A penny for your words. Job insecurity as the chief problem affecting Spanish professional journalism

Abstract

Given the challenging period professional journalism is going through and the challenges facing journalists in their day-today work, this paper seeks to identify the main problems affecting professional Spanish journalists from the perspective of journalists, citizens and experts. To this end, the research presents results obtained through surveys of Spanish journalists, citizen focus groups and in-depth interviews with experts. The findings from a survey of journalists in 2018 are compared with those from a survey of Spanish and European journalists in 2012. These two surveys were conducted using the same parameters. The inclusion of findings from an additional survey carried out in 2008 by the researchers of this paper allows us to plot the evolution of the problems faced by the profession in Spain, highlighting those that have remained unchanged and become more deeply entrenched over a decade marked by the global economic crisis. The results show that Spanish journalists identified job insecurity as the main problem of their profession, while economic and political pressures came in second and third place respectively.