Conform or confront: how journalists respond to rising authoritarianism

It has been a long time that the established world order is facing a critical political threat: the decline of the democratic system that has held sway for several decades. During this period, several countries shifted from a democratic system to an authoritarian system, or some authoritarian leader again consolidated the power and became more autocratic (Curato, 2017; Puddington & Roylance, 2016; Lendvai-Bainton & Szelewa, 2020; Yilmaz & Turner, 2019; De Jonquières, 2017). This inevitable trend has a strong effect on how journalists behave. On the one hand, some journalists may give up and conform with the authoritarian ideology, becoming a willing participant: they regard their principal role as defending the status quo and consider themselves as important agents of ensuring stability in the country (Schimpfössl & Tablokov, 2014). On the other hand, some journalists follow the western tradition of understanding censorship: analyzing journalism from the perspective of normative ethics, comprehending censorship as top-down repression, and as the natural opposite of free speech (Schimpfössl et al. 2020). But most of the journalists are staying in the middle part, carefully negotiate with the increasing censorship. Thus, different journalists’ perceptions of professionalism towards the authoritarian ideology will result in different actions taken by journalists to suit the system. Previous studies have already summarized three significant ways that authoritarian governments around the world usually use to censor and suppress journalists: business pressures, threats or attacks, and legal measures (Coşkun, 2020; Lei, 2019; Slavtcheva-Petkova, 2019). However, there is no study that provides an overall idea on understanding how journalists deal with them. This literature review would present illustrations of three common tactics that an authoritarian regime usually uses to suppress journalists and utilize Scott’s arguments (1985) on power and resistance, which is the weapons of weak, to explain how journalists in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, etc. respond to those tactics in order to demonstrate their understanding of journalist’s professionalism. At the same time, will be helpful for scholars to understand journalism practice in other areas like Hong Kong, which are having political changes.