Control vs. passivity. The media and political parties’ transparency

Abstract

Political parties must display their information on transparency portals to be accountable to society and thus be controlled through public scrutiny. This is a direct channel of information with citizens, but the population uses the media to be informed. Media control and transmit the information that political parties communicate and one of their roles is being the watchdogs of power. Therefore, they must control the political class and verify that the information they spread is true, also in their transparency portals. This article aims to check whether the media use the transparency portals to carry out an audit of the political parties' transparency portals. The results show that this exploitation of content does not take place in the Spanish online media and, therefore, they do not use the parties' platforms to innovate in new journalistic practices such as data journalism and fact-checking.