Populism's Influence on News Content: Polarization, Political Parallelism, and Journalistic Professionalism in Rafael Correa's Ecuador.

This article investigates how populism in power influenced news media in Ecuador during leftist president Rafael Correa's presidency (2007–2017). Correa's administration triggered a bold media reform in Ecuador challenging traditional media and promising media democratization, but his government received sharp denunciations from press freedom and media organizations which considered Ecuador as a "not free" country, especially after the passing of a Communication Law in 2013 that regulated media extensively. Through content analysis of news and opinion pieces published in 2005, 2006, 2015, 2016, and 2018 by Ecuador's main legacy newspapers, El Comercio and El Universo, different legal and political contexts are examined. The main observations suggest an increase in polarization and improvements in journalistic professionalism, two results consistent and divergent to mainstream academic approaches and public discussions about populism. This contradictory situation may be explained by the emergence of a new political parallelism, absent before Correa came to power, which combines consistent stances based on the rejection of Correa's leadership, with an improvement in professional practices, especially when Correa was in power. These results, and novel approach adopting a detailed content analysis to explore the relationship between populism and journalism in a Latin American media system, may contribute to a better understanding of the influence of populism on news media. This study calls for more comparative and longitudinal analyses in different media systems and populist experiences, focused on the connection of professional practices and political positioning, with or without populist actors in power. Plain language summary: This article investigates how populism in power influenced journalism in Ecuador during leftist president Rafael Correa's incumbency (2007–2017) in a pioneering study using content analysis to observe what happened in the country after years of a populist presidency. One of the most complex cases of the so-called Latin American Pink Tide, also represented by the governments of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Cristina Fernandez in Argentina, or Evo Morales in Bolivia, Correa's Ecuador revolutionized the media system, amidst Correa's attacks to the "corrupt press," promises of media democratization and sharp denunciations from most press freedom and media organizations. Through analysis of news and opinion pieces, this article presents findings of how polarization and professionalization performed in Ecuador's main legacy newspapers, El Universo and El Comercio, before, during, and after Correa's era. The main observations suggest an increase in polarization and improvements in professionalization, two results consistent and divergent to mainstream academic discussions. This contradictory situation may be explained by the emergence of a new political parallelism, which combines consistent stances based on the rejection of Correa's leadership, with an improvement in professional practices, especially when Correa was in power. These results, and novel approach toward the relations between populism and news media, may contribute to a better understanding of the influence of populism on news media and to call for more comparative and longitudinal analyses in different media systems and populist experiences, focused on the connection of professional practices and political positioning, with or without influential populist actors in power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]