Suchergebnisse

This study is a cross-national comparative content analysis of the coverage of European Union politics in British, Danish, Dutch, French, and German television news. The study identifies key characteristics of the coverage and investigates influences shaping the coverage. In the majority of countries studied, EU politics was marginally represented in national television news. EU officials, too, were absent in the news. However, if the EU was covered, EU politics was more prominently presented than other political news. Three influences were found to positively contribute to the amount and prominence of EU news: it was more prominent in public broadcasting news programs, in countries with higher levels of public satisfaction with democracy, and during periods around EU summits. The visibility of EU officials in television news was highest in public news programs. The findings suggest that, with EU coverage being of limited visibility and without protagonists, the Europeanization of television news coverage is more an illusion than reality.

Advertorials are a form of outside lobbying that organized interests use to influence policy makers and attentive publics. It is apparent by their popularity that organized interests consider them to be an effective form of political communication. Recent studies have dealt with advertorials related to the ordinary business of politics and public affairs. This article examines advertorials associated with an extraordinary event, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack and the ensuing "war on terrorism." The authors analyze 689 advertorials sponsored by 415 organized interests that appeared in the New York Times from the attack through the first anniversary to the end of 2002. Typologies of advertorials (11), organized interests (21), corporate and noncorporate economic interests (30), and 9/11 content (28) are used to document what types of advertorials were placed, what interests availed themselves of advertorial campaigns, which organizations sponsored the most advertorials, and what messages were being communicated. The rationales of organized interests in sponsoring advertorials in response to a national trauma like 9/11 are discussed.

A content analysis of U.S. newspaper editorials ( N = 158) examined framing of U.S. Supreme Court rulings on affirmative action at the University of Michigan. Results showed that remedial action and no preferential treatment, frames dominating affirmative action discourse in news media from the 1960s through the mid-1990s, were overshadowed in 2003 newspaper editorials by diversity, a frame asserting that a mix of racially and ethnically different people serves to strengthen organizations and society. The Newsroom Diversity Index (the ratio of the proportion of minorities professionally employed by the newspaper to the proportion of minorities living in its market) was positively associated with choosing the diversity frame and negatively associated with choosing the no preferential treatment frame.