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ideological diversity of the Spanish media, a response to Vicenç Navarro Empire

Now in its delivery weekly in the newspaper Público, professor of political science at the UPF, Vicenç Navarro, offers a reflection on the plurality of media that is in line with the discussions that we sometimes have in the carpet. The article begins:

One of the biggest problems that English democracy is very limited ideological diversity that exists in the media of the country's largest circulation. And it is easy to prove. (read more ...)

And to prove it, Professor Navarro goes to the cutoff of anecdotal evidence that supports their argument. The Article above, of course, journalistic standards, but scores a rather poor if analyzed from scientific standards and from the empirical evidence we have today on the characteristics of the English media system in comparison with other countries.

So what really is no pluralism in Spain as Professor Navarro says? On the one hand if we follow the thesis of Hallin and Manchini (in his book Comparing Media Systems -considered manual subject header), media systems in the Mediterranean, which includes Spain, the media are closely involved in political conflicts and tend to have a vocation of editorializing on political developments. Citing these experts "when it comes to contentious issues, it is common to see very sharp political differences in the English media, manifested in disputes holders in the selection and emphasis on articles so as to images and a bitter debate in the editorial "(pg.98)

Not long ago put a particularly grotesque about this issue in a class I did in the Summer of Teruel. On February 13, 2007, the two main means of communicating our country confused the audience with two conflicting headlines about the same event:

In fact theoretically slightly editorialized (an expert report of March 11) each half interpret "ideological" content to make it consistent their editorial. This question was perhaps the world means more vocation editorialized. In effect, the newspaper was interested in the pockets of the explosions were other components outside the Goma 2 to hint (which for some is synonymous media environments to demonstrate) linking ETA to the plot.

But to avoid to be accused also be providing anecdotal evidence, then turn back again to the work of the experts. The professor of public opinion of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Anton Castromil, performed a very interesting study about the partisan leanings English newspapers during the last election campaign. In his study collected a sample of 2000 articles from different newspapers and classified according to their ideological bias. The results are as follows:

Chart: tone of the articles of major newspapers in the election campaign of 2008 (Castromil, 2008)

Tone article: (PP = PP articles favorable or unfavorable to the PSOE / / PSOE PSOE = articles favorable or unfavorable to the PP)

The data show that although a large volume of information is presented as neutral, if there are clear ideological bias in the English media very consistent with what common sense tells us. Other quantitative evidence of the politicization of the media I offered you a few weeks ago (look two scores below or click here ). There was evidence that the consumption of print media was clearly influenced by the ideology of the reader and in recent years, the ideological polarization has tended to increase.

Part Vicenç Navarro is right, sometimes it enojante seen as in some subjects, there was a single thought introduced in both the media and among politicians of our country. The rejection of Hugo Chavez is perhaps the best example of this (hence the value of the article Vicenç) But that should not blind us to the degree of politicization of the print media in our country are higher than in other democracies around us.