Page 276 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Wolfgang Donsbach and Thomas Patterson

whicharemorelikelytobeliberalthanconservative,colortheirreporting
(Schulman 1982).
Through our comparative design, we sought to assess the level of
partisanship in Western news systems and how it varied across types
of news organizations. We used a standard measure – a seven-point
Left-Right scale – to assess journalists’ political leanings. We found, as
Schulman (1982) suggested, that journalists identify more with the Left
than with the Right, although not to the same extent in all countries.
Italian journalists with a mean score of 3.01 were the most liberal group.
British and Swedish journalists with average scores of 3.46 and 3.45
respectively were the least liberal.
One way that journalists could promote their partisan values is to
seek a position with a news organization that subscribes to the same
values. However, the opportunities for such employment vary substan-
tially (Patterson and Donsbach 1993; Curtice 1997; Donsbach 1999a).
The United States provides few opportunities in any area. The British
national newspaper system provides numerous opportunities for right-
of-centerjournalistsbutrelativelyfewforthoseontheLeft.TheGuardian
and the Mirror are among the few national newspapers on the political
left, while the Daily Telegraph, The Times, Daily Mail, Sun, Express,or
Star are among the many on the Right. (After our study was completed,
some of these papers changed their editorial stance and supported Tony
Blair’s New Labour Party in the 1997 and 2001 British general elections.)
In contrast to Great Britain, Il Giornale is one of the few right-of-center
national papers in Italy; most of the other national dailies have a lib-
eral bias. Germany and Sweden are more evenly balanced in the Left-
Right distribution of their national newspapers; in both countries, there
are several major news organizations on each side of the political spec-
trum. In general, broadcast organizations and local newspapers provide
less opportunity for partisan journalism, although some opportunity
does exist.
These differences in partisan opportunities were associated with jour-
nalists’ organizational affiliations. As Table 11.1 indicates, there was vir-
tually no correlation between U.S. journalists’ political beliefs and their
perception (measured on seven-point Left-Right scales) of the edito-
rial position of the news organization for which they worked. In the
European news systems, there was a closer connection between jour-
nalists’ partisanship and that of their own news organization. The cor-
relation (Pearson’s r) was particularly strong among Italian (.47) and

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