The negative image of immigration in the media: a question of strategy?

Abstract

This research study sets out from the hypothesis that the general mass media do not have a strategy for reporting on immigration. The recent literature has shown by means of different methodologies that in their news stories journalists associate immigrants with negative values, thus contributing to their criminalization. This study proposes a new methodology that is inserted in the Newsmaking tradition. The proposal is to change the focus of analysis from the news product to the process of generating information, that is, the productive routines and the interaction of journalists with their sources. The case study that we present, centered on the main Basque mass media, concludes that journalists do not in fact have specific guidelines and that, beyond their ideological positions, they improvise when reporting on this issue.