Journalists’ Perception of the Threats and Risks of Corruption in Institutions and the Media

Abstract

Corruption scandals have been constantly present in the Spanish media in recent years. The public stays informed about these events through the media, so the way in which journalists cover them, as well as their perception of this problem –which threatens and endangers society– as regards the institutions and the media themselves, is of great important. This article addresses this issue using a representative survey, conducted between March and July 2023, of 391 Spanish journalists belonging to media outlets of different sizes and platforms from across the country. Journalists were asked about the perceived level of corruption in different public institutions, their level of institutional trust, and their degree of agreement with a variety of statements about corruption and the media. After performing a descriptive and inferential statistical analysis of the data collected, the results showed that journalists see corruption as one of the main problems in Spain, with a definitively higher incidence in political institutions compared with other public institutions. In addition, it was found that, the greater the perception of an institution’s corruption, the greater the journalists’ distrust of that institution, thus confirming the dysfunctional thesis of political scandals. Finally, it was revealed that, for journalists, the watchdog role is theoretically essential, but it is not carried out in practice owing to the commercial logic that has been embraced by the Spanish media