Televisión, política y democracia: análisis del cubrimiento informativo de los noticieros de Caracol y RCN a las campañas electorales para la presidencia de Colombia 2018-2022

This paper analyzes the information coverage that the news broadcast of the main private television channels in Colombia, Caracol and RCN, gave to the electoral campaigns for the presidential elections during two months of 2018, with the aim of identifying the communication resources, in regards to their form and content, that were used to contribute to form the public opinion of their audiences. Our initial hypothesis is that both Caracol and RCN are strongly conditioned by the political, social and economic interests of the business groups to which they belong, preventing them from presenting real unbiased information. To carry out this investigation, a content and discourse analysis of the Mondays’ 7:00 pm informative segments was performed during a period lasting between February 19 and April 16. The main result was that both channels’ work was influenced by proselytism and the image that they projected of every candidate was defined by the political ideology of each one of them and the affinity with the news broadcast.