Politicians and journalists constructing political news. A ... · ultimately journalists have the...
Transcript of Politicians and journalists constructing political news. A ... · ultimately journalists have the...
1
Politicians and journalists constructing political news.
A factorial survey with political journalists to analyze source selection patterns.
Debby Vos
Paper prepared for ECPR Graduate Conference, 3-5 July 2014, Innsbruck
INTRODUCTION
In modern politics, mass media play a crucial role in connecting voters to politicians since citizens
often rely only on news media to get informed about their representatives. Being visible in news
media is essential to acquire political success and influence political processes. Politicians thus have a
crucial interest in gaining favorable news coverage (Tresch, 2009). Politicians compete to get media
access and this study analyzes who wins this media battle by taking both politicians and journalists
into account. This is a relevant approach as the construction of political news results from a co-
production between newsmakers and journalists (Wolfsfeld & Sheafer, 2006). Politicians try to move
past media gates to convey their message to citizens and peers. However, journalists do not simply
transmit messages coming from politicians, but decide themselves which issues and sources to select
and how to report on them (Althaus, 2003).
In a broader perspective, the selection of politicians as news sources fits within the traditional
paradigm of media gatekeeping, which concerns the process through which numerous events and
actors are reduced to the few stories appearing in news media. The keyword during this process is
selection: selection decisions at multiple points in time define what gets into the news, what is left
out and how the news output eventually looks like (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). Scholars describe
media gatekeeping as a hierarchical process with influential factors on multiple levels. Five levels of
influences have been identified: individuals, routine practices, media organizations, social institutions
and societies (Reese, 2007).
We examine which politicians get selected as a news source by journalists and explain the
selection patterns by looking at the first two levels: individual journalists and routine practices. On
the one hand, journalists are led by routinized practices of news work. Gatekeeping is not a random
process but results from systematic selection mechanisms that lead to a rather uniform news menu
across news media (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). News values are such mechanisms guiding journalists
during news selection. We apply news values to politicians and consider their characteristics and
activities as assets that can guide them through the media gates. This leads to our first research
question: which characteristics and activities of politicians matter to get selected as a news source by
journalists?
2
On the other hand, the supply of politicians who have certain news values is only one side of
the coin. As stated before, politicians present themselves to journalists to gain coverage but
ultimately journalists have the final verdict. Journalists tend to follow news values but their personal
characteristics and beliefs might also shape news selection (Shoemaker, Eichholz, Kim, & Wrigley,
2001). We are interested whether journalists judge the newsworthiness of politicians according to
their own background and preferences or whether they are guided solely by routine selection
mechanisms as one professionalized group. With our second research question we examine if
journalists’ personal characteristics and beliefs influence their selection of politicians as a news
source?
Media gatekeeping research has a well-established and enduring tradition. White (1950) was
the first to connect the gatekeeping concept to communication theory and media gatekeeping has
been studied extensively ever since. Media gatekeeping typically is studied by employing content
analyses. However, a fuller understanding of the gatekeeping process is best accomplished by
combining content analyses with other research methods, such as surveys, interviews, observations
or experiments (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009, p. 81). We employ an experimental survey with 73 Flemish
journalists as an innovative method to examine news coverage of politicians. This method
complements existing research and offers some advantages.
First of all, conducting a vignette survey with journalists allows us to analyze news selection of
politicians on a disaggregate media level. Whereas most content analyses examine one or more
media outlet(s) and draw conclusions about news organizations (for example Fogarty, 2012; Midtbø,
2011; Waismel-Manor & Tsfati, 2011), we can look specifically at those persons who create news
items in the first place: individual journalists. Since political news results from the intertwined
relation between politicians and journalists, we need to include both on a micro-level to analyze
interactions between them. For example, some studies conclude that news from female reporters
consists of a greater number of female news sources (Aday & Devitt, 2001; De Swert & Hooghe,
2010). We can verify if this holds true when examining journalists’ selection decisions instead of
analyzing news output, where also editorial and organizational decisions come into play.
Second, experiments are an appropriate means to investigate unconscious processes that are
hard to observe or explain verbally. News selection is such a process that occurs in a rather
unconscious and routinized manner. Yet, experimental research in media gatekeeping studies is rare
(for exceptions see Hudson, 1992; Patterson & Donsbach, 1996). By means of a factorial survey, we
ask journalists to judge press releases from politicians, which contain carefully manipulated features
of the politician. The judgments of the journalists will most likely be less subject to social desirability,
because they are probably not aware of the manipulations in the vignettes (Wallander, 2009).
3
Third, the numerous content analyses in gatekeeping research imply that the news product is
investigated. This news product is only the very last step in the news making process, after the news
discovery and the news selection (McManus, 1994). We deviate from this dominant perspective by
examining the selection process, which comes much earlier in the news making process. Moreover,
whereas content analyses examine what becomes news, we can analyze which events and people do
not make it into the news. As Shoemaker & Vos (2009, p. 80) put it clearly: “[…] studying what does
not become news is perhaps more revealing of the decision-making process than is studying only the
news product.” With content analyses, it is hard to know the “population” of events where news gets
selected from, whereas we can control all incoming information and then examine who journalists
judge as newsworthy enough for covering.
THEORY AND HYPOTHESES
Media gatekeeping happens on several levels, all having their own influence on news selection
(Reese, 2007). This study focuses on the individual level and routine practices to explain news
coverage of politicians. On the level of routine practices, journalists share basic definitions of
newsworthiness. They select and make news based upon a generalized set of routine practices,
although these rules are not consciously acknowledged or written down (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009).
The theory of news values explains how ground rules of newsworthiness operate during the daily
news production. Several news values, such as ‘continuity’, ‘reference to something negative’ and
‘reference to persons’, determine which information moves through the news gates (Galtung &
Ruge, 1965; Harcup & O’Neill, 2001). One news value is ‘reference to elite people’: events concerning
elite people have more chance to become news because their actions are more consequential than
the activities of others (Galtung & Ruge, 1965, p. 68). However, it is not clear who these ‘elite people’
exactly are and if they all manage to become news sources. As Harcup and O'Neill (2001, p. 271)
state: “’Elite people’ is too broad a category to shed much light on what makes news in our current
cultural climate”.
In this paper, we narrow down the broad group of elite people and specifically focus on
political elites. We examine which features of politicians make journalist decide to report on them.
We regard the characteristics and activities of politicians ‘forces’ that facilitate or constrain
politicians’ movement through news gates (Shoemaker et al., 2001) and thus see them as news
values of politicians. We suppose that journalists all employ these selection mechanisms to judge the
newsworthiness of politicians and examine which characteristics and activities of politicians matter
to get selected as a news source by journalists.
4
In spite of journalists applying implicitly shared news norms, these norms are not binding and
reporters’ subjective beliefs and personal background might influence their judgments. Their
predispositions can lead to selective attention, selective perception and selective retention of
information (Donsbach, 2004). As Weaver and Wu (1998) put it simply: “The major assumption is
that journalists’ backgrounds and ideas have some relationship to what is reported (and how it is
covered) in the various news media around the world”. It is not only interesting to look at which
features of politicians are relevant for journalists, but also whether all reporters apply them in a
similar way. We analyze whether journalists’ personal characteristics and beliefs influence their
selection of politicians as a news source? Finding uniformity in newsworthiness judgments implies
that journalists mainly carry out a set of routine procedures without personal motives. If journalists
on the other hand differ in their selection decisions, the micro-level of journalists should matter to
explain political news coverage.
Features of politicians as news values
A whole range of features of politicians might determine if they become a news source, but we need
to choose those most interesting for us to include in the experimental survey. After all, in an
experimental setting it is important to include only few variables of interest and keep other
confounding factors as constant as possible. The decision of which features of politicians to analyze is
based upon three considerations. First, content analyses of political news often result in inconsistent
findings, where our experimental design might bring some clarification, as is the case for gender for
instance. Second, some possibly relevant features of politicians lack substantial research, such as the
specialization of politicians, which we now include in our experimental survey. Lastly, we are also
interested in interaction effects between politicians and journalists, for example between the party
of the politician and the political preference of the journalist. It is thus necessary to include features
of politicians where we might expect an interaction to occur.
The considerations above lead to five features of politicians worthwhile analyzing: party
attachment, gender, specialization, type of communication and type of action. These features
determine politicians’ newsworthiness and can be divided in politicians’ structural characteristics on
the one hand and their active engagement on the other. Party attachment and gender are fixed
treats whereas politicians can consciously decide how and when to communicate about an issue,
whether or not it is about their issue specialization, and how they act politically on that issue.
Party affiliation is a feature that cannot be ignored when analyzing news selection of Belgian
political actors, since political parties are highly present in Belgian politics and news coverage.
Belgium is considered to be a partitocracy with strong parties (De Winter, 1996) and news items
typically mention the party of the politician each time he gets covered. More importantly, including
5
parties has a clear theoretical relevance. The so-called ‘political balance’ or ‘partisan media bias’ has
been studied frequently to determine if certain political parties and its members are favored in news
coverage (Hopmann, Van Aelst, & Legnante, 2011). The strength of a party can influence the amount
of news coverage its members receives. First of all, media attention allocated to politicians is
supposed to be proportional to the electoral strength of their party. To secure balanced reporting,
journalists can apply the number of seats a party has gained in parliament, with politicians from
electoral stronger parties receiving more coverage as a result (Van Aelst, Maddens, Noppe, & Fiers,
2008). Second, government and opposition parties attract different media attention. Journalists are
inclined to favor politicians from government parties – the so-called ‘incumbency bonus’ – because
their decisions and actions are more consequential and thus more relevant. Government can actually
do something while opposition members can merely talk and criticize. Moreover, government
members are strong news sources because they have good access to news media, can offer exclusive
information and are the official sources for informing about political decisions (Hopmann, Elmelund-
Praestekaer, Albaek, Vliegenthart, & de Vreese, 2012; Midtbø, 2011).
H1a: Politicians from electoral stronger parties get selected more often by journalists.
H1b: Politicians from government parties get selected more often by journalists.
Gender is a second structural characteristic that might influence news coverage. The study of news
coverage of female politicians is a relatively young, but well-studied research field (Larson, 2001).
Scholars indicate the existence of a double gender bias in political news: female politicians receive
less news coverage (Heldman, Carroll, & Olson, 2005; Kahn, 1994; Niven, 2005) and also different
coverage (e.g. Aday & Devitt, 2001; Ross, 2004) compared to their male colleagues. Yet, some recent
studies fail to find gender differences in visibility in news coverage (e.g. Atkeson & Krebs, 2008;
Kittilson & Fridkin, 2008; Semetko & Boomgaarden, 2007). This might signify that women’s growing
presence in politics results gradually in a more equal coverage. In Belgium, female politicians have
conquered a firm position in politics and female representation is quite high: 41% of current federal
parliamentarians is female (Belgische Federale Overheidsdiensten, 2011,
http://www.belgium.be/nl/). We thus expect female politicians are being judged equally newsworthy
compared to their male colleagues.
H2: Male and female politicians get selected equally by journalists.
6
Parties are often associated with a particular issue they ‘own’. Consistent attention and policy action
on specific issues by parties makes citizens come to view the party as competent at handling those
issues, thereby creating stable and long-term issue-ownership (Petrocik, 1996). Hayes (2008, p. 380)
suggests that journalists as well are guided by partisan heuristics when reporting about politics: “[…]
party expectations influence journalists’ choices of which candidate statements to report and which
to ignore”. We take this a step further and apply the issue-ownership mechanism to individual
politicians, since we are interested in politicians and not parties as such. Most politicians who have
an elected mandate specialize in one or a few policy domains and become experts on it. That way,
they have their own issue-ownership. We propose that political journalist are driven by politicians’
specialization, in the same way they follow issue ownership heuristics. This also relates to the
concept of ‘thematic relevance’: the extent to which a political actor’s position can be linked to a
public issue (Wolfsfeld & Sheafer, 2006, p. 339). When a politician has knowledge about and
experience with the topic at hand, journalists will judge him as more relevant and thus newsworthy.
H3: Politicians who communicate about their issue specialization get selected more often
by journalists.
It is not only important to look at the issue politicians communicate about, but also at the timing of
their communication. They can try to initiate a debate and get initial control about the topic or on
the contrary they can respond to an ongoing mediatized debate, thereby ‘surfing the wave’. The
modern political process can be perceived of as a sequence of cycles in which leaders, publics and
mass media concentrate on a small number of public issues for a limited period of time (Wolfsfeld &
Sheafer, 2006, p. 335). Media generate ‘hot topics’ and politicians are attentive to it: by talking about
hot topics they try to surf the current wave of attention. This relates to continuity as a news value:
once an event has become headline news it remains in the media spotlight for a while because it has
become familiar and easy to interpret (Harcup & O’Neill, 2001, p. 263).
H4: Politicians who react on an ongoing debate get selected more often by journalists.
Next to raising relevant issues, politicians are supposed to take action upon societal problems. They
have a wide scope of activities to pursue. Firstly, politicians can try to set the political agenda by
pronouncing their personal standpoint and vision. Secondly, they can employ parliamentary
questions to voice their concerns, control government and prepare legislative acts (Bailer, 2011;
Wiberg, 1995). Thirdly, initiating and passing legislation are central in representative democracies.
Politicians want to pass bills through legislation to realize their policy goals, to demonstrate to
7
citizens that they are caring and acting about salient issues and to acquire a good reputation amongst
colleague politicians (Anderson, Box-Steffensmeier, & Sinclair-Chapman, 2003).
All these actions have their inherent political relevance, but are also applied to gain visibility
and name recognition. Taking actions can be inspired by publicity-seeking motives (Bailer, 2011;
Midtbø, 2011). We indeed propose that journalists are led by these types of action when selecting
news sources, although not all actions might be considered as equally newsworthy. We differentiate
between the symbolic and the substantial politic agenda, where issue positioning and asking
parliamentary questions concern the symbolic agenda, and bill proposals are a means to influence
the substantial agenda (Walgrave & Van Aelst, 2006). We expect that journalists are mainly
interested in actions directed to the substantial policy agenda since it has more consequential impact
on society and thus is more pertinent to cover. Moreover, drawing up bill proposals shows a good
deal of effort and knowledge put forward by the politician and stands out from the abundance of
parliamentary questions. In the year 2012-2013, to give an example, 4499 oral questions and 5288
written questions were asked compared to only 530 bill that were proposed (Kamer van
volksvertegenwoordigers, 2013).
H5: Politicians who undertake a substantial action get selected more often by journalists.
Features of journalists influencing selection decisions
Journalists in general select political news sources based upon the newsworthiness of politicians.
However, it is interesting to not only look at journalists as one homogenous group, but rather
differentiate among them along socio-demographic characteristics and personal beliefs. This way, we
can examine whether their personal background has an effect on their news work practices, or
whether they are entirely socialized into the newsroom and closely follow news values and working
routines developed over time.
To begin with, news decisions can reflect in some way journalists’ political beliefs. Previous
research concludes that partisan bias is hard to find when looking at news media as a whole, but this
does not mean that “[…] every reporter and every newspaper is unbiased. Quite the opposite: a wide
variety of data […] indicates that specific newspapers and specific reporters and editors can show
substantial (and substantive) ideological bias” (D’Alessio & Allen, 2000, p. 148). Reporters tend to be
more liberal than the news organization they work for (Peiser, 2000) so the effect of political bias
might be ruled out by the combination of more left leaning reporters and more right leaning owners
of media organizations. For that reason, we investigate partisan bias by looking at the one-on-one
relation between politicians’ party affiliation and journalists’ political preference.
8
Socio-demographics might also influence professional decisions. Journalists have diverse
beliefs and priorities consistent with their gender, age, experience and education, which then leads
to a different socialization into the workplace. Scholars have analyzed reporting styles according to
gender (Hanitzsch & Hanusch, 2012; Meeks, 2013; Rodgers & Thorson, 2003), but diverse viewpoints
exist as to whether female journalists report differently. The gender model contends that men and
women socialize differently in the workplace, because they have diverse beliefs and priorities. The
job model, on the other hand, asserts that socialization is a function of the work environment.
Women and men incorporate the prevailing rules and structures of the newsroom and develop
similar working routines (Rodgers & Thorson, 2003). Van Zoonen (1998, p. 36) lists the use of sources
as one area where men and women can differ in their reporting: women are inclined to select more
often female news sources. With our design, we can examine interaction effects between the gender
of the journalist and the gender of the politician.
In addition, we also investigate their years of experience as a journalist and the degree in
which they are specialized in political news coverage. Within the notion of socialization, it is plausible
that senior journalists have fully incorporated the working routines of the newsroom and are more
acquainted with professional norms of journalism (Cassidy, 2008). As a result, they might construct
political news differently compared to less experienced journalists only just entering the profession
of news worker. Journalists’ topical specialization can also influence news selection. Journalists with
the same specialization are more homogenous than generalist journalists and tend to apply similar
working routines to a larger extent (Peiser, 2000).
RQ: Do journalists’ personal characteristics and beliefs influence their selection of
politicians as a news source?
DATA AND METHOD
The factorial survey method
The factorial survey approach is a method intended to determine the underlying principles behind
human judgments of social objects. The main component are vignettes: short, carefully constructed
descriptions of a person, an object or a situation that are representing a systematic combination of
characteristics. Respondents typically judge multiple vignettes to measure their belief or intended
behavior concerning each presented vignette scenario. These vignettes consist of various dimensions
which in turn all have several levels. The total vignette population is obtained by a full factorial
9
combination of all levels (Atzmüller & Steiner, 2010). By letting each of the dimensions vary
independently with respect to its levels, factor orthogonality is obtained across dimensions. This
means that respondents only need to judge a randomly or systematically drawn sample of the
vignette universe to disentangle the unique effect of dimensions that are normally very highly
correlated. However, factor orthogonality also implies that respondents may be presented with
descriptions of situations that seldom occur in the real world. Therefore, it is important to exclude
implausible combinations and pay attention to the degree of realism of the vignettes (Wallander,
2009). In our case, no implausible combinations are present and we ask a control question to
measure the degree of realism of the vignette scenarios.
Operationalization of dimensions
Based upon our theoretical expectations, we include five dimensions in our vignettes, each with two
or four levels (see table 1).
Dimension Levels
Gender Male - Female
Party Green - Socialist - Liberal - Flemish Nationalists
Issue Defense - Fiscality - Judiciary - Immigration
Type of communication Initiate - React
Type of action Standpoint - Oral question - Written question - Bill proposal
Table 1: Operationalization of dimensions
We operationalize the gender dimension by including names of real male and female Dutch-speaking
members of Belgian federal parliament. This advances the degree of realism and thus increases
ecological validity. The choice for which MPs specifically to include1 was firstly based upon the
combination of gender and party: we selected one male and one female MP of each of the four
parties in the vignettes, resulting in eight MPs appearing each in one of the eight vignettes randomly
presented to respondents. Moreover, four of the selected MPs have a clear specialization on one of
the four issues in the vignettes whereas the other four are rather generalists2. To control for an
effect of using real MPs, we measured their perceived newsworthiness by asking respondents: “How
1 The MPs are: Wouter Devriendt and Meyrem Almaci (Greens), Renaat Landuyt and Caroline Gennez
(Socialists), Mathias De Clercq and Carina Van Cauter (Liberals), Theo Francken and Sarah Smeyers (Flemish Nationalists). 2 The determination of specialization was based upon interviews with federal MPs where they were asked in
which issues they are specialized, with the support of the European Research Council (Advanced Grant ‘INFOPOL’, N° 295735) and of the Research Fund of the University of Antwerp (Grant N° 26827). Moreover, we selected only those MPs with a clear distinctive specialization that political journalists are aware of according to our assessment. This resulted in the following specializations: Devriendt – defense, Almaci – fiscality, Landuyt – judiciary, Francken – migration & defense.
10
often to the following actors succeed in making it into the news?” The respondents each had to judge
eight politicians - randomly chosen from a group of 50 Belgian politicians amongst which also our
eight MPs - on a five-point Likert scale (1 = never, 2 = rarely, 3 = sometimes, 4 = often, 5 = always).
The mean scores range between 2,7 (Mathias De Clercq) and 3,9 (Theo Francken), so all of them are
well-known by political journalists and appear regularly – but not always – in news media. We also
include this measure as a control variable in our analyses.
Secondly, we include one left government party (Socialists), one right government party
(Liberals), one left opposition party (Greens) and one right opposition party (Flemish Nationalists).
This way, we can easily test hypothesis H1b while keeping the politicians’ ideology constant.
Furthermore, we selected consciously four issues: national defense (removal of nuclear bombs on
Belgian ground), fiscality (regulation of salaries and bonuses of bank managers), judiciary
(replacement of outdated prisons), and asylum and migration (residence permits for under aged
asylum seekers). None of these topics are clearly owned by one of the four parties, but four of the
MPs have a clear specialization concerning one of these issues. This way, we are able to focus on the
effect of MP specialization and rule out the influence of issue-ownership. Concerning the type of
communication, initiating is operationalized by MPs who “want to reopen the debate on”, whereas
MPs who react state that they “want to react to the recent news about”. Lastly, we manipulate
intended action. They could “advocate for” (personal standpoint), “ask an oral question during the
next plenary session” (oral question), “draw up a written question” (written question) or “submit a
law proposal” (bill proposal).
Two variables on the MP level were constructed afterwards. Electoral strenght of the party
consists of the amount of seats in Federal Parliament after the 2010 federal elections (N-VA: 27, sp.a:
13, Open VLD: 13, Groen: 5). Whether the MP communicates about his matching specialization was
defined by combining the MP who communicates in the vignette with the topic he communicates
about.
Next to the five manipulated dimensions, we also hold certain dimensions constant. First of all,
we do not manipulate the function of politicians, but consistently present MPs. Previous studies have
shown the strong effect of political position on news coverage (e.g. Cook, 1986; Midtbø, 2011;
Schoenbach, Ridder, & Lauf, 2001), so we need to hold it constant to test other possibly influential
features of politicians. Second, all vignette texts are presented as press releases coming from one
federal MP. Press releases are still a commonly used by MPs to solicit news coverage as they are easy
to set up and a quick manner to communicate actions and policy stances to journalists (Fogarty,
2008). Third, every press release is negatively formulated, urges for actions from government or a
cabinet member, and contains a quote from the MP. This way, the press releases are conceived more
realistic and have already a certain degree of newsworthiness.
11
Taking all manipulated and constant dimensions together leads to a vignette with five manipulated
dimensions, as the example below shows (a man of the Greens reacts on a defense issue and asks a
written question):
“The B61-nucleair bombs do not need to be modernized, but rather destroyed”,
responds Green Member of Parliament Wouter Devriendt on the recent news about the
modernization of the nuclear weapons stored in Kleine Brogel. “Nuclear weapons are
dangerous and useless. Moreover, the modernization, the storage, the maintenance and
the surveillance of the nuclear bombs are extremely expensive. The government needs to
undertake action to commence and finish a complete nuclear disarmament.” Devriendt
wants to gain clarity about the measures concerning nuclear weapons in Belgium by
asking a written question to the authorized cabinet member.
By multiplying all levels (2 x 4 x 4 x 2 x 4), we become a vignette universe of 256 vignettes. We draw a
half faction factorial sample which allows for statistically efficient estimations of all direct effects and
first and second order interactions, resulting in 128 vignettes that are presented to respondents.
Survey and respondents
A typical vignette study consists of two components: 1) a vignette experiment as the core element,
and 2) a traditional survey to measure additional respondent-specific characteristics (Atzmüller &
Steiner, 2010). Each respondent first got a set of eight vignettes randomly drawn from the sample of
128 vignettes. They judged the newsworthiness of the press release on a 7-point Likert scale (1 =
definitely not, 7 = definitely) based upon the question: “Would you make a news story based upon
this information?” With a second judgment, we check the newsworthiness of the MP in the press
release on the same 7-point scale: “If you would make a news story, would you mention [name MP]
in the news story?”
Afterwards, several follow-up questions were asked. Firstly, the respondents judged the
degree of realism of the vignettes on a 10-point Likert scale (1 = totally unrealistic, 10 = totally
realistic). Overall, the respondents assess the press releases as rather realistic (mean = 5,9; SD =
1,86). This measurement is also included as a control variable in the analyses. Secondly, we gauged
which issues they find salient, which parties they associate with issues, and how often certain
politicians succeed in becoming a news source. To end, we measured respondents’ socio-economic
background and political beliefs.
12
The survey was distributed as an online survey. Our target group consists of political
journalists, but it is not straightforward to define who those journalists exactly are. In a first step, we
consulted the ‘journalistendatabank’ (http://www.avbb.be), which gathers information on more than
5000 journalists in Belgium. We searched for Flemish speaking journalists specialized in politics which
resulted in a list of 167 Flemish political journalists. However, when looking more into detail, the list
was not exhaustive: journalists who haven’t indicated their language for example, were not included
in the list. Hence, the total group of Flemish political journalists is probably larger than 167. In a
second step, we checked the websites of news organizations as well as actual newspapers and news
broadcasts to find additional political journalists. We interpreted political journalist broadly by also
selecting those journalists who write sometimes about politics.
Eventually, 293 journalists were contacted in March and April 2014 by a first e-mail, two
reminder e-mails and phone calls. Of those, 167 journalists did not enter the survey (57%), 26
journalists indicated that they were currently not working as a journalist or that they never report on
politics (9%), 25 journalists entered the survey, but did not finish it (8%) and 75 journalists did fill in
the survey (26%). However, two journalists pointed out in the follow-up question that none of their
articles contains political actors, so we exclude them from analyses, leaving us with 73 respondents.
Two recent surveys with journalists in Belgium yield similar response rates: Raeymaeckers, Paulussen
and De Keyser (2012) convinced 31% of Belgian journalists to participate and Raeymaeckers et al.
(2013) got response of 33% of Flemish journalists. Our group of respondents (see table 2) resembles
to a very large extent the respondents of Raeymaeckers et al. (2013), except for our political
journalists being higher educated than Flemish journalists in general.
Variable Measurement N Mean SD Min Max
Sex 1 = male, 2 = female 73 1,32 0,46 1 2
Ideology 0 = totally left, 10 = totally right 60 4,15 1 0 7
Journalistic experience In years 68 17,50 11 1 43
Political specialization Amount of news stories with political
actors on 10 last news stories 59 6,51 3 1 10
Table 2: Descriptives of respondents
Analyses
Since each respondent rated eight vignettes, the observations in our dataset are not independent
from each other. We account for this clustering by employing multilevel regression models. We take
each judgment on a single vignette as one case, leading to a total of 584 cases on the lowest level of
vignettes, coming from 73 respondents on the highest level.
13
RESULTS
The dependent variable in our analyses is respondents’ judgment about the newsworthiness of the
press release coming from a politician, which is normally distributed as can be seen in figure 1a
(range = 1 – 7; mean = 3,9; SD = 1,71). We checked with a second rating question whether the
politician in the press release would indeed become a news source if the respondent would make a
news story. As figure 1b shows, this variable is positively skewed (range = 1 – 7; mean = 5,83; SD =
1,46). We can conclude that if journalists select a press release for coverage, they would also include
the politician who sends the press release as a news source. Consequently, it is plausible to use the
first, normally distributed rating as our dependent variable.
Figure 1a and 1b: Distribution of ratings of press releases (1a) and ratings of politicians (1b)
First of all, we test whether we can verify our theoretical hypotheses about politicians. Model one
shows the direct effects of characteristics and activities of politicians on selection by journalists. To
begin with, we test whether party affiliation influences politicians’ newsworthiness, and look at
parties’ electoral strength and government versus opposition parties. H1a gets confirmed: politicians
from parties with a larger faction in parliament get selected more often. Concerning H1b, there is a
clear positive effect of being a government MP, which approaches significance level (p = 0,07). Purely
statistically, we cannot conclude that journalists select MPs belonging to governments parties more
often than MPs from opposition parties, but there is a clear trend in that direction. With H2, we test
differences in the selection of male and female MPs, but as expected women do not become a news
source less often (p = 0.61). Our third hypothesis concerns specialization. We think that MPs who
communicate about their own issue specialization are considered as more newsworthy. This
050
10
015
0
Fre
qu
en
cy
0 2 4 6 8PressreleaseJudgment
050
10
015
020
025
0
Fre
qu
en
cy
0 2 4 6 8PoliticianJudgment
14
expectation is not confirmed however (p = 0.97)3. With H4, we want to gauge the type and timing of
politicians’ communication. We believe that politicians who try to ride the wave by responding to an
ongoing debate are more likely to become a news source than politicians who try to initiate a debate,
which indeed gets confirmed in the analysis. Our last hypothesis examines the influence of the type
of action. Consistent with our expectation, introducing a bill to influence the substantial agenda has a
significant positive effect on journalists’ selection decisions and this effect is bigger than actions with
a more symbolic meaning. Moreover, it appears that asking oral questions has the smallest effect on
getting selected, whereas stating a personal standpoint and asking a written question take the
middle position. To conclude, we point to the insignificant effect of the perceived newsworthiness of
the MPs (p = 0.51) which indicates that the effects above are not a consequences of the real MPs
chosen.
Secondly, we want to examine whether journalists judge newsworthiness of politicians as one
homogeneous group or whether their personal characteristics and beliefs influence to some extent
their selection decisions. With model 2 we check whether individual journalists make other
judgments in general whereas model 3 makes the explicit connection between journalists’ features
and politicians’ features. The models show that journalists do not differ among each other when it
comes to judging newsworthiness. They select the same politicians regardless whether they are male
or female (p = 0.74), more right-leaning (p = 0.69), more experienced as a journalist (p = 0.56) or
more specialized in political news (p = 0.11). The interactions between politicians and journalists do
not yield any significant effect either, indicating that journalists as one professional group apply the
same selection mechanisms.4 We also included journalists’ perception of the realism of the vignettes
as a control in both models and this does has a significant effect. When the respondents perceive the
vignettes as being more realistic, they rated its newsworthiness higher.
3 With a follow-up question, we measured which parties journalists link to certain issues. The results show that
they indeed connect some parties to certain issues in the vignettes. Consequently, we tested whether the non-significant effect of specialization could be explained by the perceptions of issue-ownership. This appears to be not the case, since the effect of issue-ownership on selection is insignificant (β = 0.20, SD = 0.14, p = 0.17). 4 Next to individual features of journalists, we also looked at the level of the news organization to examine
whether journalists working for television news select differently than newspaper journalists. Similar to the individual features, they don’t yield significant results (respectively β = -0.11, SD = 0.44, p = 0.80; β = -0.14, SD 0.42, p = 0.74) and thus cannot explain variance between journalists.
15
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
Level 1 (politician)
Size party 0.02* (0.01)
0.02 (0.01)
Government party (Ref. = opposition party) 0.30 (0.17)
0.22 (0.21)
Gender (Ref. = male) 0.07 (0.14)
-0.28 (0.43)
Specialization (Ref. = not specialization) 0.01 (0.18)
0.31 (0.44)
Type communication (Ref. = initiate) 0.21* (0.11)
0.22 (0.13)
Type action (Ref. = personal standpoint)
Oral question -0.31* (0.15)
-0.29 (0.19)
Written question -0.20 (0.15)
-0.16 (0.19)
Law proposal 0.39** (0.15)
0.45* (0.19)
Level 2 (journalist)
Gender
0.13 (0.40) -0.25 (0.62)
Ideology
-0.04 (0.11) -0.06 (0.12)
Journalistic experience
0.01 (0.02) 0.01 (0.02)
Political specialization
0.09 (0.05) 0.10 (0.06)
Interaction effects (level 1*level 2)
Gender*Gender
0.25 (0.31)
Party*Ideology
0.03 (0.05)
Specialization*Specialization
-0.07 (0.06)
Controls
Perceived newsworthiness (politician) -0.18 (0.28)
-0.07 (0.38)
Realism of vignettes (journalist)
0.20* (0.09) 0.20* (0.09)
Intercept 3.39*** 2.12 2.30
N (journalists) 73 54 54
N (vignettes) 584 432 432
Residual variance
Level journalists 1.07 1.04 1.04
Level politicians 1.29 1.40 1.36
Rho 0.41 0.35 0.37
Table 3: Multilevel linear regression (random effects) with news selection by journalists as dependent variable. Note: Standard errors in parentheses. * p ≤ 0.05, ** p ≤ 0.01, *** ≤ 0.001.
CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION
Politicians and journalists are the two main actors in constructing political news. Their relationship is
intertwined and symbiotic as both control key resources. Politicians are in control of exclusive
information and are the official sources who grant legitimacy to news stories. Journalists on the
other hand act as gatekeepers and define the extent to which politicians get visibility in news media
16
(Strömback & Nord, 2006). The connection between journalists and news sources is often described
as being a ‘tango’: “The relationship between sources and journalists resembles a dance, for sources
seek access to journalists, and journalists seek access to sources. Although it takes two to tango,
either sources or journalists can lead, but more often than not, sources do the leading” (Gans, 1979,
p. 239). This quote fits our findings: political news sources prevail journalists’ personal preferences in
the negotiation of newsworthiness.
We conducted a factorial survey with 73 Flemish political journalists to examine news
coverage of politicians. We are interested firstly in which politicians succeed to become news sources
and secondly in selection decisions by individual journalists as being the first gatekeepers. Over time,
routine practices have developed by which journalists all apply news values in a similar manner. We
tested which news values of politicians guide journalist in their source selection and if these working
mechanisms are also influenced by journalists’ personal characteristics and beliefs. We conclude that
journalists as a profession indeed follow certain news values typically for politicians and could not
find differences in judgments between individual journalists, which has implications for both
journalists and politicians.
First of all, our results support the notion of a similar socialization in the newsroom regardless
ones gender, ideological preference or experience. Political journalists are a homogenous group of
highly professionalized workers who are not influenced by their own ideas and preferences. Looking
back at the media gatekeeping model (Reese, 2007), it appears that routine practices exert more
influence on news construction than individual characteristics of journalists. The traditional starting
point of White’s study was the individual reporter who published stories based upon his “own set of
experiences, attitudes and expectations” (White, 1950, p. 386). Later on, scholars contradicted the
idea of highly subjective news workers by showing that news decisions are primarily based on the
professional norms of journalism and media routines (Cassidy, 2008). Our study adds to this
conception and to theories about media logic. The media logic implies that news values become
more determining in news reporting and journalists have increasingly common views about what is
inherently relevant and interesting for the public (Van Aelst et al., 2008).
Secondly, politicians themselves can enhance their newsworthiness by actively engaging in
their communication and actions. Next to their party attachment, which is a fixed characteristic, MPs
can steer their news coverage by paying attention to their timing of communication and their
political actions. Journalists select politicians who react on an ongoing debate rather than politicians
who try to put an issue on the agenda themselves. This relates to literature on the political and the
media agenda: which agenda determines the other one? Our results suggest that journalists prefer
information already on the media agenda instead of incorporating issues originated from the political
agenda. News media are not passive transmitters of the political agenda, but have their own
17
professional interests. They do not simply reflect political realities, but rather actively choose
mediatized issues and transform them into news stories that are relevant and culturally resonant
(Sheafer & Wolfsfeld, 2009).
Surprisingly, journalists do not judge politicians communicating about their own field of
expertise as being more newsworthy. Several explanations come to mind. First, the dimension of
issue specialization might not have been operationalized clearly enough. The vignettes scenarios did
not state explicitly when an MP was communicating about his expertise. Moreover, this implies that
journalists themselves do not recognize specialized MPs. With an ever faster news cycle, most
journalists are generalists themselves instead of specialized in politics. However, our results do not
indicate that journalists who indeed are political experts select sources differently than generalist
journalists. A second plausible reason is that journalists keep their public in mind and suppose that
readers and viewers do not have any knowledge about parliamentarians’ field of expertise. As a
consequence, politicians talking about their specialization are not perceived as more relevant the
audience. A third explanation originates from the real political world: specialist MPs might not exist
(anymore). MPs can focus somewhat more on a limited amount of issues, but not necessarily
become an expert in that field.
To end, we reflect on the use of experimental designs to study news selection. Most media
gatekeeping studies are based upon content analyses of the media product. We focused on the
selection phase where journalists choose which events and persons to report on. This way, we add to
previous research on news coverage of politicians by clarifying inconsistent results or validating
earlier findings. Concerning gender for example, it remains unclear whether female politicians in
present day politics still receive less coverage. Our findings support the idea that news coverage does
not depend on the gender of a politician but on a range of other elements. This might indicate that
gender differences might not occur when journalists select political news sources, but rather arise
during the editing phase. Additionally, we find support for earlier findings that the way politicians
communicate (Sellers & Schaffner, 2007) and the activities they undertake (e.g. Midtbø, 2011;
Tresch, 2009) can raise their newsworthiness.
18
REFERENCES
Aday, S., & Devitt, J. (2001). Style over substance: newspaper coverage of Elizabeth Dole’s
presidential bid. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 6(2), 52–73.
Van Aelst, P., Maddens, B., Noppe, J., & Fiers, S. (2008). Politicians in the news: media or party logic?
Media attention and electoral success in the Belgian election campaign of 2003. European
Journal of Communication, 23(2), 193–210.
Althaus, S. L. (2003). When news norms collide, follow the lead: New evidence for press
independence. Political Communication,, 20(4), 381–414.
Anderson, W. D., Box-Steffensmeier, J. M., & Sinclair-Chapman, V. (2003). The Keys to Legislative
Success in the U.S. House of Representatives. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 28(3), 357–386.
Atkeson, L. R., & Krebs, T. (2008). Press coverage of mayoral candidates: the role of gender in news
reporting and campaign issue speech. Political Research Quarterly, 62(2), 239–252.
Atzmüller, C., & Steiner, P. M. (2010). Experimental Vignette Studies in Survey Research.
Methodology: European Journal of Research Methods for the Behavioral and Social Sciences,
6(3), 128–138.
Bailer, S. (2011). People’s Voice or Information Pool? The Role of, and Reasons for, Parliamentary
Questions in the Swiss Parliament. The Journal of Legislative Studies, 17(3), 302–314.
doi:10.1080/13572334.2011.595123
Cassidy, W. P. (2008). Traditional in Different Degrees: The Professional Role Conceptions of Male
and Female Newspaper Journalists. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 16(2), 105–117.
doi:10.1080/15456870701840020
Cook, T. (1986). House Members as newsmakers: the effects of televising congress. Legislative
Studies Quarterly, 11(2), 203–226.
D’Alessio, D., & Allen, M. (2000). Media bias in presidential elections: a meta-analysis. Journal of
Communication, 50(4), 133–156.
Donsbach, W. (2004). Psychology of news decisions. Factors behind journalists’ professional
behavior. Journalism, 5(2), 131–157.
Fogarty, B. J. (2008). The strategy of the story: media monitoring legislative activity. Legislative
Studies Quarterly, 33(3), 445–469.
Fogarty, B. J. (2012). Local newspapers, House members, and source usage. The Social Science
Journal, 49(3), 275–283.
Galtung, J., & Ruge, M. (1965). The structure of foreign news: the presentation of the Congo, Cuba
and Cyprus crises in four Norwegian newspapers. Journal of International Peace Research,
2(1), 64–91.
19
Gans, H. J. (1979). Deciding what’s news: a study of CBS evening news, NBC nightly news, newsweek
and Time. New York: Pantheon Books.
Hanitzsch, T., & Hanusch, F. (2012). Does gender determine journalists’ professional views? A
reassessment based on cross-national evidence. European Journal of Communication, 27(3),
257–277.
Harcup, T., & O’Neill, D. (2001). What is news? Galtung and Ruge revisited. Journalism Studies, 2(2),
261–280.
Hayes, D. (2008). Party Reputations, Journalistic Expectations: How Issue Ownership Influences
Election News. Political Communication, 25(4), 377–400.
Heldman, C., Carroll, S., & Olson, S. (2005). “She brought only a skirt”: print media coverage of
Elizabeth Dole’s bid for the republican presidential nomination. Political Communication,
22(3), 315–335.
Hopmann, D. N., Van Aelst, P., & Legnante, G. (2011). Political balance in the news: a review of
concepts, operationalizations and key findings. Journalism, 13(2), 240–257.
Hopmann, D. N., Elmelund-Praestekaer, C., Albaek, E., Vliegenthart, R., & de Vreese, C. H. (2012).
Party media agenda-setting: how parties influence election news coverage. Party Politics,
18(2), 173–191.
Hudson, T. J. (1992). Consonance in Depiction of Violent Material in Television News. Journal of
Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 36, 411.
Kahn, K. F. (1994). The distorted mirror: press coverage of women candidates for statewide office.
The Journal of Politics, 56(1), 154–173.
Kamer van volksvertegenwoordigers. (2013). Belgische Kamer van volksvertegenwoordigers. Gewone
zitting 2012-2013: activiteitenverslag. (p. 93). Brussel: Kamer van volksvertegenwoordigers.
Kittilson, M. C., & Fridkin, K. (2008). Gender, candidate portrayals and election campaigns: a
comparative perspective. Politics & Gender, 4(3), 371–392.
Larson, S. G. (2001). American women and politics in the media: A review essay. Political Science and
Politics, 34(2), 227–230.
McManus, J. H. (1994). Market-driven journalism : let the citizen beware? Thousand Oaks Calif: Sage.
Meeks, L. (2013). He Wrote, She Wrote Journalist Gender, Political Office, and Campaign News.
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 90(1), 58–74.
Midtbø, T. (2011). Explaining media attention for Norwegian MPs: a new modelling approach.
Scandinavian Political Studies, 34(3), 226–249.
Niven, D. (2005). Gender bias? Media coverage of women and men in Congress. In S. Tolleson-
Rinehart & J. Josephson (Eds.), Gender and American politics. Women, men, and the political
process (Vol. 2, pp. 264–283). New York: Sharpe.
20
Patterson, T. E., & Donsbach, W. (1996). News decisions: journalists as partisan actors. Political
Communication, 13(4), 455–468.
Peiser, W. (2000). Setting the journalist agenda: Influences from journalists’ individual characteristics
and from media factors. Journalism & mass communication quarterly, 77(2), 243–257.
Petrocik, J. R. (1996). Issue Ownership in Presidential Elections, with a 1980 Case Study. American
Journal of Political Science, 40(3), 825–850.
Raeymaeckers, K., Heinderyckx, F., De Vuyst, S., Libert, M., De Maeyer, J., De Dobbelaer, R., Le Cam,
F., et al. (2013). De Belgische journalist in 2013: een zelfportret. (p. 58). Gent: Academia
Press.
Raeymaeckers, K., Paulussen, S., & De Keyser, J. (2012). A survey of professional journalists in
Flanders (Belgium). In D. H. Weaver & L. Willnat (Eds.), The global journalist in the 21st
century. New York, NY, USA: Routledge.
Reese, S. (2007). Journalism research and the hierarchy of influences model: a global perspective.
Brazilian Journalism Research, 3(2), 29–42.
Rodgers, S., & Thorson, E. (2003). A socialization perspective on male and female reporting. Journal
of Communication, 53(4), 658–675.
Ross, K. (2004). Women framed: the gendered turn in mediated politics. In K. Ross & C. Byerly (Eds.),
Women and media. International perspectives (pp. 60–80). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Schoenbach, K., Ridder, J. D., & Lauf, E. (2001). Politicians on TV news: getting attention in Dutch and
German election campaigns. European Journal of Political Research, 39(4), 519–531.
Sellers, P. J., & Schaffner, B. F. (2007). Winning coverage in the U.S. Senate. Political Communication,
24(4), 377–391.
Semetko, H., & Boomgaarden, H. (2007). Reporting Germany’s 2005 Bundestag election campaign:
was gender an issue? The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 12(4), 154–171.
Sheafer, T., & Wolfsfeld, G. (2009). Party systems and oppositional voices in the news media: A Study
of the Contest over Political Waves in the United States and Israel. The International Journal
of Press/politics, 14(2), 146–165.
Shoemaker, P., Eichholz, M., Kim, E., & Wrigley, B. (2001). Individual and routine forces in
gatekeeping. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 78(2), 233–246.
Shoemaker, P. J., & Vos, T. P. (2009). Media gatekeeping. An integrated approach to communication
theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 75–87). New York: Routledge.
Strömback, J., & Nord, L. W. (2006). Do politicians lead the tango? A study of the relationship
between Swedish journalists and their political sources in the context of election campaigns.
European Journal of Communication, 21(2), 147–164.
21
De Swert, K., & Hooghe, M. (2010). When do women get a voice? Explaining the presence of female
news sources in Belgian news broadcasts (2003-2005). European Journal of Communication,
25(1), 69–84.
Tresch, A. (2009). Politicians in the media: determinants of legislators’ prescence and prominence in
Swiss newspapers. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 14(1), 67–90.
Waismel-Manor, I., & Tsfati, Y. (2011). Why do better-looking Members of Congress receive more
television coverage? Political Communication, 28(4), 440–463.
Walgrave, S., & Van Aelst, P. (2006). The contingency of the mass media’s political agenda setting
power: toward a preliminary theory. Journal of Communication, 56(1), 88–109.
Wallander, L. (2009). 25 years of factorial surveys in sociology: A review. Social Science Research,
38(3), 505–520.
Weaver, D. H., & Wu, W. (1998). The global journalist: News people around the world. Hampton Press
Cresskill, NJ.
White, D. M. (1950). The gatekeeper: A case study in the selection of news. Journalism quarterly,
27(4), 383–390.
Wiberg, M. (1995). Parliamentary questioning: control by communication? Parliaments and majority
rule in Western Europe, 179–222.
De Winter, L. (1996). Comparing similar countries: Italy and Belgium. Res Publica, 48(2), 215–236.
Wolfsfeld, G., & Sheafer, T. (2006). Competing actors and the construction of political news: the
contest over waves in Israel. Political Communication, 23(3), 333–354.
Van Zoonen, L. (1998). One of the girls? The changing gender of journalism. In C. Carter, G. Branston,
& S. Allan (Eds.), News, gender and power (pp. 33–46). London: Routledge.