Géneros informativos y estilo periodístico en la cobertura de sucesos en la prensa diaria de información general en España (1977-2000)

Abstract

The pressure of audiovisual hegemony in transmitting reality has forced the press to give a spectacular character to its content. There has been a notable evolution in design and also in narrative conception. Melodrama, entertainment or impact have acquired a scale that relegates depth and interpretation into the background. Within this change, accident and crime reports, far from being an exception, have become one of the cutting-edge areas. This is confirmed in this article, which analyses the evolution of style and journalistic genres in the Spanish quality newspapers (El País, ABC, El Mundo, Diario 16, La Vanguardia de Barcelona, El Periódico de Catalunya and El Correo Español-El Pueblo Vasco) in their coverage of eleven of the main big accidents, natural disasters and crimes that occurred in Spain between 1977 and 2000.