Media discourse and news frames on political corruption in Spain

Abstract

Corruption cases are increasingly recurring in the Hispanic American press. The present article studies, from the standpoint of the interpretative responsibility of journalism, the editorial framework of one of the leading newspapers in Spain. From a qualitative methodology such as Discourse Analysis, this paper responds to the objective of "analyzing the media treatment of political corruption in Spain, through the analysis of the headlines of El País and El Mundo (newspapers with the highest circulation and the largest number of readers in the country)." Among the results, it is worth highlighting a personalization of the treatment of processes and events of corruption, omission responsibilities by the power structures, as well as some editorial bias as regards the nominalization of the different political parties involved in the current topics covered. The main conclusion of this research is the urgent need to encourage a type of press that favors an interpretative contribution, which allows citizenship to understand and comprehend corruption.