While balance and fairness are important journalistic norms worthy of research, many previous studies have only examined them in the electoral context. A content analysis of news coverage of State of Union Messages from 1982-2013 on ABC, CBS, and NBC, tests for balance in tone as well as sourcing between the President's side and the partisan opposition. It also addresses partisan or ideological biases. Despite the customary opposition response, coverage showed sourcing imbalances favoring the President the vast majority of time on all networks. Though the overall tone was neutral, non-partisan and media sources were decidedly negative. Democratic presidents received more favorable coverage than Republicans, though Republican presidents were somewhat more likely to receive airtime advantage. ABC also appeared more balanced than the other two. Journalists may be balancing the presidency's institutional bias with critical outside voices, and tempering a Democratic tonal bias with greater use of Republican sound bites.

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This study utilizes a comparative, content analysis of coverage of the Obama 'Birther' controversy from 2008 to 2012 in newspapers from relevant geographic locales -Hawaii, Kenya and Washington, DC -in order to determine whether and how localism impacted the framing and portrayal of the dispute to different audiences, as well as to see how responsibly journalists treated this topic. There were geographic differences in the amount and nature of coverage, though all the outlets gave more space to the anti-Obama side than the President's. In other respects, however, the Kenyan and Hawaiian papers appeared to be more factual and responsible in debunking the false claims about Obama's birthplace, while the DC papers viewed it more as a political conflict. The article concludes that while localism can lead to more responsible journalism, the case may instead suggest that media organizations are driven by audience more than truth concerns, even in coverage of conspiracy theories.