Media, politics and confrontation in Spain: European elections 2009

Abstract

The media play an important role in today’s society, particularly when it comes to dealing with and communicating information of a political nature. The political class at large is one of themain sources of information for journalism as is any move it makes. On top of that we must bear in mind that the main players in the Spanish press tend to drift away from objectivity. This makes them accomplices to the crime of giving a subjective and biased vision when reporting on political issues. In this piece of work we will be showing how two of Spain’s most representative newspapers, El País and El Mundo, reported on the 2009 European Elections. At the time the political scene in Spain was stained by a series of scandals and dark events and these two players transmitted both a blatant and extreme bias and a political negativism coupled with a general spirit of confrontation.