Political interview and audiovisual bias. The case for Los desayunos de TVE (2018)

Abstract

This study discusses possible bias in making television interviews with spanish political leaders. The audiovisual narrative process and scenesetting, the responsibility of the production team, are seen as playing a decisive role in the neutrality of interviews. The study analyses the audiovisual manner by which the Spanish public television corporation, TVE, treated the main Spanish political leaders Pedro Sánchez, Pablo Iglesias, Albert Rivera and Mariano Rajoy on its programme Los desayunos de TVE, as well as their closest collaborators, Adriana Lastra, Pablo Echenique, Fernando de Páramo and Fernando Martínez-Maíllo, in 2018. In the interviews analysed, audiovisual narratives were identified; these were guided by the programme's directors, who are able to influence the impartiality of the interview. The homogeneity of the audiovisual coverage on each political leader is discussed, in respect of all the locations and scene-settings being similar. The results show that the different political leaders did not receive the same conditions or narrative coverage in the audiovisual direction. Consequently, they did not face the same implicit threats in the interview questions analysed.