Hope collection

How does populist leadership affect press freedom, and what practical strategies can media professionals use to maintain independence and resist government interference?

Practical Tips/Advice for policymakers, courts, journalists, and media managers

• Media oversight:
  Create a super-majority-appointed, budget-protected Media Freedom Commission with non-renewable terms to license outlets, audit platforms, and block executive meddling before capture begins.

• Disperse ownership:
  Cap any owner’s audience share to a minority of the market, bar cross-ownership above a specified threshold, and keep markets competitive so populists never command a single nationwide megaphone for persuasion.

• Shield journalists:
  Criminalise harassment, fast-track press-freedom cases, and empower a special prosecutor independent of the executive for crimes against reporters—raising the personal cost of intimidation central to populist strategies.

• Media collaboration:
  Forge legally backed newsroom compacts among competitors to share legal funds, mirror sites, ad revenue, and joint investigations; retaliation against one outlet triggers sector-wide resistance and deters repression.

• Digital media regulation:
  Mandate platform interoperability, public algorithm audits, curtailment of GenAI political content, and searchable political-ad libraries so citizens escape echo chambers and populists cannot quietly amplify allies or bury critics.

Abstract

To what extent is populist rule associated with a decline in press freedom and freedom of expression? Populist rule refers to government headed by charismatic leaders who seek to gain and retain power by mobilising mass constituencies that are typically free of other political attachments. Populism in this sense matters for two reasons: (1) controlling the media is a core objective of populists compared with other types of political leaders, who can rely on other organisational links to supporters; and (2) the interests of populist parties are virtually equivalent to the interests of party leaders, which means that populists face different time horizons and constraints on their behavior than the leaders of more deeply institutionalised parties. Using cross-national data on up to ninety-one countries from 1980 to 2014, this paper tests whether populist rule is associated with the erosion of press freedom and freedom of expression relative to other types of government and whether any effect is conditional on the ideology of the populist government in question. It finds that populist rule is associated with a decline in most measures of media freedom relative to programmatic party rule. However, this effect is lessened for right-leaning populist governments.

Full paper access

Kenny, Paul D. (2020). “The enemy of the people”: Populists and press freedom. Political Research Quarterly. 73(2), pp. 261 - 275.

Contact the researcher

Professor Paul Kenny
paul.kenny@acu.edu.au

Learn more about Professor Paul Kenny’s research