Cost-cutting and profit-maximizing. The impact of company decision-makers on immigration coverage Articles uri icon

publication date

  • April 2025

start page

  • 1

end page

  • 20

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 1464-8849

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1741-3001

abstract

  • This paper presents a critical analysis of journalists' relationship with their media
    companies within the socio-economic and political context of Spain, focusing on the
    coverage of immigration matters. Drawing on indepth interviews with 21 specialized
    journalists, we explore the factors that influence the accuracy, balance, and representativeness
    of the selective and creative processes occurring in newsrooms. The analysis
    reveals two salient features in media narratives of immigration: cultural essentialism,
    which simplifies immigrant identities into rigid stereotypes; and institutional parallelism,
    which aligns media content with political or institutional agendas. These appear to stem
    from internal challenges, such as limited staffing, cognitive biases, and informational
    opacity, alongside external pressures, including audience demands and political influences.
    Findings suggest that ownership and management exert higher influence over the selective
    and creative processes than the individual input of journalists in the newsroom.
    Paradoxically, journalists perceive themselves as having a satisfactory creative autonomy,
    suggesting a disconnection between their subjective experience and the objective realities
    shaped by managerial or ownership directives. This research emphasizes the increasing
    impact of decision-makers at the media company on newsroom practices, which, in the
    context of immigration reporting, tend to prioritize commercial or political agendas over
    human rights principles, compromising the diffusion of balanced and contextualized
    information. The study aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of media coverage
    within an evolving and competitive journalism environment.

subjects

  • Information Science

keywords

  • media; immigration coverage; cultural essentialism; institutional parallelism; audience agenda; labor conditions; framing theory; political economy of communication