Abstract

The international empirical research about journalists’ perception of their professional roles and functions presents a remarkable increase in recent years, but not so in the Spanish case. In this research, which is part of the comparative transnational study “Worlds of Journalism Study”, we analyse data from a survey conducted in Spain (representative and stratified by type of media and Autonomous Community) to 390 journalists from 117 media, who were consulted about their work to detect their professional attitudes. The study identifies six roles: the watchdog, the speaker of citizenship, the instructor of the audience, favours the status quo, entertains public opinion and the disseminator of objective information. Professionals feel more identified with the role of speaker of citizenship, in relation with the Spanish political, economic and social changes in recent years. This function downplays the predominant role in the recent similar studies on Spanish journalists: the disseminator of objective information. We also found two large groups of journalists: the stimulators and the narcotizators of public opinion. Moreover, it was observed that some organizational factors (in particular, the property of media) and other individual ones (such as gender, age and years of work experience) significantly influence the perceptions of professional roles.