How the populist radical right delegitimizes critical journalists: a discourse-theoretical analysis of Vlaams Blok/Belang rhetoric about the media (1978-2013)

The media are central to the politics of and against the populist radical right (PRR); not only as an arena for PRR and anti-PRR rhetoric, but also actors in and as objects of the discursive struggle between the PRR and its opponents. PRR parties have accused mainstream media of treating them unfairly. Competing political parties and anti-racists have criticised media's purportedly uncritical and excessive coverage of the PRR. And media have reflected on their attitude towards the PRR, navigating between on the one hand commercial imperatives, news values, and key journalistic values such as objectivity, and on the other hand democratic values.
Debate on how media should deal with the PRR has been an integral part of the discursive struggle of and against such parties, but has received only cursory academic attention. There is a relatively small body of - mainly quantitative but also discourse analytical - work on media coverage of the PRR. Discourse studies has also paid much attention to PRR rhetoric, but has not systematically studied PRR rhetoric about the media.
This paper presents a discourse-theoretical analysis (Carpentier & De Cleen 2007) of the rhetoric of the Flemish Vlaams Blok/Belang (VB) about the media, focusing on a number of critical discourse moments (Chilton 1987, Carvalho 2005) since the foundation of the party in the late 1970s. Studying media material and VB propaganda, it shows how the VB's rhetoric on the media is connected to the party's broader populist, nationalist, conservative and authoritarian rhetoric. Given the centrality of the signifier democracy in the debate, particular attention is paid to the VB's claim on the signifier democracy. As a party accused of being undemocratic and therefore deserving a different (media) treatment than other parties, the VB has increasingly moved away from speaking in a blatantly authoritarian fashion towards a populist and formally democratic rhetoric. It turns the signifier democracy against its political opponents but also against the media, by accusing them of being part of a politically correct elite that is far removed from 'the people' and that does not live up to journalistic values such as objectivity, impartiality, and truth.