Changes in Journalism in Politicized Media Systems: A Study on Newspapers in Poland and Hungary

This paper comparatively investigates variations in journalistic role performances in politicized media systems. Poland and Hungary are included in the quantitative content analysis as illustrative cases of Central and Eastern European countries featuring democratic erosion, political polarization, and media systems with a high level of political parallelism. Our study identifies whether the fall of liberal and deliberative democracy and increasing political pressure on the media have been accompanied by modifications in the manifestation of journalistic roles and, if so, what those changes have been. We employ Mellado's (2015) concept of journalistic roles by focusing on democracy-related domains, namely journalistic voice and power relations, and four roles: interventionist, watchdog, loyal facilitator, and civic. We compare data from national newspapers from two periods, namely 2012 and 2020. Despite experiencing similar changes in political context, journalists in Poland and Hungary have differed in their performance of the watchdog and civic roles. However, they have been alike in relation to the steady rise of journalistic interventionism. Surprisingly, we found no evidence of the elevation of the loyal facilitator model in newspapers. This study indicates that systemic politicization and political pressure on the media go alongside with diminishing objectivity and detachment in professional role performance.