Dear employer, the crisis - of course, again - does not affect everyone equally, it is clear, and there are sectors that are suffering more than others, the media tell us that every day. But so far we have not said much, especially the print media is its own crisis, which is not only due to the economic situation, but, according to the expert's background is a structural model business.

The main income of most media companies comes from investments made by the advertisers and advertising, when they begin to reduce them substantially - this happened in Catalonia and Spain at the end of 2007 and early 2008 to part of the real estate companies, especially - all media, especially the writings, large or small, see how they approach problems, and now here they are installed - Infoadex Study of Investing in Spain 2009 -. But in addition, this agrees with the fact that they have to deal with changing social habits and the impact of new technologies. One thing: the Internet advertising spending grew 26.5% in 2008, and reached the figure of 610 million euros, 8.6% of the total, the same as the traditional sector of the journal . Aware of this, the College of Journalists of Catalonia, the Press Association of Madrid, the College of Professional Journalists of Galicia, the Federation of Unions of Journalists, CCOO and UGT have asked the Government of State your commitment to address these serious problems. However, this environment means our house is pretty, is global.

And speaking of comprehensiveness in early February, five known British journalists from different media - Financial Times, BBC, The Guardian, Daily Mail and Sky - were called to testify before the Committee of Economy of the House of Commons to explanations on how they reported on the problems of banks in that country. This led to a debate on the role of the media when reporting economy sufficiently investigated at the time of prosperity? Why then not reporting on what was being done? They convey an overly optimistic picture to the society? There was a conflict of interest (advertising) in a context of fierce competition? Were now too alarmist and pessimistic? They were and are too inexperienced journalists (young lower cost)?

A discussion of this type there not some way because, to what extent the interests of media companies in writing and the mood of its shareholders and directors do not influence directly or indirectly in the headlines and articles professionals write? Because the reality is that is, whether good or bad, but there are many ways to write it.

Joseph Albet

Economic Focus, 14-03-2009