Changing Political News? Long-Term Trends in American, British, French, Italian, German and Swiss Press Reporting

Abstract

This study intends to examine the relevance of Hallin and Mancini’s characterizations of media systems for explaining news output produced by print media embedded in these systems. We employ a longitudinal design comparing print outlets from six Western systems (USA, GBR, GER, SUI, FRA, ITA) in 1960/61 and 2006/07. While we find clear convergence in the preference for opinionated stories in covering politics, the use of objectivity-related and negativity-related reporting features continues to differentiate journalism models. Although institutional aspects of media systems cannot be expected to be directly reflected in content, we are able to confirm several expectations by Hallin and Mancini, including their suspicion that France and Great Britain are borderline cases of their respective models. We conclude that similar technological and economic changes around the world as well as growing transnational exchanges between the national models have not led to an across the board, wholesale homogenization of news practices.