In 2004 Madrid experienced the worst terrorist attack ever on mainland Europe. This event and the subsequent defeat of the conservative government featured prominently on world news websites; This article is concerned with the coverage of Spanish government's initial claims, and the use of term 'separatist' and 'terrorist' in two English-speaking media (the BBC and CNN) and their Spanish services. The article approaches English media texts drawing on Fairclough's model, borrowing also on the strategies suggested by Bell and van Dijk, to examine the ideological implications of the lexical choices made in the texts and intra-textual cohesion devices used by text producers. Spanish reports in BBC Mundo and CNN en Español are analysed. Control contexts are used to ascertain whether the patterns identified for the reports on the attacks follow standard procedures. Texts are compared in order to examine more closely the lexical choices made and the extent to which they reflect what Schelesinger and Lumley called 'a journalistic ideology of independence (1985: 325), or are, in fact, instances of 'negative mediation'.