On and Off the Supreme Court Beat : A Content Analysis of Newspaper Coverage of the Supreme Court from 1997-2004
Lacking both an electoral connection and a means of enforcing its rulings, public esteem is arguably more important to the Court's political health than it is to the democratically accountable branches. Given the importance of public support to the Supreme Court's political health, and given the importance of the news media in providing information about the Court, what is needed is an analysis of news coverage designed to produce data with relevance for public opinion. I use the literatures of media coverage and the Court and public support and the Court to derive four coding dimensions for newspaper coverage: whether the tone of coverage is positive or negative, if the Court is described in political or apolitical terms, if news coverage focuses on the political implications of Court actions, and if the Court is covered as an institution or as a collection of individuals. I expect to find that coverage of the Supreme Court is apolitical, positive, and portrays the Supreme Court as an institution rather than a collection of individuals. I also expect to find significant differences in beat and non-beat reporting in two dimensions: I expect non-beat reporting to be more critical than beat reporting and I expect non-beat reporting to contain more coverage of the political implications of the Court's work than non-beat reporting. I find that the Court is indeed covered as an apolitical institution, without differences between reporter types, focus is on the institution rather than individuals, and non-elite reporters focus more on the implications of what the Supreme Court does. I also find that beat coverage is negative, and significantly more negative than non-beat coverage. These findings are robust to stratifications by both type and topic of coverage
Year of publication: |
2010
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Authors: | LaRowe, Nicholas |
Publisher: |
[2010]: [S.l.] : SSRN |
Subject: | Verfassungsgericht | Constitutional court | Rechtsprechung | Court decisions |
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