Abstract

Science controversies are opened to democratic processes where mass media play an important role shaping policy issues related to biotechnology and deciding which voices are included and which criteria are considered to present the situation to the public. This study presents the results after analyzing 2,482 articles collected from the web archives of two prestige daily papers in Spain, El País (1497) and ABC (984) with the keywords “células madre” and “célula troncal” from 1996 to 2006, with two indexes of scientific production and political activity. The method is content analysis with a coding sheet previously used in The New York Times y Washington Post and bibliometric searches in ISI web of Science and in the daily sessions of Spanish Congress and Senate. From the beginning of this decade stem cells becomes an issue in Spanish press until in 2006 it is announced a new Law of Biomedical Research allowing therapeutic cloning, researching on frozen embryos and embryonic stem cells.Results showed media agenda is closer to political than scientific one. Stem cell research is portrayed more in terms of political strategy than of new research. In addition, the source of stem cells present in mass media is more related to ethical controversies than to scientific results