Media Thrust in the German Bundestag Election, 1994: News Values and Professional Norms in Political Communication

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Abstract
This article analyzes how the news media shape the political process particu larly in times of elections The so called "Super Wahljahr" in Germany with a total of 20 elections on all legislative levels culminating in the campaign for the federal parliament in October 1994 is taken as a case in point The data are supplied by the project "Medien Tenor " a continuous quantitative content analysis of some 15 German print and television news media of national signifi cance The findings can be summarized as follows 1 Most of the German news media covered the campaign in a way that indicates an advocacy model that is endorsing one of the candidates more or less strongly 2 Similar to findings in the United States news about the candidates was rather bad news and focused on personal images rather than issue positions 3 Particularly for the printed press I found a strong correlation between a news medium's stand point on candidates and parties as expressed in the editorials and its selection of statements in the news "synchronization".

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