The concept of freedom of the press as a symbolic conflict in the journalism field: the case of Venezuela

Resumo

The defense of the freedom of the press is a unanimous point among press professionals, but the definition of such concept is not a consensus in the field of journalism. The present study investigates to what extent the social position of the Venezuelan journalists acting in the field changes their definitions of press freedom and censorship. The corpus of the analysis consists of qualitative interviews with six journalists of the Venezuelan television. The chosen stations – Venevisión, VTV and Globovisión – are representative of the political and market-orientation distinctions among the main media companies of the country, which constitute a group of press outlets that are different among themselves and in regard to the constraints that their professionals are subjected to. The theoretical framework is based mainly on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, whose concepts of field, symbolic conflicts, heteronomy and autonomy are useful to the analysis of the journalism field, of the restrictions to which it is submitted and of the strategies adopted by its members. The text reaches the conclusions that freedom of the press is a concept under dispute, and that the relative positions in the journalism field have a decisive influence in the definitions of freedom, press and censorship as presented by each interviewee. As the journalists defend the freedom of the press, they impose representations that sustain the strategies for maintaining or subverting the setting of their field that is more interesting to the outlets for which they work.

Keywords: Freedom of the Press, Censorship, Journalism Field, Symbolic Conflict, Venezuela.

Submission date: February 14^th 2011
Acceptance date: April 25^th 2011