Political Journalism in Spain. Practices, Roles and Attitudes

Abstract

The general aim is to characterize Spanish political journalism through the discourse of editors of the political sections, to verify the extent to which it conforms to the model of a polarized pluralist media system. In Spain has had a consolidated advocacy oriented journalism, which either made the journalist part of the party or organization’s strategy, or an advocate of a particular ideology. According to Hallin and Mancini we consider two indicators of political parallelism: the journalistic orientation and practices, and the relations between the media and the political system. The data were obtained through indepth interviews with 14 editors. The results suggest that the Spanish political journalism meets two basic features: high levels of political parallelism and polarization. With regard to relations between politicians and journalists, they reveal an attitude of mistrust against politicians.