A semi-independent press: Government control and journalistic autonomy in the political construction of news

This introduction to a special issue of Political Communication discusses changes in the political content of news and introduces the concerns of the three articles in this symposium regarding the autonomy of the press in setting the political agenda. While considerable agreement exists about the shrinking space for hard news and the rise of sensationalism and infotainment formats, there is less scholarly agreement about whether the remaining hard news space is less subject to the news management efforts of public officials and elites and more likely to be filled with narratives driven by events and journalistic initiatives. We propose looking at news construction as a negotiated process involving both routine high levels of official management and circumstances under which events offer journalists opportunities to write more independent political scripts.