Shielding democracy: foreign correspondent coverage of the 1981 Military Coup Attempt in Spain in The Economist, Time and Newsweek

Abstract

The role of the international press as an external contributing agent to the consolidation of democratic regime change within emerging democracies is a growing research area within the field of media history and political communication. Within the context of these press/power dynamics, this article analyses the intense coverage made by the influential transatlantic weekly magazines, Time, Newsweek and The Economist of the attempted military coup in Spain in February 1981. It argues that all three publications made editorial decisions and employed narrative strategies –based on contempt for the foiled military uprising, acritical elevation of the young King and the consensual projection of democratic consolidation in the country- in an indirect but strategic contribution to the defence of the institutional stability of a country emerging from 40 years of dictatorship and whose destiny was crucial to wider Cold War geopolitical considerations in the southern Mediterranean at the time.