doxa.comunicación | nº 31, pp. 315-340 | 323
July-December of 2020
Ana Mancera Rueda and Paz Villar-Hernández
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
is also Vox, but El Diario chooses a verbal locution, “incite a purge”, which has a more negative axiological value. On the other hand, in [Ex. 12], an infinitive is chosen and the focus is no longer on the ban instituted by the party, but rather on the difficulty experienced by journalists in carrying out their work. However, in this case, reference to the newspaper itself is avoided, despite the fact that the “insults, bans and threats” to which it refers (an example of which is presented in the statement made in direct speech have also been targeted at El Diario; The headline of El País shown in [Ex. 13] also uses a verbal locution with a negative axiological value, as it uses a metaphor with belligerent features; However, unlike the other headlines, the OK Diario avoids any criticism of Vox.
As can be seen in the graph above [Image 1], La Vanguardia and El Diario are the newspapers with the most political issues, which account for 21.2% and 20.5% of their headlines, respectively. By contrast, political issues in OK Diario represent only 4.7 %.
On the other hand, some media report on personal issues, as can be noted in the following text, which refers exclusively to a person’s religious practices:
[Ex. 14.] Vox’s second in command in Barcelona attended a mass in Franco’s honour, which ended with singing the Falange-inspired hymn, ‘Cara al sol’ (El Diario, 17-04-2019)
The omission of temporary deictic references could lead the reader to believe that this is current information, when in fact the Eucharist in question took place in 2016, three years before publication of the news. Perhaps the intention of publishing this non-current news item is to give greater force to the editorial policy of El Diario, which is very critical of this party’s ideology, by highlighting the affiliations of Vox’s candidates with the Franco regime. As shown in [Image 1], this newspaper has the most headlines related to personal issues (9.1%), followed by El Confidencial (8.0%), where we find news that reports expressions of affection toward Vox’s leader published on Instagram by his wife, using various adjectives, such as the following:
[Ex. 15.] A most affectionate personal greeting to Santi Abascal on his 43rd birthday (El Confidencial, 15/04/2019)
The relevance of this type of news in the course of an election campaign may be considered dubious, and consequently, other media such as ABC, El Mundo or La Vanguardia might possibly have chosen not to include content related to the private lives of this political party’s representatives.
Finally, under the heading of policy issues, Patterson (1980) includes references to specific policy measures linked, for example, to the economic, social or territorial realms. The headlines of OK Diario and El Mundo stand out with regard to these issues, although with very low overall numbers (7.5% and 4.8%, respectively), perhaps due to the specialised nature of this type of news. These newspapers address issues related to the economy and taxation from a perspective that benefits Vox, yet sometimes collides with good journalistic practice, as shown by the following examples:
[Ex. 16]. Vox: The Spanish tax system wastes up to 1.15 euros for every one invested (OK Diario, 14/04/2019)
[Ex. 17]. Economic policies in the first 100 days with Vox in the Andalusian Regional Government (OK Diario, 26/04/2019)
What is striking about the first of the two headlines above is how the newspaper seems to echo one of Vox’s proposals, but without specifically identifying it as an indirect style statement. On the other hand, the second headline has a nominal