On January 11, 1998, towards the end of my research, one of the main news stories was the political pressure and propaganda like material that government workers witnessed while attending an AEK euskaltegi. Secondary articles were quick to focus on the ikastolas, similar stories at the ikastolas and the response of the Ikastola Movement. Two years later, on January 20, 2000, the Secretary of Education, who many considered responsible for privatizing ikastolas, Fernando Buesa (PSOE), was assasinated by ETA.

News events such as these make it impossible to ignore the role of political association with changes in education and schooling options. But is there other news coverage regarding education that defies this popular link between politics and education? What image is promoted in the mass media? How do pintadas compare to the mass media? I use the daily ritual of three characters representative of broader tendencies I observed in my fieldwork and an analysis of the effect and content of the various mass media to justify my decision to concentrate on the newspaper, above all mass media.