Political communication is one of the most dynamic fields of study in both political science and communication studies. However, although the comparative approach has a relatively long tradition in the first, it is still in its adolescence in the latter. This book is a major contribution to what could be deemed comparative political communication studies, “the first systematic, internationally comparative assessment of political journalism—its production, content, and the effects that it produces,” as the authors claim in the introduction (p. 2). Indeed, their research design is ambitious and rigorous: surveys among political journalists of Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, and Spain to see how their professional values and relationships with politicians may influence the news they produce; a content analysis of political news in the main newspapers and TV newscasts of those same countries to measure the levels of partisanship and infotainment; and a two-wave panel survey with citizens from all of those countries but Germany, to assess the impact of news content in citizen political learning and satisfaction with journalists’ performance.

The book benefits from a good theoretical-empirical integration, covering the main variations of democracy in Western Europe as defined by Daniel Hallin and Paolo Mancini in their 2004 seminal work Comparing Media Systems (consociational Denmark, liberal Britain, and polarized Spain), with the aim of offering generalizable empirical results regarding the ideal systemic conditions for a journalism that benefits democracy. These conditions would be “a high degree of professionalization in journalism, a low degree of political parallelism [meaning a weak identification between journalists and dominant political parties], a strong public broadcasting system, and moderate degrees of commercialization and competition” (p. 170).

The book is organized by following three major aspects of political journalism: 1) its production (looking at journalists’ autonomy from economic and political power, and their relationship with politicians); 2) its content (journalistic style is analyzed according to the relevance it attributes to politics as compared to other newsworthy events, its degree of impartiality, and its willingness to cross the barrier between information and entertainment); and 3) its effects on the citizens it serves, examining how journalism content affects political knowledge and political cynicism, and whether citizens are satisfied with the political journalism they receive. The authors cover the process of political communication in full, “from the moment news is produced until the moment news is consumed by its audience” (p. 27), and they do so in two steps, moving “from the effect of conditions on content to the effects of content on users” (p. 94).

Political parallelism (the alignment of media companies with political options) is found to limit journalists’ autonomy, particularly in Spain, where “political pressure” is the main constrain for the journalistic work of Spanish political reporters. For Danish journalists, political pressure from within their media organizations is almost nonexistent, though it is somewhat present in Germany and the UK. Spanish journalists are among the most ‘sacerdotal’ (giving political news priority over other issues) and partisan, whereas British reporters are more prone to infotainment (mixing information with entertainment). Danish journalists stand out for their impartiality and their low preference for soft news. German reporters are some of the most “pragmatic,” meaning that they are willing to treat political news as regular news, being less reverential to politicians and their actions or declarations. The authors investigate the relationships between journalists and politicians, concluding that a high degree of political parallelism (as it happens in Spain, where the media system is a reflection of the political system) leads to more political pressure on journalists, and this itself causes reporters to have a cynical view about politics, seeing politicians as a self-serving crowd. The perception of an active role by “spin doctors” is also a driver of cynicism among journalists, as the professionalization of political marketing communications is seen by reporters as a main roadblock to their work.

The relationship between journalistic ideals (reporters’ self-conception about their role vis-à-vis politicians and society) and the content they produce is coherent in the Spanish and UK cases, but not in the Danish one. Spanish journalists are partisan and so is their news. British journalists are more entertainment oriented, and their coverage dips frequently into scandal stories. But Danish journalists profess a reverential attitude to politics, yet their coverage includes stories dealing with soft news.

One of the authors’ most counterintuitive findings is that a sensational coverage of political news, with conflict and human-interest frames, contributes to the increase of political knowledge among those less interested in politics. The effects of infotainment on political cynicism are mixed: On the one hand, privatized news (focusing on the private lives of politicians) generates cynical attitudes toward the political system among the population. On the other, personalized coverage (finding the human-interest and the emotional angle in political news) contributes to a less cynical view of politics, but only among those with little inclination toward political affairs.

Another original approach of this book is its concern about citizen satisfaction with the political coverage by journalists. Research on the satisfaction of end users is common in marketing communications, but rare in journalism studies. The authors find that the public tends to be more content with journalists the more they perceive that reporters are performing a good “watchdog” function toward political power. In Spain, where watchdog journalism is perceived to be less prevalent, citizen satisfaction with media coverage is lower than in Denmark or the UK, where reporters are seen to be more vigilant of government.

Because of its comparative outlook, its theoretical-empirical integration, and its novel findings, this book is a relevant contribution to the literature on journalism and political communication studies. There are, however, some minor limitations. Political Journalism in Comparative Perspective completely ignores political news and discussion on the Internet. Even if legacy media manage to keep our attention (as the authors argue on p. 180), they no longer have the monolopy on mediation between politicians and citizens. The success of the populist left-leaning party Podemos in the 2014 European elections in Spain could not have been predicted by mainstream media coverage. It might be that Spaniards, whom the authors find to be unsatisfied with traditional political journalism, are turning to alternative forms of journalism, and this mainly happens online. Regarding the study of the effects of news content on political engagement, the dimension of political participation is absent, mainly because their comparative study is based on the coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign in the United States, which makes the comparison of media content across countries easier and more consistent (hence, such a choice) but prevents researchers from measuring the impact of political news content on the political participation of (European) citizens.

Despite these minor shortcomings, works like this one from Erik Albæk and his colleagues are finally meeting the long-standing demand by the pioneering communications scholars Jay G. Blumler and Michael Gurevitch for more comparative research in the field of political communication.