Cost-cutting and profit-maximizing. The impact of company decision-makers on immigration coverage

Abstract

This paper presents a critical analysis of journalists’ relationship with their media companies within the socio-economic and political context of Spain, focusing on the coverage of immigration matters. Drawing on indepth interviews with 21 specialized journalists, we explore the factors that influence the accuracy, balance, and representativeness of the selective and creative processes occurring in newsrooms. The analysis reveals two salient features in media narratives of immigration: cultural essentialism, which simplifies immigrant identities into rigid stereotypes; and institutional parallelism, which aligns media content with political or institutional agendas. These appear to stem from internal challenges, such as limited staffing, cognitive biases, and informational opacity, alongside external pressures, including audience demands and political influences. Findings suggest that ownership and management exert higher influence over the selective and creative processes than the individual input of journalists in the newsroom. Paradoxically, journalists perceive themselves as having a satisfactory creative autonomy, suggesting a disconnection between their subjective experience and the objective realities shaped by managerial or ownership directives. This research emphasizes the increasing impact of decision-makers at the media company on newsroom practices, which, in the context of immigration reporting, tend to prioritize commercial or political agendas over human rights principles, compromising the diffusion of balanced and contextualized information. The study aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of media coverage within an evolving and competitive journalism environment.