WATCHDOGGING POPULISM: journalistic roles conception, performance and negotiation in reporting the far-right in Portugal

Abstract

The article aims to unpack the press reporting of far-right populism invested in its journalistic roles, as manifested in the watchdog performance by the leading Portuguese newsmagazine Visao in a series of feature articles on the emergent Chega party. Drawing on an original combination of methodologies comprising surveys, rhetorical analysis, and qualitative interviewing, it concludes that Visao adopts an interventionist mode of the watchdog role in the reporting. It also validates the need to integrate a negotiative assessment of the role orientation and reporting practice to fill both the general ideal-practice gap of the journalistic roles and the specific idealperformance of the watchdog role.