Valencian Politicians under the spotlight of the À Punt TV network: A study of television coverage of the 2019 regional elections

Despite repeated failures by the former Valencian television network — Canal 9 [Channel 9] — to live up to its public broadcasting duties, the station’s closure in 2013 still came as a shock. The step by the regional government (then run by the Conservative Partido Popular — PP) had a huge public impact, depriving Valencians of their public TV network at a stroke. That is why Valencian society had high hopes when a new public media platform — Punt Mèdia — was launched. Among other things, politicians and broadcasters needed to show that a more even-handed, professional approach could be taken to media reporting. The 2019 Regional Elections were a wonderful opportunity to prove this. On the one hand, it was a chance to usenew audiovisual methods to better convey political information to citizens. On the other hand, it gave the network and its masters the chance to renounce the shameless political partisanship that had so marred Canal 9’s history. This paper looks at the extent to which these goals were attained. It does so by examining À Punt's coverage of the election. Specifically, we focused on political interviews with candidates, and on the electoral debates. Various methodologies, both quantitative and qualitative, were used. We found that both the form and depth of news stories were fairly balanced. Nevertheless, the network showed a surprising lack of ambition despite À Punt’s stated aspiration to be Valencia’s leading TV station.