The Determinants of Balanced Coverage of Political News Sources in Television News
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1 Faculteit Politieke en Sociale Wetenschappen Departement Politieke Wetenschappen Proefschrift voorgelegd tot het behalen van de graad van Doctor in de Sociale Wetenschappen: Politieke Wetenschappen aan de Universiteit Antwerpen te verdedigen door Knut De Swert Where is the balance in the news? The determinants of balanced coverage of political news sources in television news. Nederlandse titel: Waar is het evenwicht in het nieuws? Determinanten van balans tussen politieke actoren in het televisienieuws 2 3 Abstract The basic idea of this Ph.D. study is to use the concept of balance to make it possible to study media bias at news item level, offering the great advantage that news item specific characteristics can be brought into explanatory analyses on media bias. First, the study of the use of political actors in the news is situated in the wider field of media research. Then, some of the basic concepts of the debate on this subject are presented in the large framework of the media bias literature. At the end of this chapter, balance will be chosen as the specific concept to work with, since this can be measured at the news item level. After specifying the exact way this concept will be used in the framework of this Ph.D., and after validating of this concept, existing literature is discussed that can be helpful in the quest for determinants of balance on different levels of the news making process. These determinants will be evaluated on the country level, the broadcaster level, the journalist level and the item level. Two empirical chapters follow upon this, one based on Flemish ENA-data (2003-2007) and one based on a self-collected international sample of 24 newscasts of eleven countries. Both analyses will be performed with multilevel logistic regressions. The former should shed more light on the journalist level predictors (e.g. ideology), while the latter is expected to illuminate the way in which country and broadcaster specific variables determine the presence of actor balance in a news item. In the conclusions of both these empirical chapters, attention will be given to the reaction of some news makers themselves to these results (based on interviews). In the final conclusion, some limitations of this study will be highlighted, and an evaluation will be made of the use of balance-analyses like this, and their possible merits for future research. 4 Table of content Preface ................................................................................................................. 8 Chapter I. Introduction........................................................................................ 10 I.1. The role of news media in democracy ....................................................... 14 I.2. Objectivity as a standard for journalism .................................................... 17 I.3. Objectivity, fairness and impartiality in practice ........................................ 20 I.3.a. Patterns in news access for political sources ...................................... 20 I.3.b. News Access: looking for a benchmark .............................................. 21 I.4. Evaluating objectivity of news media: bias, bonus & balance..................... 25 Chapter II. Research on media bias ..................................................................... 34 II.1. Aggregate vs. individual: how to measure and evaluate media bias? ........ 35 II.2. The U.S.-focus of media bias research ...................................................... 36 II.3. The electoral focus of media bias research ............................................... 38 II.4. Benchmarks in existing media bias research ............................................. 39 CHAPTER III: From Bias to Balance. An item-level approach to media bias. .......... 46 III.1. From an aggregate to an item-based approach. How ‘balance’ can help.. 46 III.2. Operationalizing balance as “opportunity balance” ................................. 50 III.3. Validation: content vs. opportunity. A pilot study. ................................... 53 III.3.1. Missed occurrences of standpoint balance ....................................... 54 III.3.2. Opportunity balance where there is no balance of opinions ............ 56 III.4. Conclusion .............................................................................................. 58 Chapter IV. Explaining balance in television news items ...................................... 60 IV.1. The media routine level .......................................................................... 61 IV.2. Factors on the individual level (of the journalist) ..................................... 63 What can and cannot be learned about individual journalist’s behaviour from the “indexing” theory ................................................................................. 67 Time frame: Elections versus non-elections ................................................ 70 IV.3. Factors at the organizational level........................................................... 71 IV.4. Factors at the system level (media & politics) ......................................... 74 5 MEDIA COMPETITION ................................................................................. 75 NATIONAL NEWS CULTURES AND FORMAL LEGISLATION ............................ 76 POLITICAL SYSTEM VARIABLES .................................................................... 77 Chapter V. Explaining political balance in Flemish television news ...................... 81 V.1. Political balance in Flemish television news ............................................. 81 Item-level factors ....................................................................................... 83 Journalist level factors ................................................................................ 85 Broadcaster-specific factor ......................................................................... 88 V.2. Data and methods ................................................................................... 90 Dependent variable .................................................................................... 90 Independent variables ................................................................................ 92 Methods ..................................................................................................... 94 Sample ....................................................................................................... 96 V.3. Results ..................................................................................................... 99 Item-level factors ..................................................................................... 105 V.4. Conclusion ............................................................................................. 113 Chapter VI. Explaining political balance in an international comparative perspective ....................................................................................................... 122 VI.1. Hypotheses ........................................................................................... 122 Item-level factors ..................................................................................... 124 Journalist-specific hypotheses .................................................................. 125 Broadcaster-specific hypotheses............................................................... 125 Country-specific hypotheses ..................................................................... 127 VI.2. Data and methods ................................................................................ 129 Coding ...................................................................................................... 133 Dependent variable .................................................................................. 135 Independent variables .............................................................................. 135 VI.3. Analysis. Balance in the news: a comparison between 24 broadcasters. 138 Item level variables................................................................................... 142 6 Variables at broadcaster level ................................................................... 146 Variables at country level ......................................................................... 148 Variables at the journalist level ................................................................. 150 Beyond political balance ........................................................................... 151 No balance at all ....................................................................................... 152 VII.4. Conclusion ........................................................................................... 155 Chapter VII. Conclusion ..................................................................................... 160 Limitations ............................................................................................... 163 The future of balance = the future of bias? ............................................... 166 References ........................................................................................................ 169 APPENDIX A: overview of what balance is in this study ................................. 185 APPENDIX B: Information broadcasters international sample ........................ 186 APPENDIX C. Multilevel models by chapter V. (Flemish ENA data) ................. 187 APPENDIX D. Short overview of (television news) media markets