European Union deprived of a public radio-television broadcasting service, in spite of having its own unique language and culture, the new government that took office after the 2015 elections began the process of recovering the Valencian public media. After many months of work and pressure from the professional associations of the Valencian communication sector through the Valencian Audio-Visual Sector Board (MESAV), which brought together workers, businesses, and academics from the universities of Valencia, together with the involvement of the new government, the Valencian Parliament approved Law 6/2016 of 15 July regarding Radio-Television Public Service Broadcasting at the regional level, owned by the Regional Government of Valencia.

The restoration of RTVV’s public service in the Valencian Autonomous Region has been a complex process carried out within a turbulent political context involving a dispersed audience with multi-screen consumption habits that have little in common with the media scene of 2013, at which time the broadcasting service was terminated (Galán Cubillo, Gil-Soldevilla, Soler-Campillo & Marzal-Felici, 2018). However, due to the fact that citizens were highly estranged from RTVV, this disaffection has not diminished in recent years. It should be emphasized that in the period from 2012 to 2020, the national and regional press has not rigorously covered the process of the RTVV closure nor the process of creating À Punt Mèdia (Public Media Corporation of the Valencian Region, PLC), but instead, the coverage has often been close to sensationalism, and has even “taken on the dimensions of a real-life ‘soap opera’” with the dismissal of thousands of professionals, or the issue of job rankings for the hiring of new APM staff, which satisfied the morbid curiosity of a highly uninformed audience that was saturated by the constant “informational noise” regarding the case, in which there has been considerable confusion in distinguishing “information” from “opinion” (Marzal-Felici & Soler-Campillo, 2017). In short, the RTVV crisis has worsened the reputation of the professions related to communication and the audio-visual sector. Moreover, it is clear that the communicators themselves were, and still are, largely responsible for the precarious reputation of communication activity in Valencian and Spanish society.

2. Methodology

The study we present herein combines different research techniques: a bibliographical and documentary review of the subject; PEST analysis, or in other words, an examination of the general environment –political, economic, social and technological factors– that comprise the contextual framework of the Spanish and Valencian communication system; use of a participatory observation technique, given that the authors of this work are presently, and have been, involved in the activities of some of the professional organisations under study; surveys with closed questions based on Likert scales regarding the reputational image of the Valencian communication sector; and finally, in-depth interviews with relevant leaders and professionals of the Valencian communication and audio-visual system.

2.1. Design of the questionnaires

The design of the survey questions followed the questionnaire model based on the Likert psychometric scale, with the aim of objectifying agreement or disagreement on a statement by means of an ordered, one-dimensional scale from 1 to 5 to which a ‘no opinion’ option has been included, which makes it possible to improve the quality of the data