News Media Logic on the Move?

Abstract

In recent years communication scholars have repeatedly pointed out that commercial logic represents an integral element of (news) media logic, referring to specific news content characteristics such as conflict, personalization, negativity or scandal reporting that are assumed to be increasingly deployed by journalists to gain public attention. In order to empirically prove the assumption that commercial news media logic is on the rise, differences and commonalities in media reality construction are examined in Germany’s most influential news media across all regular news beats, analysing a total of 2973 news items from 1984/1989 and 2014. The sample includes the leading national quality daily (Süddeutsche Zeitung), the leading tabloid (Bild-Zeitung), and the major television newscast (Tagesschau). The findings suggest that, compared to the past, German news media reality is constructed differently in 2014, using—as predicted—a higher share of commercial logic characteristics. Surprisingly enough, these changes not only affect hard news in particular but especially address Germany’s paper of record, the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

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