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Media Coverage of State Legislatures: Negative, Neutral, or Positive? *
Author(s) -
Rosenson Beth A.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
social science quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.482
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1540-6237
pISSN - 0038-4941
DOI - 10.1111/ssqu.12211
Subject(s) - newspaper , legislature , tone (literature) , neutrality , scholarship , political science , politics , state (computer science) , objectivity (philosophy) , social psychology , law , psychology , linguistics , computer science , philosophy , epistemology , algorithm
Objective To evaluate how neutral newspapers are in their coverage of state legislatures and whether the tone of this coverage is affected by the partisan orientation of the newspaper's owners and by the focus of the stories. Methods I examine hard news stories in four newspapers from two states, during April 2005, to assess the tone of coverage (positive, neutral, or negative) of their state legislatures and test whether tone varies with owner partisanship and focus of the particular news story on the whole legislature or individual legislators. Results The majority of coverage (81 percent) is neutral in tone. There is no difference in tone when the newspaper's owners share the same partisan orientation as the state legislature compared to when they have a different partisan orientation. There is no difference in tone when the focus of the story is on the whole legislature instead of on individual legislators. Conclusion Contrary to scholarship that suggests the media is negative toward political institutions (including legislatures), or partisan in its coverage, tone is largely neutral. When covering state legislatures, newspaper reporters adhere for the most part to the professional standard of objectivity or neutrality.