Often media has been considered as key player in creating an atmosphere that discourages corruption. However, beyond the role that freedom of press plays in helping to combat corruption, we have little empirical information about the circumstances under which the media performs this function. In order to tackle this research gap, we analyze in this paper how the Spanish media news frame corruption related episodes with the focus on three key institutions that define the system: the judiciary, the police and civil society organizations. Our study stems from the premise that media news coverage of corruption must be accompanied by information about the efficiency of the system in reporting, prosecuting and punishing corruption; otherwise, media news might just be contributing to promote cynicism, to spread sense of impunity into the society, and reinforcing the structure of incentives to engage in corruption related activities. Existing research on media coverage of corruption in Spain has mainly focused on the analysis of media political parallelism with little attention to the above-mentioned aspects. The paper relies on the analysis of Spanish national (general press and business press), regional and local newspapers. We test whether there are differences in the framing of corruption episodes among the considered news media outlets, which operate at different levels of government and that target different audiences.