Economic Journalism and the Elitist Approach (original) (raw)
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Communication & Society, 2015
This article reports on a conceptual and empirical analysis conducted to determine the degree to which economic and financial news published by two of Spain's foremost daily newspapers, El País and El Mundo, may have been spectacularized through the use of infotainment techniques and strategies. Researchers postulated at the outset of this study that spectacularization takes place at every phase of the crafting of a news item and that agenda setting, framing and the selection of information sources, narrative devices, and language constitute strategic points in the process that can be oriented towards transforming news into an appealing and easy-to-consume product. Content analysis was used to examine coverage these papers provided during May and June 2012 of a bailout of Spain's banking sector that entailed a partial government takeover of Bankia, the country's fourth-largest bank in terms of assets, an event that marked one of tensest moments in the country's long economic crisis. Findings indicate that the use of infotainment strategies in now common in economic reporting-the hard news core of the quality pressand that leading newspapers not only employ framing techniques associated with this genre such as dramatization, personalisation, emotionalism, and speculation but also rely heavily on journalistic subjectivity rather than expert sources of information.
The Political Economy of Communication, 6 (2), 2019, 2019
The bursting of the housing bubble in Spain in 2008 triggered the recent Spanish economic and financial crisis. In this context, we analyze tensions between the technical and popular nature of the housing bubble phenomenon, along with its media coverage for different audiences. We consider the extent to which, media treatment of this issue differs between those newspapers, directed to the elites, and those appealing to the general population. The article argues that in Spain, especially before the bubble burst, press discourse generally was 'captured' by the logic of elite to elite communication, the dominant form of news in finance and economics. The results of this research contribute to our understanding of economic issues and policies, both from a journalistic and a political economy perspective.
Who has a say in political news? An analysis of sourcing trends in the Chilean quality press
Journalism, 2018
Based on journalistic sourcing theory, this article analyses sources used in political news in the Chilean elite press to establish whether there is a tendency to diversify them or a persistent pattern of favouring official and mainstream sources. The Chilean case may serve as a ‘laboratory’ for observing journalistic sourcing within a context of highly concentrated ownership of the quality press, which is attributed with being a right-wing ideological duopoly. We conducted a quantitative content analysis of political news published in constructed weeks from 2007, 2011 and 2015, years in which the left and centre-right government coalitions alternated. Our three objectives were, first, to determine whether the sourcing practices used by these media outlets follow the typical pattern of using mainly official and mainstream sources; second, if there is significant uniformity in sourcing in the elite press due to the concentration of media ownership and considering the right-wing ideol...
Newspaper attention and policy activities in Spain
Journal of Public Policy, 2013
Spain's newspapers are characterised by strong partisan identities. We demonstrate that the two leading newspapers nonetheless show powerful similarities in the topics of their coverage over time. The media system is strongly related to the policy process and it shows similar levels of skew (attention focuses on just a few topics) and friction (attention lurches rapidly from topic to topic) as others have shown for policy processes more generally. Further, media attention is significantly related to parliamentary activities. Oral questions in parliament track closely with media attention over time. Our assessment is based on a comprehensive database of all front-page stories (over 95,000 stories) in El País and El Mundo, Spain's largest daily newspapers, and all 7,446 oral questions from 1996 to 2009. The paper shows that explanations of friction and skew in governmental activities should incorporate media dynamics as well. Political leaders are clearly sensitive to media salience.
The media reputation of Spain during the global financial crisis
Communication & Society
The overall objective of this article is to measure what economic indicators and trends can shape or change the evaluation of a country by influential foreign media, during turbulent times. The case analyzed is that of Spain during the last economic crisis. Before the crisis, the Spanish economy boomed and was considered a kind of miraculous paradigm, but it abruptly collapsed in 2008. Then, the coverage and the tone of the articles published by some global business newspapers and magazines, as The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, and The Economist, mutated considerably, as negative news outscored the positive ones. Two regression analyzes conducted demonstrate that the trends followed by the unemployment rate, the benchmark stock market index of a country, and the exchange rate can change dramatically the tone of news published by influential foreign media about a country. Other results are discussed in the paper.
This article explores the ties between elite economic journalists and mainstream economists in Brazil. It does so by investigating the influence of mainstream economists on journalists’ careers, and therewith, on Brazil’s public discussion. Using mixed methods, we study the main achievements that help to explain economic journalists’ position. We present a multiple correspondence analysis of 53 economic journalists, 30 who are in elite positions and 23 who are from the same cohort but are not in elite positions. Elaborating on 58 interviews, we explore the field’s professional dynamic, examining the sources that produce scoops, how journalists formed their economic perspectives and how economic sources link to the press. We find that there are two elites of economic journalists in Brazil with different career paths. Although careers among elite journalists might diverge, there is a manifest elective affinity between them and financial elites. Key economic journalists reached elite positions by sharing the doxa of mainstream economists. Journalists who worked in the Central Bank, economic ministers or private banks tended to rise in their professional careers. The familiarity with key financial agents of non-elite journalists, by contrast, is more limited. The article concludes by discussing the implications of this elective affinity for the public sphere in Brazil.
Framing Austerity in Spain: The Influence of Sources and Economic Policies Over the Media Discourse
Journalism Practice, 2020
European countries responded to the economic crisis of 2008 by adopting austerity policies that deeply transformed their economic and social model, leading to a general decline in welfare. This study attempts to demonstrate how the media contributed to legitimise this kind of policies by portraying them as the only possible alternative, focusing on the Spanish press. To this end, we carry out a Content Analysis of the frames used by two Spanish newspapers to address the policies applied in response to the crisis between 2008 and 2015. Additionally, this article links through a Z-test the frames reproduced by the media with the type of sources that promoted them, a dimension of the crisis coverage that remains largely unexplored. It also analyses the evolution of the media discourse throughout the crisis. The results show how coverage was dominated by frames that legitimised austerity by presenting it as the only existing option. In a relevant way, both elitist and alternative sources mostly promoted frames that legitimised austerity, although in a different way. On the other hand, the legitimisation of austerity was exercised more intensely in the crisis periods in which these policies were being applied more strongly.
Spain has a highly partisan media system, with newspapers reaching self-selected partisan audiences and espousing explicitly partisan editorial preferences. Do the newspapers of the left and right differ in how they cover politics in ways that can be predicted by their partisan leanings? We review theories of issue ownership, journalistic standards, and information scarcity and test hypotheses derived from each. We find that the parties converge substantially in virtually every aspect of their coverage. Few differences emerge when we look at what topics are covered or in the dynamics of which topics gain attention over time. However, we confirm important differences across the papers when they make explicit reference to individual political parties. Journalistic norms result in a surprising focus on the faults of one's enemies, however, rather than the virtues of one's allies. Our assessment is based on a comprehensive database of all front-page stories in El País and El Mundo, Spain's largest daily newspapers, from 1996 through 2011.
Central European Journal of Communication
This paper discusses the role and utilization of journalistic sources in the process of communicating the transitional path of a society in crisis towards economic and sustainable growth. It is mainly concerned with the general tendency of the press to display a high degree of manipulation of public opinion by reduction of the diversity of sources and/or their misuse. Cyprus was selected as a case study not only because newspapers still play a dominant role in shaping public opinion in contrast to New Media, but also because sustainable growth has been the basic argument and rhetoric in governmental communication policy, which promoted it as one of the main means in overcoming the ongoing economic/banking crisis the country has been facing since the bailout of the banking sector in 2013. The aim of this research is to examine which categories of journalistic sources shape this topic in the current public sphere and the ways journalists perceive and practice the utilization of their ...
By means of a cross-longitudinal quantitative content analysis of the Chilean national press, this article analyses the changes in reporting styles and the framing of politics in news coverage between 2006 and 2011, exploring whether the features of political reporting found in studies of Western countries are evident in the case of Chile. According to the data, while politicians trigger the majority of political news stories, political coverage originates significantly more from events than from statements or issues. Likewise, although framing politics as a game is a dominant and significant characteristic of the Chilean press, there is a systematic increase in the public policy frame. The results also indicate low levels of interventionism in covering political news, showing the practice of journalism where politicians have a strong influence on news content. The research allows for discussion on how politicians are adapting to the needs of the media and presents a deeper understanding of the characteristics that define political journalism in new democracies.