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High freedom of the press equals low corruption. This according to earlier studies trying to figure out the connection between these two factors. But there are countries that don’t fit into this assumption and Costa Rica is one example. With this study we have tried to get an understanding of how a country can have both high corruption and high freedom of the press. Our theoretical base has been theories about corruption and freedom of the press. We also believe that it’s relevant to problematize the measures of freedom of the press since they only build on different criteria decided by political scientists and economists. No consideration is taken to the context the journalists works in, which are different for almost every country. We have also used theories about commercialisation and journalism as a fourth estate. Our result is based on ten interviews with costaricans. We chose the perspective of the recipients because we wanted an impartial view on how media reports about corruption, the costaricans opinios about the journalist role and how they experience corruption in their every day life. To analyse our result we used four themes: mediaconsumtion, newsreporting, experiences of corruption and the role of the journalist. Our conclusions from this study are that even though a country live up to criterias as high democracy, well developed economy and official independence from the government there are other factors that can limit and affect the journalists possibility to report independentely. Culture and commercialisation are two examples that have a big impact on the newsreporting in Costa Rica. If a country doesn’t have a history of impartial and investigating journalism it can be hard to apply it into the journalistic work. Another conclusion is that if a country has a long history of corruption, regulations are not enough. Instead normative changes are needed, which can be achieved through education and informing the population about their rights and the governments responsibilites. But there is also a risk, that if people dont feel any faith in institutions like goverment and media, they start to accept corruption as a part of their lives.