1

London School of Economics and Political Sciences

Department of Media and Communication

MSc in Politics and Communication

An agonistic role for the press?

Página/12 and the Argentine progressivism.

Supervisor: Dr. Margaret Scammell

Candidate number: 42214

August 2007

Dissertation (MC499) submitted to the Department of Media andCommunication, London School of Economics, September 2007, in partialfulfilment of the requirements for the MSc in Politics and Communication.

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Contents

1. Abstract 3

2. Introduction 5

3. Theoretical Chapter 9

Democracy 9

Press 13

Identity 17

Case Study 21

4. Methodology 24

Sampling and selection of the data 29

5. Findings and analysis 31

Content Analysis 31

Discourse Analysis 42

6. Conclusion 50

7. References 52

8. Appendices 57

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1. Abstract

This paper aims to assess the way the newspaper Página/12 promoted and

strengthened a progressive political identity in Argentina after the return of

democracy. The work was oriented by three theoretical questions about the

kind of democracy, press and identity usually involved in political

communication studies. The theory of delegative democracy (O’Donnell, 1994)

was used to broad the scope lately used in political communication to analyze

‘emerging’ or ‘consolidating’ democracies. The hypothesized agonistic role of

the press stems from agonistic pluralism theory (Mouffe, 1999). The question

about the relation between media, politics and collective identities that this

paper addresses has not been usually been raised in political communication

research.

The research is empirical, and is methodologically based in the triangulation of

quantitative and qualitative techniques, content and discourse analysis

respectively. For the content analysis, the ideological consistency of the

editorial line of the newspaper was evaluated contrasting its positioning towards

the neo-liberal Peronist administration of the ‘90s against the center-left

Peronist of the ‘00s. A sample of thirty-eight covers was randomly selected,

twenty from the decade of the 90’s (two issues per year) and eighteen

corresponding to the period ’02-’07 (three issues per year). Different variables

were then constructed, such as topic, value-judgement direction towards the

administration in office of different elements in the cover, ideological origin and

institutional affiliation of the columnists. The discourse analysis addressed the

editorial line of the newspaper in three highly significative articles for the self-

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definition of its identity. In addition, the cover of the first edition was also

reviewed.

The main findings are that the newspaper has played an important role in the

construction of a progressivist collective identity, attached to the values of

democracy, human rights and equality. Beyond the limits of traditional

bipartisanship, and in the present disarray of the party system, it constitutes a

useful ideological anchor.

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2. Introduction

Political communication scholars have raised the question about the democratic

role of the press on many occasions (Scammell, 2000; Curran, 2000, Dahlgren,

1992). It is less clear, thou, that they had extended it beyond the scope of the

liberal model of democracy of western developed societies (Scammell, 1999).

As Scammell has accurately asserted, “several models of democracy have

quite different demands of media” (Scammell, 2000). Furthermore, these

democracies taken as a model are also long-standing, stable democracies

(Jalfin, 2003).

Other countries constitute a great opportunity to investigate the role of the press

in societies with different democratic conditions and political and media

traditions. Following this path, Argentina is been characterized as an emerging

democracy (Voltmer, 2006; Waisbord, 1995) according to a classification that

conceptualizes it as a product of the third and last democratizing world wave

(Huntington, 1991). This is due to the fact that democracy was recovered less

than 25 years ago. However, as the transit of Argentine democratic process has

not been without turmoil it was also defined as a ‘consolidating democracy’. In

addition to overcoming military menaces during the first years of democratic

recovery, since 1983 this transit has also regularly faced deep social and

economic crises. According to Levitsky and Murillo, “contemporary Argentine

democracy has proven surprisingly robust. It has survived the hyperinflation of

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1989–90, the radical [neoliberal1] economic reforms of the 1990s, and, most

recently, a depression unparalleled in the country’s history” (2003: 162). This is

why concepts such as “emerging” or “consolidating” are too broad to grasp the

particularities of the Argentine democracy.

Argentina is right now part of the left-leaning wave of Latin American

governments that emerged after a decade of neoliberal policies emanated from

the Washington Consensus. Paradoxically, the party that carried out such

policies under the Menem administration is the same party that is now in office

with Kirchner, the Partido Justicialista (PJ) or Peronism. Notwithstanding, the

last crisis had a profound impact on the party system. Argentina’s traditional

non-Peronist party, the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR), caved under the weight of

its second consecutive failed presidency. In its fall, UCR dragged its partner in

office, FREPASO, the last urban middle-class center-left coalition. Although

Peronism’s electoral resilience prevented a full-scale collapse of the party

system, it also suffered a profound impact (Levitsky and Murillo, 2003). Despite

the party being in office again, Kirchner’s administration can broadly be defined

as a progressive coalition not only because of the direction of its main policies

but because it includes functionaries and governors from other parties, with

centre-left views.

For the next presidential poll an alliance is being set, and the top current debate

for political analysts is whether the new political system is to be organized

1 As pointed in Held, D. (2004). Globalisation: the dangers and the answers, inwww.openDemocracy.net, p.5.

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around an ideological axis, in a centre-left and a centre-right poles2 (Mocca,

2004). The present governing coalition has the declared aim of occupy the

political centre-left and embodies a progressive identity. Fundamentally, the

economic policy is more heterodox than the recipes from the IMF, followed in

the ’90s.As a matter of fact, the country has recently cancelled its debt with that

institution in order to gain degrees of freedom in the design of its national

development policies, and the government enunciates the decade of the ’90s as

the main ideological enemy. Furthermore, at the core of its agenda are the

policies of human rights and full accomplishment of justice for the crimes

committed during the last dictatorship.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the process of construction of a political

identity in this context. Explicitly, the question that drives me is: what is the role

of the press in the shaping of a progressive political identity in the Argentine

democracy? Scammell (2000) has accurately questioned how little serious

attention political science pays to the media. Latin American and Argentine

literature is no exception (Levitsky, 2000; Novaro and Palermo, 19983). In

addressing such a concern, this research will focus over the role played by one

left-centre newspaper that appeared after the return of democracy.

The research will use as case study the daily Página/12. In its first issue the

publisher defined the objective of the daily as “to express pluralism and debates

in a democratic society in transition, always within the defense of human

2 As a matter of fact, such a thesis had been postulated by Di Tella in the 1970’s.3 With the outstanding exception of Sidicaro (1993), and his analysis of the daily La Nación.

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rights”4. The paper grew during the ’90s around two main topics: the defense of

human rights and the critique of the policies of state reform and privatization

implemented by the Menem Peronist administration. Wasibord has pointed out

accurately that “the political orientation of the paper is inseparable from the

subjects of denunciations” (Waisbord, 2000: 78). In present times, since the

crisis provoked by neoliberal policies has enabled the flourishing of a centre-left

government, the paper’s editorial agenda not surprisingly matches the agenda

of the current administration; to the point that it has been accused by some of

being the official house organ.

Taking this in consideration, the research design of this work will address the

continuities and discontinuities in the editorial direction towards two Peronist

administrations from different political signs. In particular regarding government

socio-economic and human rights policies. Its potential contribution is not only

that postulated by Scammell (i.e. “to build bridges across the gulf between

media and political theory”), but also to build bridges between core and

peripheral countries in order to broaden the conceptualization of the media’s

political role in the age of globalization.

4 Página/12, 26/05/87, p.7.

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3. Theoretical Chapter

The following literature review is divided in accordance with the basis of the

questions behind this study. The topics addressed are different theories of

democracy, theories about the role of the press and different journalistic

traditions, and theories about collective and political identities. Finally, the

objective, research question and case study are presented.

What kind of democracy?

Typical taxonomies of democracy followed by political communication scholars

in their attempts to conceptualize the role of media in democracy used to focus

on ideal models (Scammell, 2000, following Held). These models include

“socialism; competitive elitism; pluralism and neopluralism; the New Right and

libertarianism, and participatory democracy, the New Left and its deliberative

and communitarian cousins” (Scammell 2000). However, as Jalfin (2003)

accurately pointed out, these models were constructed upon long-standing

stable democracies.

Taking the inquiry one step further, other scholars included emerging

democracies as their object of study (Voltmer, 2000). Its classification, though,

tends to be organized following the nature of the preceding authoritarian regime

(Gunther and Mughan, 2000; Voltmer, 2000). This step seems to lack precision,

such that, as O’Donnell (1994) has point out:

“the more decisive factors for generating various kinds of democracy are not related to

the characteristics of the preceding authoritarian regime or to the process of transition.

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Instead… we must focus upon various long-term historical factors as well as the degree

of severity of the socioeconomic problems that newly installed democratic governments

inherit.” (O’Donnell, 1994).

In the Argentine case, this has led O’Donnell to qualify its democracy as

“delegative”, focusing on the heritage of populist tradition. According to

O’Donnell, delegative democracy is aligned with democratic tradition, and even

more democratic than representative democracy. It is strongly majoritarian, but

less liberal. It consists in constituting, through fair elections a majority that

empowers an authority to become, for a given number of years, the

embodiment and interpreter of the people (O’Donnell, 1994).

Other scholars (Levitsky and Murillo, 2003; Peruzzotti, 2001) have argued that

the delegative argument is somehow overstated and that it neglects

fundamental improvements of the Argentine democracy that emerged after the

last dictatorship. During the first democratic administration of the UCR party, a

historical trial condemned the heads of military “juntas” that ruled the country

under the dictatorial regime for being responsible of massive human rights

violations. However, the military pressure forced the administration to pass two

‘pardon laws’ through congress, setting both a time and a responsibility-

according-to-rank limit to trials. This trend was later deepened by the second

democratic -this time Peronist- administration. Menem’s government declared

the amnesty of the few generals that had been convicted in the historical trial of

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19845. It took years for the human rights movement to revert this trend and find

the way to reopen the trials. This has finally happened under Kirchner’s

Peronist administration, which radically inverted the human rights agenda.

Peruzzotti (2002) claims that it was precisely the legacy of the human rights

movement what acted as the catalyst for cultural change, by triggering a deep

renovation of the country’s democratic traditions. He affirms that, “the

democratic ideal defended by the human rights movement differed from

previous forms of populist self-understanding. The discourse on rights reunites

two elements that populist political culture has kept apart: democracy and the

rule of aw” (2001: 141).

The inner mechanism by which this has occurred, branded ‘societal

accountability’, is inherently linked with the media. Societal accountability is “a

non-electoral, yet vertical mechanism of control that rests on the actions of a

multiple array of citizens’ associations and movements and on the media,

actions that aim at exposing governmental wrongdoing, bringing new issues

onto the public agenda, or activating the operation of horizontal agencies”

(Peruzzotti, 2001: 141). This new kind of accountability, that arguably

constitutes a direct democracy mechanism, is a key concept in understanding

the nature of the present Argentine democracy and the role of the media within

it. Especially in the case of Página/12, that brought muckraking investigative

journalism to the mainstream Argentine press.

5 For more information, refer to http://www.nuncamas.org

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Within political theory, another relevant debate to the aim of this research is the

one that stemmed from the work of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas (1964)

postulated that political questions could be solved rationally, by the exchange of

arguments and counter-arguments in the public sphere. Because a consensus

would emerge in such a way, his model is known as “deliberative or consensual

democracy”. His theory has triggered many critiques, but the most

comprehensive departs from a radical conception of democracy. From a post-

structuralist position, Mouffe (1999) does indeed propose a displacement of the

traditional relation between democracy and power. If Habermas’ vision of

‘deliberative democracy’ considers that the more democratic a society is, the

less power would be constitutive of social relations, Mouffe claims that relations

of power are constitutive of the social. This is why she considers that “the main

question of democratic politics is not how to eliminate power but how to

constitute forms of power that are compatible with democratic values” (1999:

753).

In a point particularly relevant to the topic of identity, Mouffe further argues that

if politics is always concerned with the creation of an “us” against a “them”, the

key issue is “how to establish the us/them discrimination in a way that is

compatible with pluralist democracy” (1999: 755). In order to do so, she

distinguishes two types of political relations, one of antagonism between

enemies, and one of agonism between adversaries, and sets the aim of

democratic politics as the transformation of antagonism into agonism.

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These political perspectives enable different answers to the question about the

role of the press.

What kind of press?

After the seminal work of Habermas, most of media studies focused on the

relation between media and democracy through the lens of the deliberative

theory. Conceiving of the public sphere as the space where public opinion is to

be formed, the model addresses a consensual conceptualization of democracy.

Then, assuming the liberal model of democracy, political communication

literature tends to accept the typical roles prescribed to the press as duties to

democracy. These duties are, 1) the watchdog function against the state, 2) to

supply accurate and sufficient information, and 3) to represent the people

reflecting the spectrum of public opinion and political competition (Scammell,

2000).

With regard to emerging democracies, many scholars consider that the

understanding of media in democratization processes is ‘underdeveloped’

(Mughan & Gunther 2000; Voltmer 2006; O’Neil 1998). However, they seldom

go beyond those traditional roles (Scammell, 2000). As Jalfin has accurately

pointed, the assumption of a liberal model of democracy in media theory has

two main problems; first, it neglects other possible duties of the press (Curran,

1996; Street, 2001; Scammell, 2000), and in fact that the duty of watchdog is

often restricted to the state and not applied to corporate power (Curran, 1996).

Second, the assumption of a liberal model entails an implicit focus on ‘stable,

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affluent, capitalist democracies’ as opposed to newly democratised societies

(Sparks, 1998: 175; Jalfin, 2003: 15).

However, this critique still falls short in overcoming the consensual liberal theory

of democracy. As the deliberative model remains unquestioned, it obturates the

recognition of other models of democracy available in the theory (Scammell,

2000), such as agonistic pluralism. Deliberative models of democracy are

inextricably related with a professional model of journalism. At this level, the

adoption of the professional model neglects other journalistic traditions that had

an outstanding impact in the development of emerging democracies. Waisbord

(2000) rightly argues that the US model of neutrality and objectivity is not

universally applicable. In Latin America activist journalism tradition coexists with

the modern and detached professional style of reporting.

Both forms are fruitful and legitimate ways of establishing trust and credibility

between journalists and their public (Voltmer, 2006). This approach seems to

recognize the existence of different public spaces and is closer to an agonistic

pluralist conception. However, it still undervalues the role of the alternative

tradition in journalism in Argentina’s democracy particularly with regard to the

stabilization of the political system. Of special importance in this matter is the

evolution of the party system and, more crucially, of political identities. Gitlin

(1998) postulated the existence of several public ‘sphericules’, instead of a

unique public sphere. Mouffe has further conceptualized them as ‘conflictual’

public spaces engaged in identity construction, an agonistic struggle where

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conflicting discourses, ideas and interests are confronted (Mouffe, 1999):

“A plurality of oppositional discourses and social organization is central to current notions

of political mobilization and participation. Within a democratic or civic culture, passions

and fierce disagreements, according to her, should not be eliminated in favour of

consensus, but should be actively mobilized and incorporated into the democratic

project.” (Cammaerts6: 14)

In a context where political parties are in crisis and the political system is

changing fast, press can constitute an anchor to collective political identities.

This type of press is more related to European partisan press tradition than the

US journalistic professional model (Hacket & Zhao, 1998). As radical

democracy theory puts at the centre of the debate the struggle for hegemony,

Latin American democracies offer an opportunity to explore a different role for

modern press.

If the alternative press tradition has in common with the public journalism

tradition a movement away from the ideal of objectivity (Jalfin, 2003), it still

remains attached to factitcity to a higher degree than the partisan and activist

press. Waisbord has stated that “even news organizations that often practice

crusading reporting are concerned with factitcity as a central dimension of

professional journalism” (Waisbord, 2000: 181). It is in the editorializing, the

selection and hierarchization of news that independence and commitment are

put into play.

6 Cammaerts, B. (unknown) The media and the Public Sphere. Lecture material available inWebCT, at http://www.lse.ac.uk. The date of publishing is unknown.

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In the disarray of the Argentine political party system, a product of the recursive

crisis that democracy passed through, a progressive political identity might have

found shelter in the pages of a politically committed newspaper such as

Página/12. In that regard, its creator and first director argued that,

“from alternative journalism, we use the freedom… there are topics that we stand for not

because is good or bad deal; on the contrary, it would be a better deal no to stand for

them… the disappeared, the indult, the military… are topics that we have to defend,

because otherwise, why did we do all this? Some topics are a matter of principles, why

do we try to make an independent daily? As for the rest, we work within the circuit like

everybody does, with the rules of the circuit, not ours.” (Jorge Lanata in González, p.147).

If the political landscape is characterized by the weakening of classical political

identifies as mediated by the identification with political parties, the agonistic

model increases the democratic importance of the newspapers. In a time when

the press was the only media available, Tocqueville recognized its importance

in the production and reproduction of political identities,

“When men are no longer united among themselves by firm and lasting ties, it is

impossible to obtain the co-operation of any great number of them unless you can

persuade every man whose help you require that his private interest obliges him

voluntarily to unite his exertions to the exertions of all the others. This can be habitually

and conveniently effected only by means of a newspaper; nothing but a newspaper can

drop the same thought into a thousand minds at the same moment.” (Tocqueville, 1981:

143)

Media journalists, especially within the graphics media, usually take for granted

that they write for a specific target and that they can assume a certain type of

agreement with them. Since, in order to access newspapers and magazines

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one has to pay for them, common sense says the reader has a certain degree

of agreement with the media, and its editorial line. In Communications Sciences

this is called “reading contract”, a concept of the semiologist Eliseo Verón.

The concept of reading contract presupposes an already existing political

identity upon which the editorial line is addressed. This identity, however, is

precarious and incomplete, and is constantly being ‘mixed’, ‘remastered’ and

‘crystallized’ in the editorial action of the newspaper. To put it in again in

Tocqueville’s words, “a newspaper can survive only on the condition of

publishing sentiments or principles common to a large number of men” (1981:

143). It always represents an association - more or less defined, more or less

restricted, more or less numerous - that is composed of its habitual readers.

However, it is notorious how little attention media scholars pay to the topic of

identity. Collective identities are a cultural artefact, a kind of “imagined

community”, as Anderson (1983) has put it for the case of nations. The

members of these imagined communities will never know most of their fellow-

members, meet them, or even hear them, yet in the minds of each lives the

image of their mutual identification (Larrain Ibañez, 2001).

What kind of identity?

Political theory scholars use to wonder about the nature of collective identities,

although not in connection with the action of the media. They tend to agree in

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the centrality of opposition and conflict in its formation and definition (Panizza,

2005; Laclau, 2005; Mouffe, 1999; Larraín Ibañez, 2001; Habermas, 1992).

Panizza has underlined this by arguing that, “antagonism is central to politics,

because it is through antagonism that political identities are constructed, and

radical alternatives to the existing order can be imagined” (2005: 28).

Identities can then be classified in totalizing and segmental, according to the

line of inclusion and exclusion that defines its limits. Ideological identities are a

kind of segmental collective identity, sub-communities within most

encompassing ones such as nationalities (Larrain Ibañez, 1990: 150). However,

ideological identities are themselves a kind of patchwork product emerged from

different previous identities. Paraphrasing Laclau’s conceptualization of

populism, it might be said that the confluence of heterogeneous demands that

emerged from different collective identities set a new totalizing political identity.

Furthermore, identities are as much a matter of the present as they are of a

historical past and a projected future. Habermas has argued that identity is not

something pre-given, but “also, and simultaneously our own project” (1992:

243). Extending this definition with an agonist critique, “political practice in a

democratic society does not consist in defending the rights of preconstituted

identities, but rather in constituting those identities themselves in a precarious

and vulnerable terrain” (Mouffe, 1999: 753). This will lead us from the present to

the past, in an iterative process that projects itself to the future.

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In Latin America, in the ’70s, various groups struggled to death over hegemony

in the definition of the agenda of the main public sphere. They engaged with the

state “in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically

privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social

labor,” as Jürgen Habermas (1992: 239) put it. In Argentina, several political left

identities crystallized, such as revisionist nationalism, left-wing Peronism, a

social democratic vision linked with the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR), and a

series of radical (Marxists and non-Marxists) visions. These contrasting visions,

which in their extreme forms supported various streams of ‘revolutionary

violence’, were confronted by counter-violence among parts of the extreme

right. Finally, the military intervention thought to ‘impose order’, resulted in the

‘Dirty War’ against ‘subversive elements’ in the population (Roninger, L.: 171).

In practice, that meant the annihilation of every political and ideological

opposition, with massive and systematic human rights violations.

With redemocratization, as the full magnitude and horrors of the repression

were made public, the legacy of human rights violations provoked a debate not

only about the need for punishment of the military, but also about the

responsibility of the revolutionary left organizations in the crumble of

democracy,

“Like Germany’s World War II experiences, the experiences of the military period forced

Argentine society to face issues connected with their history and identity, their humanity

and attitudes towards the other, their policies of inclusion and exclusion, and their

patterns of social and cultural reconstruction” (Roninger, L: 169).

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In this context, the revolutionary left underwent a self-critique and a long

adaptation to the democratic process, from which eventually a new

progressivist identity would emerge. In the terms above described by Mouffe,

this is exactly what a change of the political strategy from antagonism to

agonism entails. As this political theory does not occlude the dimension of the

political and the importance of conflict to democratic cohabitation, it allows an

explanation of a key transformation in the political system; the passage from

mortal enemies in combat to political adversaries struggling over power. This

new democratic centre-left must address one crucial issue of identity in its

process of self-construction:

“A progressive stance, or more properly, a leftist stance […] consists in the

counterposition between politics and economic power. Put it differently, between equality

and inequality. Centre-left is not but moderate left. In the realm of identity and values, it

matches the same attributes and problems of the classic left. That is, it must respond:

what is the left? And also: what from the left inhabits in her? The defense and promotion

of equality is, no doubts about it, the key to reach an answer. That egalitarian spirit is

always present in the advocacy of politics” (Bobbio, 1986: 33)

In the entire region, but especially in Argentina, defense and promotion of

human rights constitutes another core issue for a progressive agenda due to

the historical difficulties in achieving justice for the crimes of the last

dictatorship. In this regard, the relation between Peronism and the left is very

important. As Peronist left and Peronist revolutionary left were among the more

dynamic political actors in the 70’s, they were the main targets of repression.

The present Peronist administration of Kirchner has the explicit aim of

broadening its support base beyond the limits of the party by occupying the left-

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center space of the political spectrum. In particular, this is made through an

aggressive and unexpected human rights agenda that exploits long-standing

claims from the human rights movement.

A key factor in the promotion of the human rights movement demands had been

the foundation of the newspaper Página/12, through which fundamental

debates, values and ideas were systematized and put forward to the public

agenda. The structuring of a public space as such is basic to the construction,

projection and reshaping of a political identity. As the semiologist Eliseo Verón

argue,

“a generalized characteristic of the newspapers, strongly linked with the consolidation of

democratic systems, is the polyphonic confluence of diverse social actor’s points of view.

Thus, the journalistic discourse, as public discourse pour excellence, becomes the place

in which the struggles of the universe of beliefs of the community are written. It is the

discourse that legitimates or delegitimates, includes or excludes, the diverse social

representations that emerge to the social scenario”. (Verón, 1999: 155)

In doing so, Página/12 may have played an active role in advancing the

interests of progressivism and, by interacting discursively, in shaping collective

visions and general rules of interaction in society.

The Case study: a newspaper called Página/12.

Página/12 is one of the three serious daily newspapers of Argentina. While the

traditional newspapers stick to the professional journalistic model prescribed by

liberal democracy theory, Página/12 inaugurated for the Argentine big press a

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mordant, explosive, informal, and critical reporting. Inheritor of an alternative

press tradition that flourished during the long authoritarian regimes, Página/12

was founded in 1987. The newspaper rejects US-styled objective journalism

and endorses specific political causes. With its hard-hitting investigative style, it

has promoted a center-left agenda.

The research starts with a question about its role in the shaping of a

progressive political identity in the Argentine democracy. Using pluralistic

agonism theory, the construction of a progressive “us” against an “other” will be

traced. Regarding that issue, Wasibord had noted that,

“the watchdog agenda of left-center newspapers reflects not only different economics but

also different politics and journalism. Unlike the “independent” press, they do not disguise

political sympathies in the ideology of the fourth estate, but openly let readers know

where they stand on a variety of issues. Although their editorial politics can hardly be

pegged to ideological causes, they clearly represented anti-government positions

particularly in regard to human rights violations and neoliberal economic plans during the

1990’s” (2000, p.85).

In pursuing the trace of this progressivist identity, the research design will

address the continuities and discontinuities in the editorial direction towards

government economic and human rights policies making use of the ideological

counterposition of the decade of the ’90s with the present centre-left policies.

The discursive aspects of how this is performed will also be assessed,

analyzing the way its creative, fun-poking and satirical headlines address

directly to the emotional identification of the reader.

23

In a word, the objective of this research is to assess the way Página/12

promoted and strengthened a progressive political identity in Argentina after the

return of democracy. I will apply the term ‘agonistic’ to this particular role of the

press, as this identity stemmed from previous a revolutionary left identity,

Hopefully, its potential contribution might be relevant in two different realms.

On the one hand, there is the political debate over the restructuring of the

Argentine political system around an ideological axis. On the other hand, it may

help to build bridges, not only “across the gulf between media and political

theory”, as Scammell has claimed, but also between core and peripheral

countries, in the task of broadening the conceptualization of the media’s political

role in the age of globalization.

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4. Methodology

The research strategy will make empirical use of content and discourse

analysis. The object of study will be the Sunday cover of the newspaper in two

different periods, 1990-1999 and 2002-2007. Thus, the coverage of two

Peronist administrations can be contrasted - in its continuities and

discontinuities - investigating the traces of a progressive political identity in the

editorial agenda of the newspaper. Particularly, economic and human rights

policies are to be analyzed. The rationale behind the selection of the Sunday

cover is the fact that it is, as in most western societies, the top-selling edition of

the week, and the one that sets the agenda of the forthcoming week.

Furthermore, when Página/12 adopts a French style of cover, with one

outstanding core story. Even when a cover does not have the kind of narrative

plot that an article does, it still enables the use of content analysis, since,

“content analysis is a research technique for the objective, systematic, and

quantitative description of the manifest content of communication” (Berelson,

1952, as cited in Hansen, H. et. al: 94).

Content analysis will give this research the power to generalize, in order to

make inferences. Bauer argued that the use of “statistical sampling enables the

opportunity of studying a smaller part of the texts population and still drawing

conclusions about the whole collection” (2000: 136). Its methodological rigour

guarantees the replicability of the study, one of the basic principles of scientific

research. However, this is not to claim that content analysis is ‘objective’ in a

positivistic sense. It does not secure a perfect matching between the theory and

25

the empirical. As a matter of fact, content analysis is only a method, a tool to

investigate dimensions defined by the researcher. In Iyengar’s words:

“is a method for analysing texts, not a theory. As a method it provides no pointers to what

aspects of texts should be examined, or how those dimensions should be interpreted.

Such pointers have to come from a theoretical framework, which would include a clear

conceptualisation of the nature and social context of the documents which are to be

examined” (1991: 18).

As the main theory on which this research is based upon is agonistic pluralism,

the statistical quantification and the analysis of certain regularities and

saliencies in the editorial line (i.e. topics, columnists, value-judgements) of the

daily will enable a hypothesis about the role of the newspaper in relation with a

progressive political identity. In particular, looking to produce inferences about

an agonistic role of the press.

There are however, limitations in using content analysis as analytical tool. The

ability of content analysis to allow the researcher to make inferences should not

be lead to the confusion that a “particular reading of an audience or particular

intention of a communicator lies within the text alone. At best, content analysis

maps the space of readings and intentions by exclusion or trend, but never the

actual state of affairs” (Bauer 2000 145).

Neither does content analysis offer much opportunity to explore texts in order to

develop ideas and insights. Perhaps the main difficulty with the use of the

method arises precisely from the operasionalisation of highly abstract

26

theoretical concepts in too simplistic variables in coding sheets. This risk has

been addressed in the literature as the fragmentation of textual wholes (Hansen

et al: 91). Without strict conceptual boundaries to reconstruct the meaning and

without the proper complement of qualitative research, the danger is that the

outcomes of the research might arguably be called an artefact. However, it still

offers the reliability of inter-coding, particularly important in analyzing

particularly subjective categories based upon value-judgement (i.e. ‘direction of

the argument’).

Above all, the main strategy implemented in order to avoid the limitations of

content analysis is to complement it with another analytical tool. For the case of

content analysis, the natural one appeared to be discourse analysis, which

offers a more thorough and in-depth analysis of the texts:

“While content analysis is primarily based on observable, countable data, such as words,

sentences, or stylistic features, a discourse analysis will -apart from making explicit such

surface structures in terms of modern grammars- also pays attention to underlying

semantic structures and make explicit implications, presuppositions, connections,

strategies, etc., which usually remain implicit in the discourse” (van Dijk 2003 p. 27).

Together, content and discourse analysis are a useful combination by which to

accomplish the research objective. In particular, discourse analysis is key to the

aim of the research with respect to identity, since it makes it easier to “uncover

how language works to construct meanings […] that signify people, objects, and

events in the world in specific ways” (Brookes, 1995: 462).

27

In complementing content analysis, discourse analysis enables an in-depth

examination of the editorial “choice of lexical items” (van Dijk 2003: 31) used to

construct a text, and to “examine the content, organization and functions of

discourse” (Gill 2000: 188). Discourse analysis is the tool prescribed for the

examination of text and image working together to convey meaning (Matheson,

2000). Since it pays attention to composition, headlines, and use of space the

variability of units of analysis allows an understanding of how the covers are

structured to convey a specific message (Wodak and Meyer, 2001).

To the matter of this research, the method allows an analysis of Página/12’s

discourse, which emerges from the editorial pieces and in the interaction of the

elements in its cover (pictures, main title and subtitle, other headlines and

references, the comic and its characteristic little text box). As with content

analysis, the method assumes that language does not simply reflect or mirror

reality, but actively represents and constitutes it (Fairclough, 1992). If discourse

is about the production of knowledge through language (Hall, 1997), critical

discourse analysis’ mission is to make “visible the interconnectedness of things”

(Faiclough, 1985: 742, as cited in Wodak and Meyer, 2001: 2).

However, the use of discourse analysis also has some limitations. In particular,

unlike content analysis, discourse analysis is less systematic and therefore

more subjective. This raises the question of reliability. As an individual analyst

carries out the interpretation of texts and images, the results will always be

highly subjective (Wood & Kroger, 2000: 77). Even when high transparency is

28

the rule and justifications for each undertaken step are given, the reflexivity of

the individual analyst will remain present (Wodak and Meyer, 2001). Discourse

analysis cannot make use of inter-coder reliability, as is the case for content

analysis.

Furthermore, although discourse analysis does allow for a comprehensive

examination of the texts, there is also the question of validity. Since the method

focuses on the production of the text, its findings are not representative (Gill,

2000), and cannot be generalised to the social realm. To make further

assumptions about the reception by, and the relationship with, its readership

(i.e. how the messages are being processed and understood) would be a

mistake. There is a fine line in avoiding what Thompson has called the fallacy of

internalism, the tendency to “read off the consequences of cultural products

from the products themselves” (1990: 105).

Alternative methods were disregarded in the present study. Interviews to the

staff of the newspaper, for example, were too costly in time considering the

value of the information they would add to the research. Surveys to the

readership would have allowed some audience perspective; but, once again,

they were not to add much value to the research’s objective. Notwithstanding

that, and not neglecting Thompson’s advice, with respect to the prime objective

of this research the newspaper itself, as a product, could and should be the

primary target.

29

Sampling and selection of data

For the content analysis, the Sunday Página/12 covers were selected using a

randomization process7. The number of covers to be analyzed was set around

forty, as this was a reasonable number to scan manually, without using Lexis

Nexis or similar tools. In accordance with the scope of the research, two periods

were designated as suitable, the decade of the ’90s (1990-1999) and the six-

year period ’02-’07. Thus, two covers per year were chosen for the period 1990-

1999 (totalizing 20) and 3 covers per year for the period ‘02-’07 (totalizing 18).

Randomness was secured by an adaptation of the usual procedure for the

method of Content Analysis, that of rotating the days of the week. In this case,

month and Sunday order were rotated. Regarding the months, six were added

from cover to cover for the period ’90-’99 (two per year) and four for the period

’02-’07 (three per year). For the Sunday order, two out of four were chosen for

the first period and three out of four were selected for the second period. The

fact that some months had five Sundays was disregarded for practical reasons.

The articles were then coded based on the criteria of 12 variables, which

implied different units of analysis. The variables were chosen in order to allow

the researcher to deduce continuities and discontinuities in the editorial line, so

as an agonistic role of the press could be traced. The reasons for choosing

each variable will be discussed in the analysis section below. A second coder

was trained and given 10% of the sampled articles. An average inter-coder

reliability (ICR) of 85% was met, which was calculated using the formula:

7 The randomization table used can be seen in the Appendices section.

30

r=agree/(agree+disagree). Even for the variables implying value-judgement,

such as direction in the cases of the main article (75%), the cartoon (100%) and

the little text box (100%), reliability was noticeably high.

For the discourse analysis, four pieces of data were used in order to draw a

comprehensive picture. They were targeted according to the objective of the

research, looking for both self-definitions of the editorial line by the newspaper

itself and the emerging result in the construction of its cover. The first one was

the institutional presentation in the Webpage of the newspaper8. The second

was the little text box of the edition of the 14th of February of 2002. This issue

was one of those randomly chosen for the content analysis and contained a

jewel in terms of the purpose of the research. Its little text box was

extraordinarily titled ‘Nosotros’9. It defined, for the first time using the first person

of the plural, the identity of the newspaper at a moment when a hostile takeover

was feared. The last two pieces were taken from the first issue of the

newspaper10. They attend to its foundational value and thus include an article

that reported the launch of the newspaper, and the issue’s cover. This last

element will be particularly useful in complementing the content analysis.

8 http://www.pagina12.com.ar/usuarios/institucional.php9 In English,, “Us”.10 The first issue date is 26/05/87.

31

5. Findings and analysis

As two different empirical methods were used to conduct the research for this

study, I shall first discuss the construction of the content analysis grid, in

conjunction with the findings and proposed interpretation. I shall then discuss

discourse analysis, as a more comprehensive examination, in triangulation with

the previous findings.

Content Analysis

In order to analyze the results from the conducted content analysis, I have

cross-tabulated certain variables, which might yield the most interesting results.

I shall first discuss the construction of these variables. The cover of Página/12

characteristically has one core article, with title and a picture or cartoon. Other

typical elements are a little text box, the topic of which is relevant either to the

current news or the editorial line of the daily. There is also a classic cartoon that

follows the same criteria, although tends to be more related to the current news

than the little text box does. For these three elements it is possible to define a

topic and a direction towards the administration in office, be it positive, neutral

or negative. These six variables – topic and direction of the main article, cartoon

and little text box – were cross-tabulated with the above defined periods. The

findings are presented together with visual aids in an attempt to make them

clearer.

As commented above, Página/12 uses a French-style of cover, which gives

central attention to only one core news item. Considering the direction of this

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main article towards the then contemporary administration for both periods,

outstanding differences are noticeable. Negative articles constitute 60% of all

’90s articles analysed, but just 5.6% of those dating from the ’00s. Inversely,

55.6% of the articles between ’02 and ’07 were positive while in the ’90s none

were. Neutrality was more equally distributed. These results depend upon

considering every case as valid (N=38).

Notably, politics makes the difference; it constitutes half of the positive news in

the ’00s and three quarters of negative news in the ’90s. Furthermore, a sub-

issue analysis underlines that corruption/wrongdoing is the modal value. It

represents 58.3% of the negative news in the ’90s and one third of positive

news in the ’00s.

Actually, if filtered, so as to consider only the topics of politics and economics

(N=25), the tendency is strengthened. 66.7% of articles are negative in the ’90s

while none are in the ’00s. Again, this strongly contrasted with 60% positive

33

articles in the ’00s versus none in the ’90s. Regarding only human rights news

(N=5), but accepting that the universe of cases is small, the negative news in

the ’90s (50%) are more than in the ’00s (33%); as for the positive news, the

picture is inverted, with more in the ’00s (33%) than in the ’90s (none)11.

An analysis of the direction of the little text box, and especially the cartoon,

emphasize the asymmetry in the coverage of both periods. The ’90s were

depicted in a negative direction in 60% of the articles, versus 5.6% in the ’00s.

Specifically, 83.3% of the negative articles of the ’90s were dedicated to the

topic of human rights. On the other side, 11.1% of the news of the ’00s is

positive in contrast with none of the ’90s. A more detailed view reveals that

83.3% of the negative direction of the little text boxes in the ‘90s has as topic

human rights.

11 All the tables are added in the Appendices section at the end of the paper.

34

The cartoon deepens this trend, as discourse analysis will reveal. Quantitative

analysis finds that 85% of the cartoon direction in the ’90s was negative versus

0% in the ’00s. Inversely, one third was positive in the ’00s while none in the

’90s. A more detailed look at the data enables a perspective where politics

emerges again as the modal category. While it constitutes 83.3% of the positive

35

cartoons topics in the ’00s, it comprises 88.2% of the negative cases in the ’90s

A further analysis by comparing the three direction variables (i.e. main article,

little box and cartoon), independently of the period, reveals that when the

direction towards the administration in office in the main article is positive,

neither the little box nor the cartoon is negative. At the same time, when the

main article’s direction is negative, neither the little box nor the cartoon is

negative. This editorial coherence in the making of the cover will be further

analyzed using discourse analysis.

Beyond the main article, the cover of Página/12 presents a very few other

articles in each issue, with an average of 2.2, with no outstanding differences

between periods. In the methodological, the limit in the construction of the

values for its variable was tighter in this case than for the main article. As they

36

usually are just titles with no further references attached, most of the times it

was impossible to draw further conclusions beyond their broad topic. The

discourse analysis will reveal that the type of title used by the paper is not

precisely objective and informative. In constructing the coding book, when

piloting the theoretical tool the value police/crime emerged as differentiable

from ‘others’. In the results, the topics of these secondary articles showed

politics once again being the modal category, making up 26.8% of topics in the

’90s and 30.9% in the ’00s. While in the ’90s the second most frequent topic

was international, in the ’00s it was economics.

Another unit of analysis that emerges clearly from the analysis of the covers are

the columnists. Again, It is impossible to guess the topic of the columns by its

title. Discourse analysis will further reveal that the importance of who the writer

is is bigger than what he or she is writing about. The variables were then

37

defined, with these limitations, in accordance with the objective of the research.

Fundamentally, the ideological affiliation of the columnists was relevant to the

definition of the editorial line of the newspaper. If an agonistic role is to be

hypothesized for the press in the construction of a progressive or center-left

political identity, the composition of its “signature’s portfolio” is of undoubtable

value. In this direction, the values were ranged from left-center to non-left

center, although this last one was not to be found in the piloting. The left-centre

category was defined according to the historical vicissitudes of Argentina’s

recent history, crossing adscription to the revolutionary left organizations of the

’70s or not with adscription to Peronism or not.

Neither of the categorizations is easily distinguishable in its values. Peronism

has a populist tradition, beyond the limits of a classic political party and closer

to a movement. Some scholars even argue that this is one of the keys of its

survival and success (Levitsky, 2003). In some cases, it is difficult to trace a

clear limit, as different degrees of sympathy with Peronism are possible, either

from the political right or the left. As for the revolutionary condition, this is even

more difficult. Given the fact that revolutionary organizations are not just armies

but the (militarized) arm of political organizations, the boundary between one

and another is hard to establish. In the task of drawing a map of both

categories, the research made use of the help of a key informant from within the

newspaper. This person was a former political editor and a present important

columnist, old enough to recognize the political trajectories of the columnists

that appeared in the research.

38

The modal value for ideological affiliation is former revolutionary Peronist left,

both in the ’90s and in the ’00s, although the trend is decreasing (50% in the

’90s versus 42% in the 00’). The same happens with the second most frequent

value, non-Peronist left (from 43% to 34%). Significantly, the only value

increasing from one decade to other is non-former revolutionary Peronist left;

while in the ’90s it represented only 7.14% of the Sunday columnists, in the ’00s

it represents 24.19%.

These changes in the composition of the Sunday columnists surely reflect

relocation in the editorial line of Página/12. This is so because while the

decrease in former revolutionary Peronist left might be due to the passing of

time and a renovation of the journalistic staff, the decrease in non-Peronist left

does not allow the same explanation. Both decreasing values pay tribute to the

increase in the ’00s of the non-former revolutionary Peronist left columnists.

Bearing in mind the subtleness in the limits of the values mentioned above, this

trend is in harmony with the political present of a left Peronist administration

being in office.

Columnist Ideological origin '90s '00s TotalFormer revolutionary Peronist left 50% 41.94% 45.19%Non-former revolutionary Peronist left 7.14% 24.19% 17.31%Non-Peronist left 42.86% 33.87% 37.50%Total (N) 42 62 104

39

As pointed to in the methodological chapter, this doesn’t mean that the

newspaper does not allow other ideological affiliations. Journalists or

collaborators with backgrounds differing from those represented in the Sunday

covers may write as columnists on other days of the week, or on the same

Sunday but without their names appearing on the cover as columnists. This

point will also be deepened in the discourse analysis part.

Notably, one columnist, Horacio Verbitsky, remains highly constant in both

periods, with an average 78.9% appearance in the Sunday covers.

Internationally recognized as a ‘muckraking’ journalist, he has put watchdog

journalism at the centre of the Argentine media. During the ’90s, Verbitsky

faced lawsuits by members of the Menem administration and was even singled

out by the president as his main enemy (Waisbord, 2000). Analyzing his

presence by period, there is a decrease in the ’00s (72%) compared with the

40

’90s (85%). This might be due to the fact that there is much more resonance

between the editorial agenda of the newspaper and the present administration

in office than was the case in the ’90s. It is true, as Waisbord said, that during

that time, “having adopted an all-out opposition role, the paper was a thorn in

Menem’s side” (2000: 34). It is also true, as this research indicates, that the

direction of the editorial line has reversed this tendency with respect to the

administration presently in office. As a matter of fact, Verbitsky’s trajectory is in

itself representative of the ideological identity of the newspaper; he was part of

the press section of the Peronist revolutionary organization Montoneros,

ferocious critic of the neo-liberal reforms in the ’90s, and supporter of the left-

center administration that emerged after the collapse of 200112. Indeed, the

newspaper is related from its very origins, and in different ways (not just in its

staff, but also investors13) with the revolutionary left of the ’70s.

With the same aim of assessing the editorial line of Página/12, it also becomes

important to consider whether the columnist is part of the staff or a guest.

Again, help from the same key informant was required. The results show that

most of the columnists were part of the staff (74% in the ’90s), and that the

historical trend strengthens this state of affairs, to the point that presently

almost every Sunday columnist is part of the newspaper (98% in the ’00s).

12 In 2003, actually, when senator and provisional president Duhalde handed in power toKirchner.13 Anguita, J. (2002). Grandes Hermanos. Alianzas y negocios ocultos de los dueños de lainformación. Buenos Aires: Colihue.

41

Columnist Institutional affiliation '90s '00s TotalStaff 73.81% 98.39% 88%Guest 26.19% 1.61% 12%Total (N) 42 62 104

The trend might be indicative of certain maturation in the editorial line of the

newspaper, or may simply be a result of a better financial position. To this

matter, the ideological affiliation of the columnists, just reviewed, is a more

reliable variable.

42

Discourse Analysis

The analysis will start with the institutional text in the Webpage, considering it in

relation to the little text box of the 14/07/02 issue and the informative article in

the first issue announcing the launch of the newspaper (page 7). It will then

tackle the analysis of the first issue cover, with the aim of deepening the

understanding of content analysis findings.

The Web institutional presentation of the newspaper is headed with the

question, “What is Página/12?”, and it was written in occasion of the twelfth

anniversary of the daily. The title is followed by the slogan that is currently used

in the promotion of the daily: “Not only informs you, but also gets you thinking”.

This is to say that the newspaper promotes itself as giving more than just

information; it would also provide a useful perspective to understand what is

going on. The point is further extended in the text. With no signature and using

the third person to refer to itself, Página/12 is depicted as the embodiment of a

true ‘social need’. Its success is attributed to ‘good ideas, creativity and a

collective personality that many others find sympathetic and trustworthy. In this

passage, one of the hypotheses behind this research seems to find some

support. The existence of an agonistic role for the press, in the construction of a

collective “Us” is referred here as the “social need” of a “collective personality”.

Although not acknowledged as such, the article speaks about the configuration

of a progressivist identity. As its founders explain in the article:

“We planned to make a newspaper which addressed people in their daily language. One

that rescued the acid humour so commonly used by Argentines to relate news. (...) We

43

thought this country needed a pluralist paper with a commitment to democracy and

human rights. A newspaper that could inform with independence and which contained

rather than answers, the right questions… The rapid growth was fuelled by a new way of

understanding the profession. The so-called “investigative journalism” became the paper

trademark. (¿Qué es Página 12?”14) [Underlined by the researcher]

The extract explains the reading contract (Verón, 1999) that Página/12 has

established with its readership. It is a four-pronged commitment; first, with the

restored democracy; second, with the defense of human rights; third, with being

independent from political parties and corporations; and fourth, tacitly, with the

configuration of a constructed collective identity, appealing to history, culture,

habits and a shared vision of the world and their own society.

The agonistic perspective can be traced more explicitly in the use that the

article makes of intertextuality. Three recognized Argentine journalists are cited

as recognizing the value of Página/12, at the same time that two of them are

explicitly presented as being from the ‘ideological antipodes’ of the newspaper.

Intertextuality is commonly understood as the shaping of meaning in a text by

other texts (Wodak and Meyer, 2001). Thus, the discursive operation makes

use of ideological adversaries to construct a ‘them’ against which the ‘us’ is

contrasted. Furthermore, “Us” is precisely the title of the little text box of the

14/07/02 edition. The exceptional use of the first person plural is justified due to

rumours of a takeover by a right wing media mogul. These rumours were

originated in the business association of that mogul with the responsible editor

14 http://www.pagina12.com.ar/usuarios/institucional.php

44

of the newspaper, in order to get the license of a TV broadcaster. The members

of the direction team exceptionally signed the article in little text box. However,

the definition of “Us” produced in the article goes beyond the direction team; it

makes a crucial distinction for an agonistic role to be conceptualized in relation

with a progressivist identity,

“’Us’, Página/12, are not just the 200 insane persons who each day fill up this pages with

letters and images… ‘Us’, we are in fact that enormous portion of Argentines that, from

the end of the last dictatorship, have been fighting for and dreaming of another kind of

country; and that since 1987 have advanced over the powerful and strange world of the

media to experiment with this newspaper a true laboratory of collective construction to

express and represent it”. Página/12, 14/07/02, pages 1 and 2. [Underlined by the

researcher]

A central figure of the article, whose concerned inquiring about the veracity of

the rumours is used as an argument to justify the exceptionality of the article, is

a member of Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Línea Fundadora), one of the main

organizations of the human rights movement15. Her presence in the narrative is

complemented by the references in the article to the ‘fighting for’ and ‘dreaming

with other kind of country’, and a later self-depiction of that “Us” as ‘hope

tracers’. Together, they draw the profile of a center-left newspaper. As

hypothesized in the conceptual framework, equality and defense and promotion

of human rights are values at the core of a progressivist identity.

15 Originally created during the last dictatorship, in reaction to its criminal action, theorganization became more active after the return of democracy. The relaxation of legalconstraints and the opportunity of justice were partly cause, but above all consequence, of theiraction.

45

An analysis of the foundational cover of Página/12 will allow a deeper

understanding of the way this agonistic role is played, in line with the results of

the content analysis. In undertaking this task, the first step is to recognize the

huge interactive play between word and image. The words almost always refer

to the whole repertoire of popular Argentine culture (sayings, advertising or

political slogans, famous movie, literature or TV titles). The absence of an

editorial article and the presence of a photograph or drawing in the middle of

the front page is remarkable. In Página/12, the front-page photograph is

distanced from its documentary or testimonial function in its strict sense, so

typical in traditional newspapers, to become an illustration of the position

assumed by the paper in connection with the significant political and social

subjects of the day. In a few words, the photograph itself becomes a

highlighting editorial, which brings out the newspaper’s point of view. Together

with the little box text title and topic and the cartoon, the front-page carries by

itself the editorial function.

The key historical-context fact needed in order to understand the first issue

cover is that Alfonsín’s administration had sanctioned the two pardon laws that

relieved his administration from the coup menaces, at the expense of limiting

the possibilities of the military having to face justice for their crimes during the

dictatorship. The cover16 shows a picture of five army men in their uniforms,

lined-up side by side and looking to the front. One of them is blowing his nose

with a handkerchief, while the last one is notably looking in another direction.

16 The first issue cover is included in the Appendices section.

46

The title and subtitle are next:

Fidelity with doubts“Yes, I swear”

[PICTURE]

The interplay between image and text is subverting and creatively transforming

the expression and ideology hidden in the reported event, while projecting the

position taken by the paper (i.e. the subordination of the military to the

democratic authorities). The effect is deepened by the subtitle of the picture:

“Superior officers of the Army in the esplanade of the Libertador buildingDo you swear by God and the Motherland to observe and make observe the Constitution?”

The piece is further complemented with a text box that informs that a Major was

detained because of having denied the oath.

Beyond the main article, the persuasive effect of the cover transits through

multiple lines of meaning that run between its elements. As seen in the content

analysis section, other articles, the little text box, and the cartoon further direct

the meaning, providing the cover with a sense of coherence. In this issue, the

little text box is the key piece to a discursive understanding of the cover.

Headed by the word “Prudence”. The title refers to a story of the then Argentine

president (i.e. Alfonsín) giving a speech about the founding fathers and

highlighting the role of the radical revolutionaries vis-à-vis the ‘prudent’ ones.

However, the narrative denounces how the historical building where the

revolution actually took place -the Cabildo- was later converted to a ‘museum of

47

the prudent’, where is even hard to find an image of the radicals. It adds that the

chapel that lies within the Cabildo was built years after the revolution in order to

give the building a ‘confessional’ tone that originally did not posses. The

comprehensive meaning of the little text box denounces a falsification of the

historical facts, and ultimately of the national identity. Arguably, if the aim of the

newspaper is to construct an Argentine progressivist identity, the task will

involve a struggle over the definition of the national identity. González argued

that the idea of identifying a presumed ‘national character’ is latent in Página/12

till the point of becoming its true invisible body (1992: 47).

This agonistic concern expressed in the little text box is connected with other

two elements of the cover. On the one hand, it subverts the meaning of the

quoted piece of speech informing about the president’s activity,

“(We) The Argentines have left behind the magical solutions”

The title of the little text box (‘Prudence’) also plays with this. If, as van Dijk

stated (2003), news promote the leading beliefs and opinions of hegemonic

social groups, Página/12 allows itself to question through its irony those

symbolic statements. This criticism against the politically and socially reducing

discourse builds a “firewall of incredulity”, that reads reality under a code which

is completely opposed to official discourses.

On the other hand, the little text box and the cartoon potentiate in each other

the direction of the editorial line towards the Catholic Church. In the cartoon, a

48

monk dialogues with a bishop,

(M) – Have you seen that a new daily was launched?

(B) – Are they divorcists?17

(M) – I don’t think so… they say they marry nobody

The Catholic Church is a powerful political actor in Argentina, and its

majoritarian and official position during the dictatorship was permissive with, if

not favourable to, the action of the military. Furthermore, and beyond that fact,

the Church is by itself a conservative institution, like the army. This is why both

constitute such a perfect agonistic adversaries to the construction of the

progressivist identity represented by Página/12.

Other elements of the first issue cover are coincident with findings suggested in

the content analysis. The pregnancy of the writer’s signature over the

informative aspect of the title about his or her article suggests a tacit agreement

with the readership. If the importance of who the writer is can be bigger than

what he or she is writing about, it is because the writers are known and valued

within the public space represented in and by Página/12. Put another way, this

is to say that the presence of a name as columnist in the cover of Página/12

transforms the writer, ipso facto, in an appreciated actor within the progressivist

space.

In line with the findings of the previously analyzed editorial pieces, the

construction of a progressivist identity is also traceable in the relationship 17 By then the divorce bill had been just passed through Congress, despite the firm opposition ofthe Church.

49

between the cover of Página/12 and popular culture. In an explicit manner, the

promoted article dedicated to ‘Culture’ is about the most successful

progressivist rock star of that time (i.e. Charly García), whose picture is part of

the piece. In a more subtle way, the title of one of the columns is the name of a

classic song (El reino del revés), by an iconic progressivist composer for

children (i.e. María Elena Walsh).

To sum up, the cover of Página/12 makes use of several narrative methods, in

a manner close to collage, and a layout and headlining which flirt with humour

and irony. Thanks to this semantic condensation, this space is an editorialising

element by itself, which potential impact to generate the reader’s identification is

outstanding.

50

6. Conclusion

Political communication studies traditionally assume the roles prescribed by the

liberal conception of democracy, i.e. watchdog function against the state, to

supply accurate and sufficient information, and to represent the people

(Scammell, 2000). This paper started with a different question, about the role of

the press in the construction of a progressivist identity in the context of the

present Argentine democracy. Through the study of the newspaper Página/12,

it states that the press is an active participant actor in the political contest over

power.

Página/12 was a key factor in the construction of a collective center-left identity

after the return of democracy. Beyond bipartisanship, the newspaper

established a reading contract with its readership that explicitly embraced the

values of democracy, human rights and equality. Furthermore, Página/12

embodies an agonistic conception of democracy all the way that acknowledges

the pregnancy of politics and accepts its own role in the conflictual game of

democracy (Mouffe, 1999). In this sense, the newspaper anticipated the current

debates about the political system being reorganized around an ideological

axis.

In the disarray of the political party system, product of the recursive crisis that

Argentine democracy passed through, Página/12 constituted an invaluable

public space to the construction of a progressivist identity. With clear bonds with

the revolutionary left of the ‘70s, Página/12 is from its very foundation a place

51

where diverse left tendencies, Peronist or not, revolutionary or not constitute a

consistent progressivist identity. In this agonistic role, lines of inclusion and

exclusion are delimitated, defining an “us”, that necessarily implies the

construction of a “them”.

The construction of these contrasting identities is shown in the results of the

empirical research. In such agonistic game, the ideological and political

consistency was evident in the content analysis in the treated topics; in the

directions in the value-judgement towards the two studied Peronist

administrations; and the ideological origin and institutional affiliation of its

columnists. The discourse analysis revealed the way Página/12 invites its

readers rhetorically to a place of identification with its editorial line.

This paper has contributed to install the role of the media as an important factor

within the current debate about the ideological polarization of Argentine politics.

In relation with this, it has underlined the relation between the media and the

shaping of collective identities. Last but not least, it has postulated an agonistic

role for the media within the democratic process.

Hopefully, this paper will contribute to stimulate lines of research in countries

with similar democratic trajectories, particularly in Latin America. Furthermore, it

aims to build bridges between core and peripheral countries, in the task of

broadening the conceptualization of the media’s political role in the age of

globalization.

52

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Web resources

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/usuarios/institucional.php

http://www.clarin.com/diario/1998/04/28/i-01701d.htm

http://www.nuevomoron.org.ar/demos/interior1.htm

http://www.lehman.edu/faculty/guinazu/ciberletras/v16/hortiguera.html

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8. Appendices

Content Analysis

• Randomization table

• Coding Book

• Inter-Coder Reliability (ICR) table

Discourse Analysis

• Institutional Web presentation

• Cover of the edition of the 14/02/02 (little text box titled ‘Nosotros’).

• Article in the 1st edition (26/05/87, reporting the launch of the

newspaper)

• Cover of the 1st edition

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Randomization criteria table.

# Year Months Sunday # Date Period

190 1 1 7/1/90 1290 7 3 15/7/90 1391 2 2 10/2/91 1491 8 4 25/8/91 1592 3 3 15/3/92 1692 9 4 27/9/92 1793 4 4 25/4/93 1893 10 2 24/10/93 1994 5 1 8/5/94 1

1094 11 2 13/11/94 11195 6 2 11/6/95 11295 12 1 3/12/95 11396 1 3 14/1/96 11496 7 2 28/7/96 11597 2 4 16/2/97 11697 8 3 17/8/97 11798 3 1 1/3/98 11898 9 4 27/9/98 11999 4 2 11/4/99 12099 10 3 10/10/99 12102 3 1 3/3/02 22202 7 2 14/7/02 22302 11 3 17/11/02 22403 4 1 6/4/03 22503 8 2 10/8/03 22603 12 4 28/12/03 22704 1 2 11/1/04 22804 5 3 16/5/04 22904 9 4 26/9/04 23005 2 3 20/2/05 23105 6 4 26/6/05 23205 10 1 2/10/05 23306 3 2 12/3/06 23406 7 4 23/7/06 23506 11 1 5/11/06 23607 1 4 28/1/07 23707 4 2 8/4/07 23807 8 3 19/8/07 2

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Content Analysis Grid.

Content Analysis Grid       Variable Values         

0 Case #                  1 Date           2 Period      1 90's    2 '02-'07         3 Main article issue    1 Politics    1.1 Political struggle    1.2 Democratic consolidation    1.3 Articulation Market-State    1.4 Corruption/wrongdoing/patronage    1.5 Empowerment of civic participation    1.6 National Sovereignity    1.9 Other    2 Economics    2.1 Income distribution    2.2 Policies towards national production development    2.3 Tax structure    2.4 Foreign debt    2.9 Other    3 Health    4 Education    5 Human Rights    5.1 Related with last dictatorship crimes    5.2 Present times    6 International    6.1 Regional integration    6.9 Other    7 Religion/secularization    8 Police/Crime    9 Other         4 Main article direction towards administration in office    1 Positive    2 Neutral    3 Negative    9 Can't tell         

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5 Other articles' topic amount      Politics      Economics      Education      Health      Human Rights      International      Culture      Sports      Other         6 Cartoon topic    1 Pollitics    2 Economics    3 Human Rights    4 International    5 Culture    6 Sports    9 Other         7 Cartoon direction towards administration in office    1 Positive    2 Neutral    3 Negative    9 Can't tell         8 Little text box topic    1 Politics    2 Economics    3 Human Rights    4 International    5 Culture    6 Sports    9 Other         9 Little text box direction towards administration in office    1 Positive    2 Neutral    3 Negative    9 Can't tell         

10 Columnists ideological orign    1 Left-Center    1.2 Former revolutionary left    1,2,1 From Peronist revolutionary left    1,2,2 From non-Peronist revolutionary left    1.3 Non-former revolutionary left    1,3,1 From left Peronism    1,3,2 From left non-Peronism  

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  2 Non left-center         

11 Columnists institutional origin    1 Staff of the paper    2 Guest         

12 Verbitsky's column    0 No    1 Yes  

62