2005 Annual Report - Newspaper Content Analysis

The study also isolated the two big stories of the year, the election and the war, for further study.

What did we find?

The U.S. Election

U.S. election stories accounted for 9% of all front-page stories, and 13% among the biggest papers.

• Election stories tended to be neutral in tone over all, that is, they were neither decidedly positive nor negative about the candidate or candidates being discussed. In all, nearly half of all election stories studied, 48%, were neutral.

• When there was clear tone to the story, however, the findings also confound the idea that the press is fairly cynical about politics. Indeed, election stories were almost twice as likely to be positive as negative - 19% positive, 11% negative. The overall number of election stories was too small to be assess whether the tone of Kerry coverage in print alone was more or less negative or positive than the tone of Bush coverage.
• Perhaps not surprisingly, election stories were heavily framed around winners and losers, with 35%, and around conflict, 13%. Just 1% mostly considered points of consensus.
• The sourcing in election stories was much more transparent than coverage generally. Fully 64% of stories contained four or more fully identified sources, compared to 48% of the coverage over all and 60% of Iraq coverage. There was little anonymous sourcing (9%) in campaign reporting.
• As with coverage overall, the vast majority of election stories, 83%, offered a mix of opinions.
• Campaign stories were more likely than coverage overall to contain multiple stakeholders. Fully 52% offered four or more stakeholder positions, compared to 38% of all newspaper stories.

Journalists' views were more likely to be included; 18% of political coverage contained at least one opinionated assertion from the journalist, versus 15% of coverage over all and 6% of front-page coverage.

Big Stories: International War on Terrorism

The second big story of the year was the war on terrorism in Iraq (and to a much lesser degree in Afghanistan), which accounted for 17% of front-page stories, 7% of all news stories and 1% of all section-front columns.

Iraq coverage was a source of contention all year. Some conservatives, including some in the Bush administration, complained that press coverage was too negative. Was there evidence to confirm that charge?

The answer is more complicated than one might expect. Stories about the Iraq war were more negative (31%) than positive (23%). Yet they were also just as likely to be neutral in tone (33%). And another 12% were multi-subject stories for which tone did not apply. To derive tone, we first identified whether the story was about a particular newsmaker or issue. If so, each quote, innuendo, and assertion was counted as positive, negative or neutral for the story's main newsmaker, or in the case of an issue story, about moving toward resolution of the central issue.

For stories to be considered positive or negative, one attitude must dominate by at least 2 to 1. In other words, if a story contains four positive statements, it must then contain at least eight negative statements to be considered negative in tone, and no more than two negative statements to be considered positive in tone. In all other cases, the story would be labeled neutral.³

Thus the notion that coverage of the war, in print at least, was decidedly negative, accentuated the bad news and ignored the good, is not clearly borne out in the numbers. The criticism, the data finds, is unsubstantiated. What is also interesting is that in newspapers at least, stories that did carry a negative tone were three times as likely to be issue stories rather than stories about a person. In other words, the negative stories were not pointed plainly at Bush or the administration.

Beyond tone, what do the numbers tell us about coverage of the war in Iraq?

• Coverage was fairly well sourced; 60% of stories had four or more fully identified sources, compared to 48% over all.

• Coverage of the war was more likely than other coverage to contain some anonymous sourcing - 27% versus 7%.
• Two-thirds, 68%, contained a mix of opinions, compared with 40% over all. Just 11% of war coverage was straight news.
• Coverage of the war stood out in particular for including multiple stakeholders. Fully 70% of war stories included at least 4 stakeholders, compared with 39% over all.
• Opinion from journalists was largely absent - just 6% of all war coverage.
• Most of the time the war and the campaign were not explicitly linked. Only 12% of the stories mentioned the campaign in some way.