Construction of the image of politics in Spanish TV news programmes. The endo- and exo-balances of the quality of political information

In our society the image that citizens have of politics is strongly conditioned by the way politics are represented in the media and, in particular, in TV news programmes. This article, a product of an R&D project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Social Policy and Sport, analyses the presence and image of political news in eight Spanish TV channels. This article also proposes a new method to measure the quality of political information in Spanish TV news programmes through the definition of the endo- and exo-balances of the political content of news programmes. The main conclusions of this study are that the news programmes of Televisión Española and Cuatro offer a more balanced image of politics, while the news programmes from Sexta and Canal 9 offer more unbalanced image. The percentage of news devoted to politics does not depend on the channels' ownership (public or private) or broadcast coverage (national or regional). On the other hand, there is a relation between the percentages of political issues and policy issues news presented on television. Keywords: agenda setting; news quality; news programmes; television; politics; image of politics.