Pluralism and political parallelism in Spanish television news programmes

Introduction: This article has two main objectives. Firstly, it attempts to determine whether the news content of the mainstream Spanish television channels is governed by external pluralism which is a distinguishing feature of the polarised-pluralist media system, as exposed by Hallin and Mancini. The second objective is to address the relation that exists between pluralism and political parallelism. Methods: The study is based on the content analysis of a sample of 3,134 news items broadcast by the prime time news programmes of six national television networks: TVE1, Antena 3, Telecinco, La Sexta, Cuatro and Intereconomía. Results: The Spanish model of television is hybrid and combines different degrees of internal and external pluralism depending on the network's profile and the media group's business strategy. The news programmes produced by the public television channels exhibit the highest levels of internal pluralism.