Having explained the aforementioned research works, we now present published informative books that also cover this subject, along with selections of random titles dealing with these types of films, but without scientific criteria. The review of Spanish books featuring journalists begins with Los chicos de la prensa, published by Juan Carlos Laviana. As its author explains, “it was written with a fundamentally capricious criterion” (1996: XIII). In 2006, around the time of the 51st edition of the Valladolid International Film Festival, also known as Seminci, another book was published entitled, Cine entre líneas. Periodistas en la pantalla (Rodríguez, 2006).The author dedicates one of its chapters to Spanish film production with more than 30 films. We have added to our research 12 film titles included in the book, Periodistas de cine. El cuarto poder en el séptimo arte, published by journalist Luis Mínguez Santos. Once again, North American films play a large part in this book in which the author acknowledges the scarcity of Spanish titles. He points out that there was hardly any production during Franco’s dictatorship, and now in the period of democracy “the few titles listed come from relatively successful fictional works or films based on real events with a strong documentary component” (2012: 197). Josep María Bunyol’s Historias de portada, 50 películas esenciales sobre periodismo (Cover stories. 50 Essential Films about Journalism) (2017), explores the dichotomy between heroes and villains, and among the 50 titles there are five Spanish films in our database.

Our research supplements all of the work mentioned above with a methodology designed by the authors of this article, which has no precedent in the study of cinema. As already explained, this present work makes a fundamental contribu-tion through the application of Vladimir Propp’s structuralism. Another novelty is the distinction made between realistic and unrealistic films in order to achieve more reliable results. Situations considered to be ‘realistic’ are those with credible characters who could be found in any pressroom, radio or television studio. Films considered ‘unrealistic’ are those with an excess of satire or fiction and unlikely situations, and therefore are not contexts of real life.

This research has the following objectives:

1) To identify the profile of the journalist featured in Spanish films through the creation of a morphology related to the functions of reporters as primary and secondary characters.

2) To describe the portrait of the journalist within their professional field in realistic and unrealistic films. The charac-teristics of the job allow for the description of the journalist’s profession in credible and unlikely situations, leading to possible heroes and villains.

3) To define the characteristics of villains portrayed by unrealistic Spanish films in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century.

The objectives are intended to test the following hypotheses:

H1. The unrealistic Spanish films of the 1990s and the first ten years of the 21st century with the presence of media and journalists are composed of villains with a lack of journalistic ethics, and characters in unlikely situations that arouse laughter or tenderness in the viewer, rather than anger.

H2. The morbidity and lies in television programs have shaped the work of villainous journalists in the unrealistic Spanish films of the 1990s and the first ten years of the 21st century.