Who Gets on the News? The relation between media biases and different actors in news reporting on complex policy processes

Abstract

Having a voice in media is important to gain power and legitimacy in policy processes. However, media are biased in transmitting information. Using a quantitative content analysis of ten years’ news reporting around water management policies in the Netherlands, we study how much media attention different groups of actors receive and how media biases relate to this attention. Executive politicians get on the news because of their authoritative position; less authoritative actors getting on the news is more related to information biases. Information biases can thus function as a form of checks and balances in news reporting on policy processes.

Key words:

• Media
• media logic
• governance network
• official dominance
• information biases

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This article is written within the research project ‘Complex decision-making in a drama democracy’, financed by NWO, project number 3010042005. An earlier version of this article was presented at the PSA Media and Politics Specialist Group Annual Conference. Special thanks to Erik Hans Klijn, Steven van de Walle, Jenny Lewis, and Sandra Groeneveld for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this article. Moreover, the author likes to thank the ten students for their valuable coding work in their research project in bachelor 3.

Notes

¹ More precisely, Tresch (2009) studies news reports in the context of two referenda: on a set of bilateral agreements with the EU and on a popular initiative ‘Yes to Europe’.

² An important exception is Baumgartner and Jones (2009). They discuss the biases of negativity and conflict in their book on policy processes.

³ Algemeen Dagblad, De Telegraaf, de Volkskrant, NRC Handelsblad and Trouw

⁴ Although Lexis Nexis is the most comprehensive newspaper database in the Netherlands – containing all national, regional, and local newspapers in the country – the coverage of some newspapers with a merely regional character did not start until after 2000. This may have led to some biases in the sample.

⁵ IJsseldelta-Zuid, dijkteruglegging Lent, Noordwaard, Wieringerrandmeer and Zuidplaspolder.

⁶ Or when the report itself was just one paragraph and it concerned the water management project.

⁷ Between 150 and 300 reports: the sample consists of the first of every two reports (for Noordwaard and Wieringerrandmeer); between 300 and 450 reports: the sample consists of the first of every three reports (for Zuidplaspolder).

⁸ However, we must remark that it is only quite recently that regional television programmes can be found on the Internet. The earliest item from regional television is from March 2006, and the date regional broadcasters started their broadcasting on the Internet may even differ per outlet. This may lead to small biases in the analysis.

⁹ These emboldened categories were also used to calculate the variable the number of information biases.

¹⁰ The fragmentization bias frequencies are quite different for the five cases; this may result from different interpretations of Patterson’s (2000) instruction on this item, which is quite broad. We have to be careful with conclusions about the fragmentization item because it may not be as reliable and valid in this study as we would like it to be. Nevertheless, in all cases, the bias is found in more than 50 per cent of the reports.