Implementation of journalism models in television news programs of Atresmedia group: Antena 3 and La sexta

Abstract

The two main heritage news brands in Spain are the television networks Antena 3 and La sexta, belonging to Atresmedia, through which the group implements a double editorial line. The main objective of this work is to measure the presence of the watchdog, infotainment, and civic journalistic roles in the news programs of these two channels, in line with the strategies of differentiated audience acquisition for the two brands. A quantitative content analysis of news published in the midday editions of the programs La sexta noticias (N = 149) and Antena 3 noticias (N = 209) during the week of 3-9 February 2020 has been carried out. To measure the presence of the three roles in the news content, 42 indicators have been operationalized, following the proposal of Mellado (2015). La sexta showed a greater presence of the watchdog and civic roles than Antena 3. For both channels, there is a tendency to put in practice the vigilance, oriented by a certain political parallelism based on the ideological profile of their respective audience. La sexta has specialized in exercising the function of questioning power and in attending to citizen demands and social groups outside power. Antena 3 applies a flatter strategy, which stands out neither for its singular questioning of power nor for being a specific voice of social groups, which provides it with a more balanced position, although not uniform, in terms of penetration by ideological groups, in its necessary search for a massive audience because of commercial pressure. It has been concluded that each news brand of the Atresmedia group practices a differentiated journalism model.