Passive or pro-active Sports journalism? The coverage of FIFAGate in the sports press in Mexico and Spain

Summary

This article analyses formats, reporting techniques and the use of sources to measure proactive journalism in the coverage of the corruption scandal known as FIFAGate in four major newspapers: Reforma and Récord from Mexico, and El País and Marca from Spain. The study examines the actors, angles and football confederations that received the most media coverage, the indicators of ‘proactivity’ per media type (specialist vs. reference) and per country (Mexico vs. Spain), and the variable with the highest impact in proactivity. It concludes that investigative journalism was overall scarce, although El País scored the highest standards of proactivity in the coverage.