self)reflection, and attempts to restore professional standards in both public and private media.

KEYWORDS:

• Authoritarianism
• Covid-19 pandemic
• crisis communication
• journalistic roles
• propaganda
• Slovenia

Introduction

A public health crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic brings many uncertainties and requires reliable and accurate information. People depend on media reporting as the central source for information on how they should behave to avoid becoming infected and spreading the disease, on government measures, and on how they should organize their everyday lives. The media influence people’s actions, which in turn impact the effectiveness of government crisis management and the maintenance of societal stability during the crisis. Media reporting thus plays a key role in the perception, management, and even creation of the crisis; and in turn, the public perception of the pandemic, its severity, and approaches to infection containment critically influence the scale of the crisis (Ringo 2005).

Crisis situations often involve the deterioration of the social and economic positions of media and changed work conditions for journalists affecting the quality of journalistic role performance. Moreover, crisis changes editorial policies and priorities, including dealing with the spread of hoaxes and misinformation on the internet. At first glance, the partial agendas of the media, politicians, the government, experts, and the public seem to be unified in partnership, focusing on how to most efficiently overcome the crisis. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has shown that the crisis creates a context in which these relationships become complicated in a variety of ways, including the strained working conditions for the media, where the production of media content is more difficult and uncertain due both to the epidemiological situation and to the changed social, political, and economic conditions (Raboy and Dagenais 1992; Scraton 2003). Much is known about the relevant role of the media in health crises (Scraton 2003; Ringo 2005; Coombs and Holladay 2010; Klemm, Das, and Hartmann 2019); however, little is known about how journalists negotiate diverse expectations during a pandemic when these are coupled with authoritarian tendencies of a government.

This article fills this gap in research by analysing how journalists narrate their work when health crises coincide with political crises, with reference to the recent example of Slovenia. The theoretical background is (health) crisis communication (Raboy and Dagenais 1992; Klemm, Das, and Hartmann 2019; Perreault and Perreault 2021; Perreault, Perreault, and Maares 2021; Papadopoulou and Maniou 2021), authoritarian and propaganda influences on the media (Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm 1963; Edward and Chomsky 1988; Christians et al. 2009), and the framework of journalistic practices and roles (Weaver and Wilhoit 1996; Donsbach 2008; Christians et al. 2009; Weaver and Willnat 2012; Hanitzsch and Vos 2017). Our aim was to understand how journalists think about their professionalism amidst crisis and increasing control over media, how they view their journalism against normative expectations, how the pandemic and governmental pressure influence their work conditions and job security, and how these vary depending on the specific media outlet. The main research question asks how journalists negotiate their roles in communication relating to Covid-19 and how these roles are shaped at the intersection of the pandemic and trends towards democratic backsliding. We add to the existing debates about journalistic roles arguing that they tend to change depending on the social and political circumstances to which journalists adapt. Results of the analysis of interviews with journalists who reported on the crisis show that the facilitative role of journalists to protect the public that is generally strengthened in times of crisis in the context of endangered press freedom develops in strong parallel to the increased watchdog role, with journalists feeling a strong normative duty to be critical towards those in power.

Crisis, Authoritarianism, and the Media

Raboy and Dagenais, in their book Media, Crisis and Democracy (1992), define a crisis as an exceptional situation of urgency that shakes the established social order and requires rapid and effective responses to mitigate. They note that in crisis, the media play a prominent role as an agenda-setter and an actor that frames the theme in a specific way by selecting aspects of issues to report. Scholars (Raboy and Dagenais 1992; Scraton 2003; Ringo 2005) emphasize the importance of dependable, and reliable media in a public health crisis, when journalists adopt similar obligations as scientists or health professionals, with the shared goal of reducing the impact of disease (Wilkins 1989, 244).

Reporting to maintain stability leads the media to adopt “a nationalizing function”, in which they are expected to protect “the national body” from the outside threat (Raboy and Dagenais 1992; Fraser 2007). Raboy and Dagenais (1992) argue that the media in crisis are subjected to a kind of “information censorship” when they are assigned or expected to report beyond the expectations of journalistic professionalism. New expectations that are imposed on the media make them vulnerable to the rise of control by those in power, manifested as political, legal, and economic pressure and changes obstructing media freedom. In a Foucault (2008/1978) sense, in crisis, specific types of disclosure are presented as truths, as mechanisms that operate to legitimate techniques of the official “truth-givers”. In a political framework of crisis, therefore, the official discourse reproduced by the media functions to maintain and strengthen the dominant relations of power; the pursuit of acceptable truth is institutionalized, professionalized, and rewarded. Existing scholarship (Scraton 2003; Ringo 2005) seems to agree that the crisis accelerates media’s dependency on government communication, putting them at risk of perpetuating the uniformization of the discourse.

While research has so far analysed the importance of the media in a health crisis (Raboy and Dagenais 1992; Scraton 2003; Coombs and Holladay 2010) and has reported on how mainstream and social media frame the crisis (Zhang and Fleming 2005), much less is known about the way media function during a health crisis in the political situation of rising authoritarian governance. A few notable exceptions include a recent study in the US in which Altheide (2020) analysed how Trump’s authoritarianism was visible in his use of social media as a propaganda tool to define top-down the Covid-19 situation. The repetitive vulgar tweets, full of combative language against journalists, enabled Trump to downplay health risks and define the virus as a hoax. Another study on misinformation and reporting on Covid-19 in Brazil revealed the media as agenda setters for the views held by President Bolsonaro (Biancovilli and Jurberg 2020). The study found that the media preference for the official discourse helps to maintain the president in power, promoting his minimization of Covid-19-related risks. Research on previous health crises, for example, the SARS epidemic in 2003, revealed that the Chinese media produced a uniform discourse in support of the ruling political party (Ringo 2005; Zhang and Fleming 2005). State-controlled media in particular came under political pressure and were rewarded for creating an illusion of normalcy (Ringo 2005). In this article, we explore further the interplay of a public health crisis and a backlash against democracy, and analyse how journalists negotiate their roles in order to overcome pressure towards discourse uniformization and censorship.

Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm (1963) in their seminal work on the four theories of the press identified the differences among press systems to see how social and political circumstances shape the relationship to the media. The authoritarian theory, they argue, requires the press to be no less than “a servant of the state” (Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm 1963, 3) and an institution controlled by the government. “Complete control” over the media is exerted by various mechanisms such as appointing the editors, issuing directives for media content, reviewing and criticizing the press, etc. (Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm 1963, 31). Such tendencies were recognized as a propaganda model of the media that, according to Edward and Chomsky (1988, 28) include various strategies exerted by the government, such as regulation of financial and advertising means, the reliance of the media on information provided by the government and business, and experts approved by these primary sources, including government’s production of “flak” as a means of disciplining the media, regularly assailing, threatening, and correcting them (Edward and Chomasky 1988, 28).

Control practices described by these seminal works on authoritarianism and media propaganda have been applied across the globe during the Covid-19 pandemic when journalists have reported difficulty in accessing information due to the restrictions imposed and general limitations on press freedom (Perreault, Perreault, and Maares 2021, 8). Numerous governments worldwide used the pandemic crisis as a pretext to push through restrictions that limit critical journalism and hinder journalists from accessing relevant information. Drawing on data from worldwide press freedom monitoring tools and platforms, Papadopoulou and Maniou (2021, 17, 18) show that the pandemic increased limitations on press freedom not only in authoritarian states but also in Western democracies. Several authorities exploited the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty and used the pandemic to restrict media reporting. They identify legal threats such as judicial decisions that hamper press freedom, political threats that pertain to censorship, economic threats that adopt measures such as the collapse in advertising revenue or exclusion of media from funding schemes, as well as physical and psychological threats such as attacks and online harassment of journalists (Papadopoulou and Maniou 2021, 9–10).

In this article, we use the theoretical frameworks of crisis communication and authoritarian theory to understand how the combination of a public health crisis and rising authoritarianism in the case of Slovenia, where the governing Slovenian Democratic Party has exploited the pandemic to exercise control over media (Splichal 2020a, 2020b), impacted journalistic work and roles. The research cited above has mostly referred to the pressing problem of limiting the media in situations of public health crises, whereas we focus on analysing how such conditions are exacerbated by authoritarian tendencies of a government and specifically how they are experienced by journalists. Instrumentalization of the media in crises by self-proclaimed “truth-tellers” results in increased pressure on the media and self-censorship, as assumed by authoritarian and propaganda media model theories, but may also, as we aim to show, result in journalistic critical self-reflection, resistance, and attempts towards the restoration of professional journalistic roles. We show how the situation of dual crisis contributes not only to the articulation of journalists’ responsibility towards the public, but also strengthens their accounts against political instrumentalization, on autonomy and press freedom.

Shifting Perceptions on Journalistic Roles in Crisis

The first influential studies on journalistic roles include Lasswell’s (1948) conceptualization of journalists as fulfilling the role of connecting parts of society and transmitting social heritage to future generations, and Lazarsfeld and Robert’s (1948) understanding of journalists in their role as enforcers of social norms. Peterson, Jensen, and Rivers (1965) were the first to disconnect journalistic roles from media’s “natural function”, and related them to libertarian media theories, affirming journalism in its role of enlightening the public, safeguarding civic liberties, providing service for political and economic entities and entertaining the public. Later research from the field has mostly been preoccupied with how journalists understand their function in society, articulating journalists’ actual experiences with their work, together with their understanding of normative ideas of journalism as a profession (Weaver and Wilhoit 1996; Christians et al. 2009). As noted by Christians et al. (2009) journalists act in the roles of exerting surveillance, forming opinion, setting the agenda, acting as a watchdog and a public informant, and being an active participant in social life. These ideals enable journalists to position themselves in society, to identify with their work, and also to differentiate themselves from other actors (Christians et al. 2009). Therefore, journalistic roles encompass expectations that are normatively acceptable by the journalists and which influence their behaviour and their job (Donsbach 2008). A recent study analysing journalistic practice in the United States, United Kingdom, and Austria (Perreault, Perreault, and Maares 2021, 2, 4) has highlighted how metajournalistic discourse affirming the tools journalists use to make sense of reporting on the pandemic develops beyond differences in media systems and beyond national differences, and works as a “stabilizing agent” within the field (Perreault, Perreault, and Maares 2021, 14).

Journalistic roles generally develop in their dependency on the level of democracy, where critical-monitoring roles for democratic regimes are differentiated against the more facilitative-collaborative roles for non-democratic regimes (Hanitzsch and Vos 2018). Similarly, studies identified “multi-layered hybridization” in the performance of professional roles within advanced, transitional, and non-democratic countries (Mellado et al. 2017). Within Europe, differences were detected between the Northern part of Europe where journalists strongly emphasize the critical-monitorial dimension of their work, and the Southern Europe where the predominance of the informational and analytical-deliberative roles was noted (Standaert, Hanitzsch, and Dedonder 2021, 933). We argue in this article that apart from recognizing the level of democratic governance, the studies of journalistic roles should consider more the specific social-political moment that influences journalism and pushes journalists in situations where they adapt, adjust, and perform the changing roles as responses to the changing circumstances. As argued by Mellado (2021, 7) journalistic roles are not monolithic and taken for granted but adhere to the fluid and dynamic nature of journalism, that adapts to the changing social and political context.

In specific circumstances of (health) crisis, journalism largely serves as a channel for communication from politicians, public officials, and experts to the larger public, described as “a facilitative role of journalism” (Christians et al. 2009, 158–178). The facilitative role is part of a broader normative framework that sees journalism as a form of collective meaning-making in a society where journalists operate as an interpretative community, as expressed by Zelizer (2009). A public health crisis in particular has been recognized (Ringo 2005; Wormer 2020; Perreault and Perreault 2021) as a period that accentuates this role, and it is therefore our aim to study further how journalistic roles develop and shift in a period of dual crisis, health, and political. While the facilitative role is related to the media’s responsibility to cherishing the public good in a crisis period, the pitfalls of strengthening this role include an increased reliance and even dependency of journalists on governmental sources. Recent research on journalism in the US during the Covid-19 pandemic (Perreault and Perreault2021, 10) reported strong cooperation with public officials, and also of several dangers journalists have faced, such as the dangers of misinformation, the dangers of their work being ignored due to lack of credibility or news validity, and the dangers of journalism being perceived as biased. The same journalists have also perceived collaboration with medical experts as useful and necessary. These practices alert us to the dynamic nature of roles that are changing in response to specific contextual moments.

Studies have shown that public health crises increase dependency on official sources to a greater extent for public media compared to those privately owned (Zhang and Fleming 2005; Biancovilli and Jurberg 2020). Public media were found to be exposed to a greater risk of pursuing a “facilitative role of journalism” (Christians et al. 2009, 158–178) compared to private media; they tend to be under greater supervision of the government and there is an increased tendency towards professional conformism as a consequence of the expectations related to their “nationalizing function” (Fraser 2007). For example, a recent study in Germany problematized public television coverage during the Covid-19 period, building up “a new cult of stars” around individual spokespersons, governmental and expert, offering them a stage that is hardly ever accompanied by journalism (Wormer 2020, 468), which can be critically viewed as a “special form of court reporting” (Jarren in Wormer 2020, 468). The increased vulnerability of public media may push them to perpetuate regimes of truths that are in line with governmental anti-crisis strategies and are built around alliances with selected health professionals.

A recent study (Klemm, Das, and Hartmann 2019) among journalists with experience in health crisis reporting in Germany and Finland found that journalists negotiate the diverse expectations when covering the pandemic and are generally committed to what earlier research (Weaver and Wilhoit 1996) identified as universal or general journalistic roles, such as information dissemination, interpretative, and watchdog roles. At the same time, the study (Klemm, Das, and Hartmann 2019) identified “shifts” in role perceptions, notably a shift towards “a public mobilizer role” when journalists felt the responsibility of mobilizing self-protective behaviour encouraging the performance of precautionary measures. Moreover, a visible identified shift was in the stance journalists adopted towards authorities when the watchdog role was weak and was replaced by a cooperative role. Journalists considered cooperation with authorities when reporting several stages of health crisis highly relevant (Klemm, Das, and Hartmann 2019, 1232–1233).

We argue that journalistic experiences would differ in a situation when a public health crisis coincides with democratic backsliding as a result of government change and increased pressure on the media. We expect that journalists in the particular context of Slovenia would be more reluctant to adopt a cooperative role in their relation to the authorities. Such expectations are in line with the findings of Weaver and Willnat (2012), who show that journalistic standards are not universal but are contextually contingent. While the existing studies differentiate journalistic roles according to the level of democracy, we explore how roles function when democracy itself is in the process of changing, particularly when it is in transit towards a more authoritarian rule as is the current situation in Slovenia. Recognizing the relative autonomy of the media field (Bourdieu 1993), we argue that authoritarian and propaganda tendencies may not function in to as outlined by existing research and we therefore assume that the cooperative, facilitative role may partly give way to a more pronounced watchdog role. We argue that such shifting roles are a consequence of specific social and political moments when in Slovenia health crisis is intertwined with deterioration of democracy. In this article, by applying the method of the interview, we look at such potential shifts, and explore how journalists view limitations to their practice imposed by anti-Covid and anti-media measurement. We further analyse how both crises have impacted journalistic work and socio-economic positions of the media.

The Democratic Backlash and “War with the Media” – The Case of Slovenia

The Slovenian government in place since March 2020 has adopted measures to combat Covid-19 in parallel with interventions in several social fields such as the media, civil society, culture, and others. The main orchestration of right-wing populism, as well as rising authoritarianism (Pajnik 2019) in the Slovenian context, has come from Janez Janša, the leader of the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS) since 1993. Janša, who is close to Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán and praised the declaration of Trump’s “victory” in the last US presidential elections, exemplifies well the paradoxes of transition that since 1989 have radicalized right-wing populist politics in the Central and Eastern European region.

Janša’s party has been the party in power in the periods 2004–2008 and 2012–2013, the major party in opposition since 2013, and in March 2020 Janša formed his third ruling coalition. Krekó and Enyedi (2018) recognize that Janša’s governing strategies fall under “Orbán’s laboratory of illiberalism”. In 2018, Orbán and his state-run media gave Janša a huge boost in snap elections, making his party the Slovenian parliament’s largest and putting him in a position to form a coalition government (Krekó and Enyedi 2018, 43, 48). Janša and his SDS are close to policies that are advocated by Orbán’s Fidesz and include attacks on the media, the opposition parties, the EU, NGOs, the legal system, refugees, etc., pushing Slovenia away from liberal democracy (Brusis 2016, 265).

Janša’s recent attacks on the media include his essay titled “War with the media” published in May 2020 on the government website,¹ which was followed by attempts to change the law on the media, the Public Radio-Television Act, and the law on STA, the Slovenian Press Agency. The suggested legal changes were launched without any professional grounding and were aimed at suppressing the autonomy of the media and crippling them financially (Splichal 2020a, 2020b, 19–20). Recently, several media, including the dailies Delo, Dnevnik, the weekly Mladina, and Radio Študent were left without public funding.² These developments have been critically evaluated by Splichal (2020b, 20) as “an expansionist-fascist and corporatist media policy” that has been operating under the “illiberal laboratory” with the support of regional oligarch owners that help Janša boost his own media empire - recently not only from Hungary but also from the Czech Republic, namely the corporation PPF, which became the majority owner of the country’s largest private TV station, POP TV.³

These developments also increased direct pressure on journalists. Janša has continued to publish insulting tweets during the pandemic, denouncing the media for “spreading lies”, “being part of the conspiracy”, “producing fake news”, etc. He accused the public broadcaster of lying and misleading the public, and posted tweets that threaten journalists’ security.⁴ Janša’s illiberal turns made headlines of major media worldwide,⁵ and stimulated critical reactions from several international bodies. For example, the memorandum on freedom of expression and media freedom in Slovenia by the Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner expressed concern about the steps taken by the Slovenian authorities that threaten to weaken public service media, interfere with editorial independence, undermine the ability of critical voices to speak freely, and produce a hostile environment for journalists.⁶

Methodology

We used the method of semi-structured interview to analyse journalists’ experiences in Covid-19 reporting and their reflections on the interactions of health, political, and media crises. We included journalists from different news organizations, focusing on those who are most followed by the public, TV and press outlets, daily newspapers, and magazines. We conducted 21 interviews with journalists who have reported on Covid-19. All journalists in the sample have from 10 to 20 years of experience in critical covering of daily politics, with some specializing for foreign politics. The majority have university degree in journalism or social and political sciences, and they have previous experience in crisis communication as they covered the “migration crisis” (2015–2018). As the majority are experienced journalists we expected their narrations to be rooted in normative views of journalistic professionalism. Media outlets where our interviewees work include the public broadcaster Radio-Television Slovenia (RTV SLO) and the privately owned print media, the three main dailies, Delo, Večer, and Dnevnik, and a weekly Mladina. Our sample includes 12 male and 9 female journalists, aged from 35 to 66, the regularly employed as well as freelancers. The interviews, for which we have collected appropriate informed consent were conducted face-to-face in the period from June to October 2020.

The interview questionnaire aimed at addressing several topics to capture journalists’ perceptions of the interrelationship between the pandemic and the political situation, experiences with (self)censorship, and its impact on journalistic roles and work. Further, a section on governmental attitudes towards the media and government communication on Covid-19 was included, while we also wanted to reflect on the differences/similarities between various media outlets, as well as to assess the impact of journalists’ socio-economic statuses and changing work conditions.

The method of the interview and the sampling strategy enabled us to identify shared journalistic roles and practices across the heterogeneous media field (Zelizer 2009). Our data do not allow for generalization but we nevertheless expect information-rich narratives to be indicative for an understanding of journalistic roles in a situation of a dual crisis. All interviews were recorded with the written permission of the interviewees and transcribed. The analysis followed instructions for thematic and inductive analysis – researchers closely read the interview transcript, noting central concepts, key emerging themes, patterns, and variations (Boyatzis 1998). A particular emphasis was placed on the temporal context, how journalists identified their communication, contacts with the government, how they understand their roles, and how they navigated Covid-19 related restrictions. In addition to seeking to understand journalists’ actual experiences, we also sought to establish how they internalized and legitimized their situation and how (self)critical they were of it or how they resisted it. Our goal was to unravel the narrated truth where interviewers’ accounts, not necessarily reflecting the “objective truth” and not allowing for generalization, nevertheless help to explain important experiences and the shaping of journalistic roles.

Restrictions in Media Crisis Reporting

Besides providing concrete information, the essential function of the media during crisis is interpretative, by establishing frameworks for how the media covers the crisis: the choice of topics and specific aspects of the crisis, the selection of questions, filtering of information, the emphasis and tone of coverage (Biancovilli and Jurberg 2020). In our interviews journalists self-critically reflected their interpretative role in the reporting of the Covid-19 as focused on medical aspects, government measures, and the number of Covid-19 cases while other features of the crisis, such as its effects on social life, specific social groups, and people’s everyday lives, became marginal themes.

We reduced Covid-19 and virus coverage to numbers, we’re counting how many are positive, how many are negative, we no longer speak about those who became ill. People have a million questions that relate to basic life and survival, and they do not find this [the answers] in the media. (Journalist 13, RTV SLO)

I thought it is very important to also open wider social, sociological, philosophical aspects of crisis. (Journalist 5, daily)

This can be interpreted as a consequence of an initial shock at the onset of pandemic, the lack of knowledge about the extent of the crisis and the need to provide information on crisis measures for the functioning of society. In particular, journalists working for the public broadcaster accentuated their informative role, stating that their editorial policy followed the principle “to be of service to the people even more” (Journalist 11, RTV SLO), and adjusted the reporting to meet the need for clear instructions and service-type information. As the pandemic has been protracted over time, the journalists also critically observed their self-censorship, i.e., crisis editorial policies which dictate that the usual variety of media content is limited to the pandemic:

We are in a period of several months’ reporting on a single topic: a sort of total journalistic monotheism in which there was no room for anything else except for corona and everything related to it. (Journalist 3, daily)

As Ringo notes (2005, 242), in times of crisis, journalists and politicians share the common goal of mitigating the effects of the pandemic, which accentuates the facilitating role of the media. This was visible in our interviews most obviously in journalists’ reflection of the partial self-restriction of autonomy and of self-censorship. To avoid raising doubts in their publics and increasing general uncertainty concerning the measures and severity of the situation, journalists tend to restrain themselves in their watchdog role, in critical commenting or questioning of government crisis-management measures.

If you thought to yourself that some of the measures taken by the authorities did not make sense, you could not say this as openly and vehemently, because at any given time you could be labelled as an enemy of the people or accused of wanting to cause harm. This situation was so new, I did not really know how to confront it properly, and I saw that I can not directly translate my personal thinking into my article. (Journalist 10, daily)

I think we slackened off a little. … As if we were half allies. Well, in Covid-19 we are, because they [the government] make decisions and we present them to the public. When we scrutinize someone, go ask them, this is one such aspect, “Well, I won’t ask them whether this [i.e., government measures] is constitutionally controversial”. Well, somebody has to. (Journalist 12, RTV SLO)

A large quantity of information on the pandemic, which is difficult to differentiate in terms of what is reliable and evidence-based information and what is misinformation, directly affects reporting in crisis (Zarocostas 2020). This is why in crisis where unverified information is amplified and spread rapidly through social media platforms, professional media outlets shoulder even greater responsibility to provide reliable and high-quality information. According to Wormer (2020), this was one of the reasons for the surge, including among young people, in the use of traditional media, especially in television. To perform their information and monitorial roles, journalists report using various ways of dealing with the cacophony of information: by interviewing experts, by acquiring data from official sources, by additionally verifying information, by using international sources, etc., while also facing uncertainty.

You have this constant feeling that somebody is playing with you and the information, just turning the statistics their way. This is why, at least for myself, I am in a constant dilemma about who is manipulating me here. (Journalist 1, daily)

The complete novelty of the pandemic crisis along with the special regime of crisis communication to a large extent restricted the possibilities of accessing verified information. Journalists stated that their most important assets for quality reporting are their knowledge about the subject and on-the-ground verification. In the Covid-19 pandemic they were cut off from both, and thus totally dependent on the government communication. The journalists underline that elimination of fieldwork and direct verification of information in the field has a markedly negative effect on the quality of journalism.

The problem was that fieldwork stopped. Everything remained at the level of phone calls. I am sure that we should work in the field, to see, to be certain, to check, to see if there’s something else, to see other things, and it is harder for someone to lie when they are looking you in the eyes than in the public releases or over the phone. (Journalist 2, daily)

The government established itself as the only competent and reliable source of information, and communicated in a one-way and confused manner, which, as the journalists reflect, hampered media coverage.

The problem is that official communication about the pandemic is very confused. … It is more the crisis of the institutions that I see than anything else, really. It is the crisis of communication as such, where the head of the state has three voices, or four, that say things that contradict one another. That sometimes their statements as such are contradictory: the number of cases is increasing – let’s open the factories to protect the interests of economy. … This institutional confusion is what makes our work difficult. (Journalist 7, daily)

The government communication was organized through digital press conferences and failed to provide the possibility to raise questions or offered pre-prepared questions, since “ … the prime minister was not willing to answer unpleasant questions” (Journalist 4, daily)

The biggest challenge was how to acquire information. Everything was closed down, the government also locked itself down quite conveniently, closed down press conferences, and then conducted them in a highly regulated manner. What I mainly see is that the government has also efficiently exploited this to make a strict selection of information, and also to limit journalists’ access to, say, ministers, the prime minister and the rest of them. (Journalist 6, daily)

Moreover, in the course of the pandemic, the Government Communications Office was authorized to give permission to representatives of public institutions, e.g., the National Institute of Public Health, to make public statements. All these strategies strongly resemble authoritarian media regimes (Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm 1963; Zhang and Fleming 2005), and they largely limited the exercise of monitorial and critical journalistic roles.

Due to lockdown and restrictions on crossing municipality borders, journalists were prevented from on-the-ground verification of information. Being unable to check out the actual state of affairs and conduct direct interviews with informants, resulted in the media becoming mere tools for channelling the government crisis communication and reality as produced by politicians. “We are, in fact, collaborating in creating a parallel reality or even propaganda.” (Journalist 5, daily). The merging of the media discourse with the official one has negative effects on the credibility of information, limiting critical and deliberative roles of the media and bringing media reporting closer to propaganda (Edward and Chomsky 1988). As one journalist commented:

I think that the propaganda operated in the form of press conferences without the presence of journalists, with the filtering of information, lack of access to certain procedures, and so on. … Propaganda is at work as soon as politicians have their own speakers, they no longer even address people directly, but have speakers, who represent a sort of filter. (Journalist 14, RTV SLO)

The Intertwining of Political Crisis and the Covid-19 Crisis

As indicated above, in Slovenia, the propaganda moment was exacerbated in the intertwining of the public health crisis and political crisis. As the journalists emphasized, it was impossible to speak of the health crisis without at the same time reflecting on the changed political context. Political crisis communication and management have largely relied on spreading fear to legitimize repressive measures. For instance, the government appointed as pandemic government spokesperson the same person who served such a function during the Ten-Day War in 1991, when Slovenia seceded from Yugoslavia. This gesture was critically observed by the public as a symbolic exacerbating of the crisis situation instead of calming it. This was also critically highlighted by the journalists:

I think there was propaganda, and this epidemic was used for ideological political goals. That is to say, the fear that people experienced was used for certain political moves which turned into a fight between pro and contra. So, if the opposition organized Friday protests, it was reduced to the threat to public health. You could see that the repression increased, the government did not act calmly, it did not calm the situation, but fuelled this fear. Not to maintain public health, though, but to display its own power. (Journalist 14, RTV SLO)

Following its authoritarian logic, and modelling the Hungarian government (Krekó and Enyedi 2018), the Slovenian government did not consider the media as partners in fighting the crisis, but as its own tool and a means of disseminating its interpretation of the situation. Any critical reporting was denounced:

Two things were interrelated here. Namely, the party that runs the government, SDS that is, is well-known, and this is documented, for putting pressure on the media, as well as humiliating or undermining their credibility. (Journalist 15, weekly)

Amid the health crisis the government cut off funding for the Slovenian Press Agency (STA), and new media legislation was prepared which would limit funding for the public broadcaster (RTV SLO). The public media were pushed into a situation in which they had to solve two problems – how to find a plausible way to keep informing the citizens and facilitate containment of the pandemic, and how to defend their autonomy when faced with a state which was becoming increasingly hostile and repressive towards public media.

As witnessed by journalists, the government’s pressure on the media even became personalized and moved to social media:

Our critique of what the government communicated, their moves, was perceived as a threat. The government, including the Prime Minister, the highest government officials and ministers, were intensely settling accounts, ad personam, at a very personal level with those who had a different, critical opinion. … You can see they are orchestrated, organized … then the pressure begins to intensify, on social networks. (Journalist 6, daily)

The journalists recognized populist patterns in government communication:

Who are the models, Trumpism, Bannonian communication, there is much more of this now compared to the previous government. This government, I think, absolutely knows what it is doing in terms of communication, why it is doing it, whom they want to mobilize through this; it is clear that there is a plan behind it, and it is all propaganda, “fake news”, a chaotic mixture of, say, substances that in this context make it even more difficult for journalists to work. (Journalist 6, daily)

Despite limited access to reliable information, self-censorship of critical commenting, and open governmental pressure on media, several media outlets as well as individual journalists have managed to maintain and consolidate their autonomy and professional roles. While at the beginning of the pandemic journalists limited themselves to a facilitative reporting function, as the crisis unfolded they increasingly strengthened their watchdog function and openly reported on problematic government practices. They continue to publish in-depth analyses, do investigative journalism, critically reflect on mistakes and inconsistencies in government measures, and raise awareness of the position of social groups who were the most affected by the crisis. In the gradual revival and strengthening of the watchdog function, there was no distinction between public and private media, nor between individual journalists. The obvious problematic practices of the government were decisive. Crisis communication of the media outlets in our sample, which does not include commercial media or those that are directly affiliated to the ruling SDS party, retained their critical role. Journalists overcame the reduction of their work to a “facilitative role”, embraced their responsibility towards the public by providing information, and at the same time managed to retain the criticism of the watchdog role.

Controlling the Media by Regulating Socio-Economic Conditions and Work Processes

The most common view of the relationship between public and private media, which is also perceived by some journalists in our sample, is that private media follow the logic of profit, and this is reflected in their production of infotainment. In contrast, public media are either committed to the public good and objective reporting or, in negative terms, are the “tool of those in power” (Journalist 5, daily). However, even in times of no crisis this dichotomy proves to be too simplistic. Our interviews show that the specific function and responsibility of the public media on the one hand and its staffing, technical and financial capacities on the other are primarily perceived by journalists as important distinguishing factors between public and private media. Both have direct consequences for the content of the coverage. Journalists of privately owned media mainly foregrounded the significantly larger resources of the public media outlets.

There’s a wide consensus that the crisis was better covered by the public media, which also have resources, people. Of course we had very similar, equal goals, to provide information to the general public, of course, quality stories, context, but in the private media, with respect to the daily press, there is this handicap of fewer resources and people, and so it’s more difficult to cover things. (Journalist 6, daily)

At the same time, they also say that due to its position and public financing the public media are significantly more exposed to the pressure of an undemocratic government than the private media, which might hinder the performance of journalistic roles.

It is terrible what is going on, how they put pressure on the media. Well, again RTV is the most exposed here. They would put pressure on everyone, but they do not have so much influence on the private media as they have on the public ones. (Journalist 9, daily)

Paradoxically, in a situation of high demand for quality information, which is reflected in higher ratings, especially of public and traditional media outlets, the media are losing financial resources from advertising due to the economic consequences of the pandemic. Wormer (2020) reports that in Germany, publishers are facing an 80% decline in advertising, resulting in many of them downsizing and introducing part-time work. “The same virus that has once again increased the demand for their product could also herald their final end” (Wormer 2020, 469).

The journalists in our sample also report a rise in subscriptions, nevertheless, the withdrawal of advertisers puts the media in a difficult position, especially privately owned ones that depend on advertising more than the public media do. However, since in Slovenia the Covid-19 crisis is intertwined with the pressures from the government on media in general, public media (RTV and STA) are also facing financial uncertainty, less because of the pandemic than because of the government’s threats to cut their funding. Critically oriented private media are also facing not only the withdrawal of advertisers, but also indirect political pressures through the withdrawal of advertising by state-owned companies. A journalist of the weekly Mladina comments:

From the first months of the epidemic until now all advertisers have withdrawn. Advertisers have also withdrawn because of the lockdown, but have not returned now that it is over. We experienced the same situation in the period of the first Janša government. Yes, direct pressure is applied through money for the advertising of public companies. Another pressure is that other companies are afraid to advertise, because you come on the blacklist. (Journalist 15, weekly)

A similar opinion is shared by a journalist at Večer daily:

Advertising of public companies is important. In this way it was not direct, but direct attacks occur on social networks, while other pressures on owners are more indirect, but also distinct. On one side, advertising has halved, or the results are even worse, there are layoffs, of course also for economic as well as business reasons. (…) Of course, in the end, it shows in the business, and of course private media, their owners have to be organized even sooner and cut labour costs, which they did here at our newspaper, it resulted in a drop of 10% to 15% in the wages of employees. (Journalist 6, daily)

Especially in daily newspapers, such as Večer, Delo, and Dnevnik, the cuts in advertising income have led to cuts in costs. Some of these outlets lowered wages, but mainly they cut costs by not extending contracts with external staff. The consequences of the deteriorating economic conditions of the media amidst the two crises were the most directly felt by precariously employed journalists and technical staff – with a significantly larger number of them working for private media, which directly depend on advertising income.

But full-time employees also express concerns for their financial security in the future, and highlight strained working conditions:

There are fears about survival which will most likely be further increased during the next year. It can definitely have a negative impact on journalistic reporting and reporting which is more opportunistic and closer to the expectations of those who will then have the levers in their hands. (Journalist 14, RTV SLO)

Journalists called attention to the reduced flow of information and more superficial information accessible through social networks, and revealed that working from home made them feel atomized and isolated, which influenced the performance of their roles.

I missed personal contact, very much so, you lose contact, you start living in your own world, you depend on a limited set of information … the contact, this personal, concrete contact with people, but also coffees, informants, I mean, it grounds you, it makes you more down to earth. (Journalist 8, daily)

The journalists says that they have slowly started to lose contact with the editorial policy, that they did not know what are topical conversations, “ … what are the rumours, where we are leaning, where we are going, what are you expected to do, what is not ok, what is ok” (Journalist 1, daily). Also experiences with working from home are varied and concrete personal situations, such as age, number, and age of children, partner’s job, economic and spatial conditions, skills in new technologies, can influence individual journalist’s quality of performance. Some experience work from home positively (I worked more and better, Journalist 9, daily), others face extreme efforts in balancing work and family:

In the morning I was a teacher, in the afternoon a cook, and in the evening I was a journalist, so I had a 12-hour shift or a 14-hour shift for a couple of months. So that my work suffered, I could not be 100 per cent. I have a family of three kids … (Journalist 8, daily).

A recent study on how news executives implemented journalistic practices during the pandemic not only highlighted work overload, stress, and job insecurity but also showed that virtual spaces reconfigured relationships in the newsroom and that they also increased collaboration (García-Avilés 2021, 9–13). Our respondents reported that employers recognized the experiences of working from home and more frequent use of new technologies as a way of potential savings and cuts in labour costs also after the Covid-19 crisis. This means that the Covid-19 crisis could have more long-term effects on the journalistic working process and roles, and these changes will not necessarily be positive.

Conclusions

The contested role of the media during a public health crisis corresponds with the different expectations that exist in society on how journalists should perform their work. The expectations include the plea of health experts and the government for the media to act as partners in adhering to responses to limit the crisis and educate the public on the risks and the ways to overcome them. Periods of health crises, therefore, intensify the dilemmas around “appropriate journalism”, i.e., what accurate and responsible journalism is, how it can avoid aggravating the situation, and the spread of panic in a crisis. We have shown that the expectations towards the media intensify even further when the health crisis intersects with rising authoritarianism. Apart from experiencing professional limitations due to the pandemic in the context of a democracy backlash, journalists are additionally burdened by government pressures and the expectations of serving as a propaganda tool.

We have analysed how the combination of crisis communication and rising authoritarianism is marked by restricted media autonomy due to government strategies of disciplining the media by mechanisms such as legal changes, changes in financial and advertising schemes aimed at economically exhausting the media, discrediting of journalists by the ruling politicians, etc. According to the classical literature on the authoritarian theory and media propaganda, this all aggravates the risk that the media are turned into mouthpiece of those in power, producing a uniform discourse on the health crisis. With such tendencies in place, a facilitative and cooperative role of the media in relation to the government strategies is expected to intensify. Our analysis has shown a less clear-cut division of journalistic roles, with journalists pointing to the coexistence of several roles in times of a dual crisis. This finding confirms that roles and practices in the media not only depend on the level of a general state of democracy in a country or a region, but are a dynamic structure that depends on social and political momentum and context. Journalists reflected on their informative and interpretative role when the sense of responsibility to report to help limit the spread of the disease is coupled with a critique of government measures that use the pandemic to strengthen its own vision of an authoritarian society. We have found such stances for both public and private media. Journalists reported on their struggles to inform citizens in a responsible way, based on verified information, to help contain the pandemic, and at the same time constantly remaining wary of bowing to governmental pressure. Therefore, governmental pressure on the media in the form of both political instrumentalization and economic undermining does not simply result in the media adopting and strengthening the facilitative role – rather, democracy decline in the Covid-19 period also appeared as the condition that has sharpened (critical) journalists’ vision of the importance of their practice.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Norface Network [grant number 2021-2023, 462-19-080]; Slovenian Research Agency [grant number J5-9445, P5-0413].

Notes

1 Available at https://www.gov.si/novice/2020-05-11-vojna-z-mediji/ (accessed on 3 April 2021).

2 More is available at the website of the Slovene Association of Journalists https://novinar.com/ (accessed on 25 May 2021).

3 See the appeal of the Slovene Association of Journalists to respect editorial independence addressed to the new owner of POP TV, https://novinar.com/novica/poziv-novemu-lastniku-pop-tv-in-kanala-a-k-spostovanju-uredniske-neodvisnosti/ (accessed on 25 May 2021).

4 For more see https://www.politico.eu/article/slovenia-war-on-media-janez-jansa/ (accessed on 3 May, 2021).

5 A non-profit initiative Danes je nov dan (Today is a New Day) published a list of media articles across the globe that reported about the political situation in Slovenia since the beginning of Janša’s government in March 2020. More than 570 media in more than 60 countries across the world reported about the changed political situation, which has not occurred since independence in 1991: https://sramota.si/ (accessed on 28 May 2021).

6 Available at https://rm.coe.int/memorandum-on-freedom-of-expression-and-media-freedom-in-slovenia/1680a2ae85. See also Media Freedom Rapid Response Report: Press Freedom Deteriorating in Slovenia under Latest Janša Government by the International Press Institute https://ipi.media/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Slovenia_PressFreedomMission_Report_Final_20210630.pdf (accessed on October 5, 2021).