Journalists

A journalist has a very high-level career of reporting on the events, facts, and people that are the "news of the day." This is for a society to be knowledgeable and aware of public issues. In a self-governing society, access to free information plays a fundamental role in preserving a secure, educated society.  At the same time, it also plays a role in distributing power equally among governments, businesses, individuals, and other social institutions. The function and status of journalism, along with that of the mass media, has undergone profound changes over the last two decades with the advent of digital technology and publication of news on the Internet. This has created a shift in the consumption of print media channels, as people increasingly get their news through e-readers, smartphones, and other electronic devices, challenging news organizations to create their digital division of information entirely as well as improvise on the context in which they publish news in print.

There are two traditions in journalism in Latin America they are Partisan Press Journalism and professional journalism. Partisan Press writing is a type of journalism in which newspapers, television, radio, and other communication media openly support a political party and whose news stories are one sided.   Also, partisan press journalism was only for upper-class people who could afford to buy newspapers and have an influence on political parties. However, after the 1800s, partisan press newspapers became a form of public property. Americans believed that as sovereign citizens they had a right to the information contained in the papers without paying anything.  In order to gain access to newspapers, readers challenged the subscription system by refusing to pay, borrowing, or stealing. , however the editors, tolerated these strategies because they wanted longer subscription lists. In addition, the more people read the newspapers more attractive it would be to advertisers, who would purchase more ads and pay higher rates. A second advantage was that greater depth of coverage translated into political influence for partisan newspapers. Newspapers also became part of the public sphere when they became freely available at reading rooms, barbershops, taverns, hotels and coffeehouses. An example of the partisan press is when President James k. Polk once persuaded a leading publisher to fire an editor who was critical of Polk's policies  

The second type of journalism is Professional journalism. Professional writing is the opposite of partisan press because the news stories are not just for the upper-class citizens, but for the everyday people as well. The owner and editor of a newspaper would be separated. At the time this meant that news stories would no longer just exclusively shaped in favor the partisan interests of press owners, but they would be determined by trained independent professionals, using judgment and skills honed in journalism schools. Professionalism meant that the news would appear the same whether the paper was owned by a Republican or a Democrat. Professionalism said that there was no longer any reason to be concerned about the monopolistic nature of newspaper markets since owners would not abuse their power and, besides, so the theory went, more newspapers in the same community would merely reproduce the same professional content, so they were redundant.

There are many positive to Professional journalism. The strengths of professionalism are obvious. It gives editors and reporters an independence from the owners’ politics and from commercial pressures to shape the news to please advertisers and the bottom line. It places a quality on being fair and upon being accurate. It makes it a fundamental sin, a career killer, to accept bribes or to put together stories. As a result, so many Americans think that the problem with U.S. journalism is that there is too little “objectivity,” as professional writing is characterized, albeit inaccurately. But even the strongest proponents of neutral journalism now recognize that values play a crucial role in story selection, deciding what gets covered and what does not, not to mention how the coverage is framed. Journalists covering a story can never be objective in the sense of some mathematicians who would all come up with the same answer for a problem. Instead of objectivity, the preferred terms today are fairness, accuracy, and balance.The Rise of Professional Journalism - In These Times.(n.d.). Retrieved from http://inthesetimes.com/article/2427

Chicago

Brazil is a good example of the partisan press.  When it comes to press freedom, Brazil has had a relatively uneven historical record. Until 1808, Portuguese colonizers prohibited printing presses in the country. As a result, a strong newspaper tradition was not established in Brazil until the mid to late 1800s. From 1889 on, with the creation of the Brazilian Republic, the country's political system has alternated between authoritarian and democratic phases. Consequently, freedom of the press has been restricted and in some cases completely abolished for significant periods in Brazilian history. The situation was not very different throughout the Velha República (Old Republic), which lasted from 1889 to 1930. Newspapers and prominent editorial writers influenced decisions made by the Brazilian ruling classes— landowners, merchants, and political and military figures—but never attained the kind of mass circulation reached by the Penny Press in the United States at the same period://www.pressreference.com/Be-Co/Brazil.html#

Latin America has been through quite a few profound political transitions over the past two decades. The shift from partisan press journalism to professional journalism played in this process. People cannot talk about a "regional model,” of journalism or press freedom, but they can discuss similar experiences in the media.  This proves that the more democracy you have, the more press freedom there is, but this still varies in different countries around the world. Throughout history, a significant part of the Latin American press had close ties to political and economic interests through its owners. Those interests more often than not took priority over journalistic neutrality, but during the 1970s, journalists became very politicized. Many became revolutionary and partisan writers, distorting the role of the press and badly undermining its credibility. However in the 1980s, as democracy spread across the region and a new generation of journalists less marked by events came to the fore, a very refreshing and positive change took place www.unesco.org/webworld/points_of_views/200802_diament.shtmlpast

Mexico and Guatemala are two of the most unusual cases of partisan press The Chiapas uprising in Mexico had the effect of cutting short press allegiance to the ruling party, the PRI, which went hand-in-hand with rampant corruption. Chiapas came on so suddenly that the government of President Carlos Salinas didn't have time to put together a media strategy to deal with the situation. As a result, part of the Mexican press began reporting very openly on events. I think it's safe to say that to a large extent, this new attitude on the part of the media sounded the death knell of one-party domination and opened the way for Vicente Fox's victory in the presidential elections in 2000 www.unesco.org/webworld/points_of_views/200802_diament.shtml

In Guatemala, during the short-lived capture of full powers by President Jorge Serrano on May 25, 1993, censorship was imposed, and the press defied the government for the first time. The newspaper Siglo Veintiuno (21st Century) renamed itself Siglo Catorce (14th Century) and ran black columns in the place of censored material, exposing the government's attempt to stop the press from reporting on events. Colombia should also im mentioned: many journalists have and continue to risk thewww.unesco.org/webworld/points_of_views/200802_diament.shtmlhere reporting amid threats from guerrilla forces, paramilitary groups and  criminal 

In the past, the Latin American press has often been submissive and engaged in self-censorship, sometimes to the point of complicity with the powers in place This has changed because of two primary factors are the return to democracy and the revolution in technology. The South American dictatorships of the 1970s created a spineless and obliging press, but as these regimes began to crumble, the media became more independent. With the return to democracy, journalists became even more daring and inquisitive.

In some places, such as Argentina, the press' credibility, and influence grew as political parties became discredited. During the 1989-99 rule of President Carlos Menem, the Argentine press published a remarkable series of investigations into corruption and money-laundering that shook the government. At one point, opinion polls showed that the public trusted the news more than any other institution in the country, including the Catholic Church.

Journalism, and specifically audio journalism, needs more voices from Latin America. In the United States, coverage is about immigration or crime, often ignoring complexity and context, while on Latin American airwaves reporting can be far too local in scope. More that 350 million people speak the same language, and there is increasing interest in regional approaches to news and storytelling. Sophisticated long-form audio journalism in Spanish can reach a local audience, showcasing Latin America’s myriad accents and highlighting the unique cultures of each country, while also deepening American audiences’ understanding of Latino and Latin American heritagenesco.org/webworld/points_of_views/200802_diament.shtml (accessed April 28, 2016).

The revolution in technology, which began with photocopies and faxes and moved onto satellite TV and the Internet, has diversified information sources to the point that nobody can seriously hope to impose any control. The relative cheapness of the technology has made the spread of information more democratic than ever before.