Censorship, clientelism and bureaucracy: Production cultures in Colombian state-owned media system

Abstract

Working conditions in the creative industries are a growing academic concern among researchers in the Global South, particularly in Latin America. However, beyond the celebratory narratives that dominate the field, more study is needed to understand the sector’s actual impact on employees’ lives. The working circumstances of state-owned television producers in Colombia are the subject of this article, as public media have long been important actors in the local creative economy. The opinions and experiences of producers are investigated using empirical evidence and survey data collected between 2014 and 2019. It is argued that precarity, an intrinsic descriptor of creative work, takes on a different hue when put into a Latin American setting, where clientelism, censorship and bureaucracy propose new contextualized understandings of creative work in a non-commercial industry and a specific national context