Introduction

Within the framework of contemporary democracies and scenarios of global complexity, political communication represents one of journalism’s cornerstones (^{Bennett & Entman, 2000}). Any model that explores the interaction of political activity with its vital and operative surroundings will necessarily have to integrate or accept the existence of political journalism if it wishes to exist in this space (^{Bartels, 1996}; ^{Negrine, 1996}).

Indeed, the way in which the discourse of politicians and journalists is addressed (^{Wolton, 1995}) usually influences how power is viewed (^{Castells, 2009}). The manner in which journalists cover events and generate the news content that reaches the public has a strong impact on the configuration of the public and private sphere of society today (^{Mellado, 2015}). Likewise, the media coverage of politics and the interactions between politicians and journalists are key areas to be considered when researching political communication (^{Strömbäck & van Aelst, 2013}).

With regard to the relationship between power and the media, the performance of specific journalistic roles on the current international stage have become of special interest to studies in journalism. For example, the arrival of Donald Trump to the White House -after an election campaign with peculiarities that are now under investigation by North American institutions- has strained the relationship between the presidential office and political journalism (^{Frum, 2018}). In modern western history, these connections have never been simple (^{Todorov, 2012}). Nevertheless, these manifestations reach a point of polarization that test the quality of democracies (^{Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018}), the work of the media and the functions of political journalism.

Democracies measure their strength through rule of law that sanctions political actions that deviate from the law, controlling authoritarianism and corruption (^{Colomer, 2003}; ^{Runciman, 2008}; ^{Sunstein, 2018}). Meanwhile, the task of journalists to foster freedom of expression (^{Enguix, 2015}) is put to the test when pressure restricts them to the point where they become prisoners of an ornamental role in democracy, carrying no weight to oversee power.

Over the last few years, this has not been easy either for other Central and South American democracies (^{Interamerican Institute for Democracy, 2015}). Aspects associated with drug trafficking and violence in politics or the excessive use of force by the State are issues that define the agenda and journalistic work in several countries in the region.

The fact that watchdog journalism cannot be practiced or is very limited due to obstacles such as government control, corporate control over media and the impact of cartels on self-censorship by journalists (^{Waisbord, 2009}) is often a generalized aspect on a global level.

In the case of South America, the recent exercise of the roles of political journalism with regard to power has been marked by the intensity of the political processes. The news coverage of these events has even featured the outgoing presidents of countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Guatemala, questioned on issues of corruption during their administrations or of irregular financing during their election campaigns. In this sense, there is an increasingly conspicuous and visible fusion between the political and the economic in the arena of power and the extension of information, an issue that should be undertaken for a subsequent empirical analysis.

Chile, positioned as a democracy that has not experienced general problems of corruption, was caught up in scandals where the common denominator has been the illicit relationship between politics and money at the highest level, affecting cabinet members of President Michelle Bachelet, collaborators of the previous administration of Sebastián Piñera, and then, the family circle of the previous president-in-office.

This article explores the roles that the macropolitical news coverage of Chilean journalism presented during 2015, one of the most difficult years in recent memory for the institutional exercise of Chile. To this end, macropolitics (^{Sterling, 1974}) is understood to be the figure that integrates the political and economic agendas as part of an interconnected and dependent system on a large, national scale, a natural space that harbors the concentration of power in Latin America.

Furthermore, this study incorporates and combines the analysis of print and digital media, resulting from technological and cultural transformations that the media ecosystem -understood as the environment of new platforms that reassign other places to the older media (^{Kittler, 1996})- has experienced over the last few years in Chile (^{Hallin & Mellado, 2018}).

Digital media has grown hand-in-hand with accessibility and portability (^{Boczkowski & Mitchelstein, 2013}; ^{Hermida, 2014}), with a new online space for interaction between power and political journalism (^{Gans, 2010}). However, political communication continues to reside in television and other media such as radio and print media, which continue to have influence on the public agenda (^{Mellado & Lagos, 2014}).

PROFESSIONAL ROLES AND ROLES AND ROLE PERFORMANCE

A theoretical approach required to study the relationships of power in the practice of political journalism from a journalism studies’ perspective, is that of professional roles, and specifically, of implementing said roles.

The “performance” of the professional role has been conceptualized as the collective result of the concrete decisions adopted in the newsroom and the resulting news style, influenced by internal and external forces (^{Mellado, 2015}).

This theoretical line in journalism studies has gained much importance over the last decade (^{Hellmueller, Mellado, Bluebell & Huemmer, 2016}; ^{Mellado, Hellmueller & Donsbach, 2017}; ^{Mellado & Van Dalen, 2017}; ^{Tandoc, Hellmueller & Vos, 2013}; ^{Wang, Sparks, Lu & Huang, 2017}), mostly because of the incapacity of normative studies to explain the professional practice, but also for its sophisticated methodology. Indeed, this area of research became visible due to results that showed that the surveys using polls with journalists did not necessarily reflect the detection of professional roles in practice (^{Mellado & van Dalen, 2014}; ^{Patterson & Donsbach, 1996}; Van Dalen, 2017; ^{Weaver & Wilhoit, 1996}).

It is understandable that journalists have a perception of their functions in society and that the journalistic role is defined in that way (^{Donsbach, 2008}; ^{Weaver Beam, Brownlee, Voakes & Wilhoit, 2007}), establishing the information to be drafted and presented in accordance with the idea that they have of journalism (^{Graber & Smith, 2005}; ^{Hanitzsch, 2011}; ^{Shoemaker & Reese, 1996}). In fact, the literature refers to the ideological responsibility of journalism to gather and deliver objective news or information (^{Weaver, 1998; Weaver & Willnat, 2014}).

However, the difficulty in the observation and analysis of this area is that the practice of journalism operates within a more complex reality, pressured by political, cultural, financial and corporate media dynamics (De Burgh, 2012), so that there is not always a correlation between what the journalists perceives as their role and what they produce as content.

This is especially sensitive in political realities of countries in which power is being challenged for its public and private actions, suffering crises of trust, as has occurred in most of South America. The characteristics of a nation and its press system (Berkowitz, 2011) determine the way in which journalists interact with sources and the comprehension of society about what media professionals should do (^{Hellmueller & Mellado, 2016}). In order to legitimate their position in society, journalists are socialized in their occupational practices and ideologies (^{Deuze, 2008}).

The observation of the performance of journalistic roles contributes to comprehending the forever-intricate network between political-economic power, journalism and its result when it is finally delivered to the public sphere in the form of news. For this reason this study proposes that a perspective of this nature is required for the proper reading or interpretation of national realities that are trying to consolidate their democracies, complementing the point of view that the political communication and the media culture of these nations can provide.

Journalistic coverage of politics is not a minor thing or an aspect that should not be revisited at different times and places. The relationship between politicians and journalists is fundamental for the democratic process given the importance of the media as a source for political information (^{Mellado & Rafter, 2014}). It has been suggested that the comprehension of the relationship between journalism and politics is specific to each country (^{Elórtegui, 2013}; ^{Strömbäck & Nord, 2006}). Indeed, for several authors, the coverage of politics in new democracies and post-dictatorship regimes may have some distinct characteristics that lead to unique patterns of political communication (^{Hughes, 2006}; ^{Porto, 2008}).

Recent studies have measured the materialization of the roles in news content (^{Tandoc, Hellmueller & Vos, 2013}; ^{Van Dalen et al., 2012}; ^{Vos, 2017}). A series of investigations have also developed a standardization of measures and operationalization of different professional roles in news reporting (^{Mellado, 2015}; ^{Mellado, López-Rabadán & Elórtegui, 2017}; ^{Mellado & Van Dalen, 2014}).

These proposals comprise and operationalize the performance of the roles into three main dominions: the “journalistic voice” in the news; the way in which journalism approaches the audience; and the relationship between journalism and those who are in power (^{Mellado, 2015}), the latter perspective being of utmost interest to this investigation.

In each one of these dominions the journalistic roles can be measured through the news content with specific indicators. The journalistic voice entails the role of the journalist as a “disseminator” or “interventionist”. The disseminator role keeps considerable distance between the journalist and the facts, and is associated with roles of neutrality. The interventionist role is present in the interpretation, opinion or other mechanisms specific to journalists (^{Mellado et al., 2017}). It is linked with a participating function (^{Donsbach & Patterson, 2004}) with which it defends different groups of society (^{Esser, 2008}).

These two positions form part of a unidimensional structure, in which a greater level of participation of the journalistic voice implies a greater level of interventionism and vice versa (^{Mellado et al., 2017}). As can be seen by its characteristics, it is also interesting to include this dimension in political coverage, especially in situations of tension, crisis or the emergence of political scandals that challenge institutionalism, given that it involves a journalistic position towards the events.

Meanwhile, the second dominion of the approach with the audience is related to public service and the commercial debate regarding journalism, including the opinion of the audience as citizens, clients or spectators (^{Mellado, 2015}). Thus, three independent professional roles are identified: the “civic”, where the audience is encouraged to participate at the social, political and cultural level; the “service role”, where the audience is observed as a client, providing information and advice on goods and useful services for everyday life; and the “infotainment”, based on different narrative-visual styles and discourses to entertain and thrill the audience (^{Mellado et al., 2017}).

In view of the characteristics of mediatized politics in contemporary democracies (^{Couldry & Hepp, 2013}; ^{Mazzoleni, 2008}), infotainment is also a role that will be observed with special attention in the macropolitical coverage of this study, due to the analytical context of corruption cases and journalistic strategies that are used to catch the attention of audiences on these topics (^{Radunski, 1999}), through an exacerbated spectacularization of politics (^{Castells, 2009}; ^{Edelman, 1988}).

DIMENSION RELATED TO POWER

The third dimension, which is observed with natural emphasis in this study, is related to the connections of journalism with those in power. Power has different resources and means in which it can manifest itself in the political, economic and sociocultural spheres, as well as different levels of influence depending on the scenarios in which it moves. In this respect, journalists can defend the function of monitoring the powerful and report wrongdoings (^{Waisbord, 2000}; ^{Weaver et al., 2007}). Press journalists can also become loyal spokespeople for those who are in power, transmitting a positive image of them, supporting official policies and using every propagandistic mechanism necessary to do so (^{Pasti, 2005}).

From this perspective, two independent dimensions emerge from the performance of the respective role: the “watchdog” (^{Donohue, Tichenor & Olien, 1995}) and the “loyal-facilitator” (^{Sparrow, 1999}). The aim of watchdog journalism is to investigate and make governments, public institutions and the corporate world accountable when engaging in illicit actions, thus acting as the “fourth estate” (^{Waisbord, 2000}). The journalistic performance is associated with that of a custodian of conscience, making events hidden by those in power visible (^{Etterna & Glasser, 1998}).

On the other hand, the loyal-facilitator is known for cooperating with those who are in power, for being submissive, dependent, subservient, a defender of the powerful (^{Sparrow, 1999}). Its collaboration includes highlighting national triumphs and the prestige of the leaders. The watchdog and loyal-facilitator roles are independent of each other, as the lesser presence of one does not mean the greater presence of the other in the news content (^{Mellado et al., 2017}).

The chilean case

As indicated by ^{Hallin and Mellado (2017)}, while each media system is unique, the Chilean case is even more so, in various aspects. Its most significant traits are related to a post-authoritarian political system, with a media that is highly commercial and has a high concentration of ownership (^{Becerra & Mastrini, 2009}). Furthermore, over the last few years, the dominion of electronic media has emerged as a source of information for the people (^{Hallin & Mellado, 2017}).

Along with this, the television industry has experienced changes in its ownership over the last few years, with the entrance of powerful economic groups linked to the retail business (Bethia Group), banking and large-scale mining (Luksic Groups) and transnational communications (Turner Group). A similar aspect in the concentration logic occurs with Chilean radio stations, where the Prisa Group (Spanish capital) predominates. Newspapers, meanwhile, are managed by a duopoly that controls all printed news nationwide (Edwards Group and Copesa).

The close relationship between the economic and political powers of Chile, which is also present in the mass media, was the motivation behind this study of both news dimensions (politics and economics) within the period studied. Hence, this research may be a starting point to moving forward in comprehending similar phenomena of the political communication of South American nations, according to the types of post-authoritarian transition regimes identified by ^{Voltmer (2013)} or those suggested in the media systems identified by ^{Hallin and Mancini (2004)}.

The scandals in Chile affected not only prominent and historical figures of the political world of the main parties but also businesspeople that financed election campaigns that defrauded the tax authority. Against this backdrop, a crisis of trust resulted from situations such as the former son-in-law of dictator Augusto Pinochet, Julio Ponce Lerou, controlling shareholder of Sociedad Química Minera de Chile (SQM ), one of the largest lithium producing companies in the world, acting as an important financier to Chile’s left-wing ruling party, or that of a former mining undersecretary of the first government term of Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014) convicted for tax crimes and an unjustified increase in assets. Moreover, important leaders from across the political spectrum were accredited with illicit behavior that resulted in a series of convictions while other lawsuits are still in process with an uncertain final.

These scandals emerged in the midst of an initial judicial inquiry that involved one of the most important financial groups of the Chilean economy, Penta, as the financial articulator of the election campaign of Chilean right-wing parties through tax-evasion schemes. At the same time, news broke of alleged influence peddling affecting the son and daughter-in-law of then-president Michelle Bachelet, involving the speculation of a million-dollar real estate business (Caval case).

In view of the aforementioned, this study establishes the following research questions:

RQ1. What presence do different journalistic roles have in the political-economic coverage presented by television, online media, radio and print media at times of institutional crisis?

RQ2. Are there significant differences in the presence of different professional roles in the macropolitical coverage of Chilean journalism depending on the news platform?

Conclusions

This investigation reaffirms the evident difficulties that watchdog journalism experiences in the Chilean reality at the multiplatform level. In spite of the crisis of trust and institutions that marked the political and economic agenda in 2015, the watchdog does not present significant activity in its functions of questioning or overseeing the authority, in accordance with the methodological design applied. Nevertheless, the distance with power does not encourage either a loyal-facilitator role towards the economic and political structures. Chilean political journalism, in this context, continues to reaffirm the traits found in previous studies and periods limited only to the print media (^{Mellado & Lagos, 2014}; ^{Mellado, López-Rabadán & Elórtegui, 2017}).

The more specific indicators show a journalism that does not assume the need to establish levels of conflict for social or political change, admits the little interest that political-economic coverage generates in the majority of the audiences, and applies commercial and spectacular logic to generating their news. Neither does it feel very stimulated to defend anyone or champion nationalist or corporate causes.

A conspicuous influence of the economic model over the media system, a part as well of a post-authoritarian political structure, can explain these conclusions. Together with this, the Chilean media concentrate a private ownership linked to important economic groups, whose political leanings, in turn, are openly known. In this respect, the balances between the need to inform and not risk credibility with audiences that are volatile and critical of the Chilean political scene, but without losing focus on institutionalism and dependencies on power from the normative standpoint (status quo), are aspects of Chilean political communication that are reflected in these findings.

Likewise, there are aspects that should be looked at with attention, as they may be embryonic instances of a political journalism that is transiting towards change. This could be true, for example, of an interventionist role whose nature is more related to interpretation (36%) and use of adjectives (43%) in the general descriptions of the indicators, which could lead to more active forms of journalism in the questioning and oversight of politics.

There are two other aspects that can be concluded from this investigation. The first one, a media system that evidences dynamism in its correlations between platforms that not only explains the speed of news production, but also the performance of roles that do not remain static in macropolitical journalism. This entails a second aspect, a journalistic performance that is complex and hybrid. It is not seen as predictable and combines roles that could lead to changes in the media system. The more respective performances between the media are compared, the more nuances and tones can be seen in the behavior towards the facts, actors and processes.

Future research should make a more extensive analysis in the period, so as to determine whether these characteristics remain the same or develop into a more elaborate profile. For example, if the watchdog and interventionist traits of online media will continue to grow, impacting the media of the platforms, or if infotainment in Chile will continue to perceive politics as a privileged space that personalizes crises.

In summary, the analysis must continue to see whether institutional ties loosen up or return stronger than ever, in pursuit of revealing how much restriction or margin for movement there is for political journalism, either under normal or democratically tense circumstances.