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

Abstract

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. 2 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.

The political vision of Europe during the ‘refugee crisis’: missing common ground for integration

“…Still, it is important to consider that the media do not transmit neutral information but show information biases. However, Korthagen (2015) found that the biases to report increasingly negative news, which are dramatized and fragmented, are not as strong in the media attention for governing officials as for unofficial actors. Therefore, it is assumed that the sources offer a sufficient overview of the imaginaries expressed by the heads of state and government and Commissioners as they are governing officials, especially as only direct quotes were included in the analysis.…”

The Effects of Media and their Logic on Legitimacy Sources within Local Governance Networks: A Three-Case Comparative Study

“…In the quantitative content analysis, we used Patterson's (2000) coding scheme, items and coding instructions, which fit the information biases that Bennett (2009) describes (see also Korthagen 2013). We focused on: ▄ dramatisation (news report has a substantial level of conflict framing); ▄ personalisation (news report has high or moderate human-interest framing) ▄ negativity (news report is clearly negative/more negative than positive); and ▄ authority-disorder bias (news report implies a need for action and attributes this to a governmental institution).…”

The influence of media, positive perception, and identification on survey‐based measures of corruption

“…Entman (, p. 163) identified three types of bias in news presentations: distorting bias (news that purportedly distorts or falsifies reality); content bias (news that favors one side); and decision‐making bias (the mindsets of journalists who allegedly produce biased content). Bennett () divided biases in news coverage into four groups: personalization (bringing a human face or emotional angle to the presentation of an issue); dramatization (focusing on crisis and conflict, as well as winners and losers in stories); fragmentization (isolating stories from one another and from their larger context); and authority‐disorder biases (taking a more suspicious attitude toward authorities) (as cited in Korthagen, , p. 621). To these biases, Patterson () added negativity (a preference for the news to be more negative) (as cited in Korthagen, , p. 622).…”