Conservative press and educational protests in Spain: Analysis of two terms: 1931-1933 and 2004-2008.
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Conference presentation. Protest and the media (13 junio 2013, Londres).
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Conservative press and educational protests in Spain: Analysis of two terms: 1931-1933 and 2004-2008.
- 1. ANALYSIS OF TWO TERMS: 1931-1933 AND 2004-2008 PROTEST AND THE MEDIA UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER – LONDON - 13TH JUNE 2013 Conservative press and educational protests in Spain Adolfo Carratalá Universitat de València
- 2. The subject: Education for Citizenship Recommendation of the Council of Europe in 2002 Taught in 15 European countries Passed in Spain in 2006 Aims: Gender equality Rights and duties Peaceful resolution of conflicts Promote tolerance to others
- 3. Opponents Social organizations Foro de la Familia CONCAPA Profesionales por la Ética HazteOir.org Bishops Popular Party
- 4. Objective: promote conscientious objection Option advocated by all organizations Presented as legitimate (even legal) by the conservative press Challenged by legal experts and the Government Refused by the Supreme Court Nearly two years after the occurrence of the first
- 5. Conservative media ABC Founded in 1903 Royalist Third-largest newspaper Circulation: 228.159 La Razón Founded in 1998 Right-wing Sixth-largest newspaper Circulation: 153.024
- 6. Media Frame Analysis: Influence SM Subject: indoctrination tool + includes moral issues Parents: lose their constitutional rights to educate their children according to their convictions Children: Victims of an ideological plan Collective action is necessary
- 7. Media Frame Analysis: Influence SM
- 8. Media Frame Analysis: Influence SM
- 9. Media Frame Analysis: propaganda Not balanced Overrepresentation of opponents Dishonest coverage: Zapatero’s invention, denounce contents and aims that the subject doesn’t consider Emotional approach Victimization + Image of threat Opinion discourses based on fallacies Newspapers as political and agitation actors Promote conflict Encourage collective action
- 10. Media Frame Analysis: propaganda A Guide protects Catholic school against Citizenship The first victims of Citizenship
- 11. Media Frame Analysis: propaganda
- 12. Media Frame Analysis: propaganda
- 13. Media Frame Analysis: propaganda Model of writing to support the objection Steps to object
- 14. Media Frame Analysis: propaganda Objectors: harassed and persecuted Against objection, persecution
- 15. Media Frame Analysis: Cult Resonances II Republic (1931-1936): religious persecution Educational reform of the socialist government that forbade the teaching of religious orders Opposition of Church and Parents Organizations Heated criticism by catholic press Sectarian and persecutory law Responds to obscure interests People can and must confront
- 16. Media Frame Analysis: Cult Resonances An attack on freedom of conscience Another attack on religion The anti-Catholic persecution in Spain ...
- 17. Media Frame Analysis: Cult Resonances
- 18. Media Frame Analysis: Cult Resonances
- 19. CONCLUSIONS Contribution to the social revelance of the action carried out by the collectives Promoted the conflict rather than the consensus Emotional approach to the issue Similarities between the historical and current press Doctrinal and moralising Cultural resonances – discursive and symbolic memory Similar aims
- 20. Thank you for your attention!! adolfo.carratala@uv.es
Editor's Notes
- Good morning, everybody and thank you to the members of the Organizing. English is not my language so I will try to make myself understood. The action of the media has always been key in the development of social protests. The success and, more often, the failure of these have relied heavily on the journalistic account that offers them coverage. Although the relationship between media and movements has been traditionally adversarial, the harmony between: the conservative press and collective actions ideologically close are characterized by showing a clear sinergy of interests and shared efforts toward common goals. There are many examples. Obviusly, in the USA. But the phenomenon is also quite remarkable in Spain, where the Catholic press believes that its involvement in social conflicts is one of its legitimate functions. This participation means, in many cases, the legitimation and the promotion of causes defended by religious and conservative organisations. This has been demonstrated, for example, in periods in which debates about values and education have been more intense, as happened during : the First Biennium of the Second Republic (1931-1933) or during the first term of President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero socialist (2004-2008). In both periods, the conservative press favoured the protest giving a fundamental role to the discourse produced and spread by the critical movement. This paper aims to compare the two periods to determine what similarities and differences are between them.
- To start I would like to remember some key points about the issue we are going to talk about. The subject was suggested by the Council of Europe in 2002, worried because of the increasing political and civil apathy among European citizens. The subject, with different names, already exists as an independent subject in 15 countries and it didn’t provoke any conflict in these societies. In Spain it was included in a new Education Law endorsed by more than half of Parliament. We have to say that in this term, the Government also passed other progressive laws like same-sex marriage, express divorce, biomedical research and other norms that were interpreted like an attack by the conservative sectors of the Spanish society. The main purposes of the subject are to improve the gender equality, to make people more conscious about their rights and duties as citizens, to make them able to use the dialogue to resolve conflicts and to promote acceptance of the diversity.
- This slide shows the main opponents to the subject. We can identify three different but interrelated actors: 1) Social organizations. The most active were these four that you can see here… Family Forum, Catholic Confederation of Parents of Students, Professionals for Ethics and SpeakUp.org 2) The members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy 3) The conservative political party in Spain, in the opposition at that time, but winner of the elections that took place some days ago. --- A first doubt that I have, that we can discuss later is if we can think in these social organizations as social movements or not…
- The conscientious objection was the objective that led the action of these organizations. All of them said that the parents had no other options to avoid this attack. Nevertheless, this protest presented a lot of doubts. The conservative newspapers showed the objection as a legitimate action. Sometimes, they even said that it was recognized by the law or the Constitution. However, most of the legal experts and also the Government always said that it was not a measure that parents could take because the objection was only legally regulated for specific situations, as the abortion. Finally, the Supreme Court ruled that the subject was compulsory for all and it was not possible to object against it. But by then, the conflict had already hit two academic years and thousands of parents had decided not to take their children to school.
- Our interest is to analyze how media framed this conflict and if their coverage was affected by the organizations discourse. We focus on the two main newspapers of the conservative political spectrum. The first one is ABC, a historical newspaper in Spain because it was founded in 1903. It has always been a defender of the monarchical system. Nowadays, it’s the third-largest newspaper in terms of diffusion. The second one is La Razon, younger than ABC. It’s clearly conservative, always endorsing the Popular Party ideas. Its circulation is lower than ABC.
- First of all I want to talk briefly about the organizations’ frame. To understand it we can identify three key points… What is the subject for them? A tool used by the Administration to indoctrinate little children and to influence their moral to become their slaves and future voters. So… What about the parents? They suffer an injustice because they loose one of their main rights. And, therefore, the children are victims of an evil attack. This reasoning leads us to understand that we have to do something about it. We have to act collectively to stop this plan.
- This frame we can find it in organizations magazines, like these two that you can see in this slide…
- We can also find it in pamphlets distributed by this movement…
- So… from a first approach to their frames we can say three important things: It’s not a balanced frame. The opponents are overrepresented because both newspapers always coverage the issue as if it was a movement endorsed by more people that in fact support these actions. They try to transmit the idea that it’s a majority of the society who is against the subject. Moreover, some reports suggest that it’s a crazy idea of the president (they usually don’t about the European origin of the subject) and even say that Education for Citizenship includes objectives that are not really there (related to sexuality, nationalism…) It’s an emotional coverage They use a victimization frame: there is a victim (children) and an attack (subject) In columns and editorials, they don’t use arguments but exaggerated analogies (with Hitler and the communist Russia) and metaphors (lobotomy and corruption of minors) They don’t try to do a journalistic task but to promote conflict. They don’t want to help to find solutions or consent but to encourage collective action to cause unrest in the education community.
- I would like to draw your attention to these two headlines. As you can check, the bold words suggest that the subject is an attack and the students are its victims.
- Notice how the picture of children were used often to increase the emotional approach.
- Here, we can see how they try to point out the strength of the movement.
- Sometimes, as we can see in these examples, both newspapers act as organizations’ magazines, publishing guides to help the parents to object.
- This slide shows two headlines in which we can identify the persecution rhetoric. One frame that remind us of another historical moment, when the conservative organizations became very active and involved with educational issues.
- One of the points I defend in my research is that the frame developed in this conflict has cultural resonances with the II Republic, a short period of the Spanish XX century, previous to the Civil War. In that period, a new Constitution and several laws tried to modernize a society that still had old structures. One of the objectives was to promote the secularization of the society with different norms. But catholic church and several organizations call it religious persecution. The main conflict was connected with a reform that forbade religious orders to continue teaching. Very quickly, the conservative organizations and the catholic press began to criticize this law. They said: it was a persecution that was related to Masonic groups and that all the families should oppose to this norm refusing to take their children to the public schools.
- Here we can see some headlines from that period in which we can identify this persecution frame…
- The pictures were also used to construct this injustice frame
- Another example, with women and children…
- In both periods, newspapers contributed to the SOCIAL RELEVANCE of the action carried out by the collectives. Regarding the type of mediation developed, we can assert that both diaries PROMOTED the conflict rather than consensus, favoring the criticism made by the opponents of the subject. As we can see, there is a clear LEGITIMASION of the conflict as a reasonable reaction. 3) Newspapers offered an EMOTIONAL APPROACH of the issue, sacrificing an accurate interpretation. Favouring a FRAMING based on PERSONALISATION and the VICTIMISED perspective of the phenomenon. The opponents are not rebels anymore but victims 4) Evident SIMILARITIES with the Second’s Republic press of provocation: The current conservative press in Spain is still political and as DOCTRINAL and MORALISING. However, we found that it uses a more secular language. The study of the intertextuality indicates that there are appeals to images that are very powerful in discursive and SYMBOLIC memory in the Spanish conservative ideology. Especially, the ideas related with the PERSECUTION of Catholics and SOCIALISTS as totalitarian leaders, hiding communist plans. That takes us to recognize similar OBJECTIVES too. On one hand, the DELIGITIMISATION of government institutions and, on the other hand, the calling for citizens to DISOBEY laws adopted democratically.