The Evolution of Objective and Interpretative Journalism in the Western Press

Abstract

A content analysis of 2,422 political news stories from national and regional newspapers examines the different ways in which the hard-news paradigm has been adopted in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, France, and Italy between the 1960s and 2000s. The study traces how hard news practices diffused differently across borders, and how they have been combined with elements of interpretation and opinion over time. This process has led to the formation of three distinct news cultures. Conclusions are drawn for a broader understanding of the evolution of news journalism and the appropriate classification of Western media systems.

Keywords

political news international journalism comparative media systems research professionalism objectivity interpretative journalism quantitative content analysis

In a rare case of comparative journalism research, the authors of The Diffusion of the News Paradigm, 1850-2000¹ argued that while different approaches to news-making emerged in the history of Western journalism, the first fully developed model was that of the “new American journalism.”² It put the pursuit of objectivity at its center. The authors showed how at the beginning of the twentieth century the ideal of a facts-oriented, evidence-based reporting style spread from the United States to the European continent. However, the process required two conditions to be fulfilled: a substantial market for newspapers and a democratic political system. Even in European countries where these conditions were met, the new journalistic style was not simply passively absorbed, but was reshaped and adjusted according to local customs and deep-rooted traditions. Where both pre-conditions were not met, as in the southern European systems, the diffusion process was delayed and in some cases is not complete to this date. It could be said that each press system has embarked on its own path of development, and national conditions posed either favorable or unfavorable opportunity structures for implementing the hard-news paradigm of objective journalism.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the earlier development of the hard-news paradigm has led to a more widespread use of objective reporting elements in the United States than the European press. Given the importance of contextual conditions, the paradigm should not have been adopted equally fast and comprehensively in all European press systems. Therefore, the study considers the relevant factors for this diffusion process from a comparative cross-national perspective. A second purpose of this study is to examine how the objectivity paradigm has changed within Western press systems. Consequently, the study also adopts a cross-temporal perspective and considers those elements that have led to an expansion of the news paradigm since the 1960s. Based on a systematic, hypotheses-led content analysis of newspapers from six countries across five decades, we conclude with a discussion of what the changes toward a more interpretative, opinionated journalism mean for specifying different types of Western news cultures. We conclude that the content-based concept of news cultures should be incorporated in institutional frameworks of media systems to gain a more comprehensive understanding of cross-national differences in journalism.

The Hard-News Paradigm in a Cross-National Perspective

We borrow the notion of news paradigm from Høyer.³ Whereas he uses it to describe the generalized concept of news as such, we apply it here to the more particular genre of “hard” news. “Paradigm” refers to a shared mind-set among members of a community about the nature of a core matter, its basic properties, and the shared preconceptions and practices guiding the collection of evidence related to this core matter.⁴ A shared mind-set in the journalism profession about the core meaning of hard news first emerged in the United States. Its basic properties have been aptly described in Mindich’s study, “Just the facts—How objectivity came to define American journalism.”⁵ This work and other relevant contributions⁶ lead us to the following definition:

The properties and practices of the hard-news paradigm include inverted pyramid writing, balanced reporting, emphasis on verifiable facts and attributed sources, a detached point of view, and the separation of the news and editorial functions of the news organization.

The many institutional and cultural conditions that led to an earlier emergence of the hard-news paradigm in the United States than in Europe include (a) the more limited partisan choices of the U.S. two-party system and the diminishing partisanship following the Progressive movement, (b) an early understanding that professionalization is tied to rationality and procedural fairness, (c) an early belief in scientific ideals and empiricism, (d) an aspiration among U.S. journalists to protect their collective integrity from the public relations industry, (e) a desire to distinguish themselves also from publishers and their favored parties, and (f) a self-perception that journalism is related to fact-digging reportorial work and not, as in some European countries, to the circles of “high literary creators and cosmopolitan political thinkers.”⁷

Chalaby draws many parallels between the development in the United States and Great Britain,⁸ but this view is contested. Schudson argues that the British case is “a kind of halfway house between American professionalism and continental traditions of party-governed journalism with high literary aspirations.”⁹ Although the British press has always subscribed to facticity and fairness, it never fully embraced the U.S. ideal of opinion-less objectivity. Many British papers never saw a contradiction between pursuing accurate facts and using them for campaigning journalism; other components of the hard-news paradigm were only observed to the degree necessary to retain credibility and success in the market and to keep the state from regulating their business.¹⁰ While American journalists tend to see non-partisanship as the highest professional value, the British prefer media sovereignty, and both sides continue to quarrel about how much advocacy journalism is acceptable.¹¹ The hard-news paradigm has been fully embraced at Reuters and the BBC, but only partly by the press. This lets us characterize Britain as a mixed type combining Anglo-American and European traditions.

Advocacy and partisanship have long been considered key components of news writing in the continental European systems. Nevertheless, it is well established that many of these systems “progressively imported and adapted the methods of Anglo-American journalism”¹² through training programs and textbooks, as well as through international news agencies and role-model news leaders like the New York Times or Time magazine. The Americanization of European newsrooms since 1945 has been facilitated and reinforced by simultaneous processes of democratization, commercialization, and technological development. However, there are structural and cultural conditions that have to be taken into account when investigating different adaptation and transformation strategies with regard to the objectivity-based hard-news paradigm. Depending on the different conditions, the literature basically distinguishes two models of journalism in Europe: the Polarized Pluralist model of the southern press systems and the Corporatist model of the northern press systems.¹³

The Polarized Pluralist model developed in the Mediterranean media systems of southern Europe where newspapers’ reliance on state subsidies is traditionally high and ties to political parties close. These characteristics—combined with a literary writing style that favors commentary and intellectual essays over shoe-leather reporting—are less than ideal pre-conditions for adopting core components of the hard-news paradigm. On the other hand, it is more likely for southern European papers to prominently feature commentary in their pages than it is for U.S. newspapers. Of the two most studied polarized systems, Italy and France, the research literature indicates that the Italian press is even further removed from the hard-news paradigm than the French;¹⁴ French media show lower levels of political instrumentalization and higher levels of rational-legal authority, making their approach to news more rational than in Italy.¹⁵

The Corporatist model of journalism as practiced in northern European media systems is known for combining a diminishing tradition of press partisanship and a legacy of commentary-oriented journalism with a growing emphasis on neutral professionalism and information-oriented journalism.¹⁶ Typical representatives of corporatism are Switzerland and Germany. They occupy an intermediate position between the Anglo-American and Polarized Pluralist models. Unlike Italian journalists who were rather unwilling to adopt the Anglo-American news style,¹⁷ German journalists were more receptive to the lessons of the American and British press coaches during re-education.¹⁸ Nonetheless, it has remained an open question to what degree the diffusion of the hard-news paradigm has led to a convergence of Western journalism, and to what degree tradition-bound alterations and extensions even sharpened the contours of the different journalism models.

The Hard-News Paradigm in a Cross-Temporal Perspective

The hard-news paradigm came under attack in the 1960s and 1970s for favoring official elite sources and catering to established powers. Fact-centered and detached reporting seemed too limited an approach for exposing larger political dilemmas like McCarthyism or White House lies about Vietnam and Watergate. It led to calls to “blend” the hard-news paradigm with analytic and interpretative elements.¹⁹ This new “blended” approach retains from the hard-news paradigm a distance from political commitment but complements it with “reflexive knowledge” and “critical expertise” of the journalist.²⁰ This version of an expanded news paradigm would lead us to expect a more frequent mixture of news and analysis on the front page. There was also a second version of an expanded news paradigm discussed in the 1970s. This second scenario led observers to believe that a more interpretative and critical press “would eventually ally itself with a political faction and so become partisan.”²¹ The fear that a more interpretative style would ultimately lead to greater partisanship was referred to as “Europeanization” of U.S. journalism.²² In retrospect, this prediction was not entirely absurd. Today, Hallin sees strong evidence for it in “the re-emergence of partisan media in the United States,” above all, in cable news, talk radio, and the blogosphere.²³

In Europe, this expansion of the news paradigm did not go unnoticed, and the historical conditions for picking up these trends were favorable. In fact, the rise from a more descriptive to a more interpretative journalism is one of the most discussed long-term trends in the European and U.S. scholarly literature.²⁴ However, in the absence of any large-scale content analysis conducted across systems and time, our knowledge about the dissemination and transformation of the news paradigm is still fragmented and does not allow for conclusive assessments. In particular, it is unclear whether any of these overtime developments have led to a harmonization of formerly divergent press styles.

Hypotheses

Our research design assumes that two explanatory conditions are responsible for characteristic differences in political news coverage. These are, on the one hand, the historical-institutional “contexts” of the press systems (cross-national perspective) and, on the other, the development over “time” and the related diffusion and adaptation processes (cross-temporal perspective). Consequently, we will organize the formulation of our hypotheses according to these two factors. Our analysis will investigate how context and time influence in symptomatic ways how the hard-news paradigm has been implemented, modified, and expanded.

The hard-news paradigm as it has evolved in its original form in the United States is defined by a set of operational practices that also meets important strategic needs of the profession:²⁵ they are easy to implement under time pressure, lend credibility to the news product and legitimacy to the profession as a whole, and they help protect members of the profession from charges of media bias. Hence, journalists have a vested interest in ensuring that the components of the hard-news paradigm are easily visible and identifiable in the news. It is also important to recognize that the paradigm’s strategic implications added to its appeal in other nations. To examine the extent to which the implementation of the paradigm differed in Western systems due to divergent opportunity structures, we will first investigate those components of the paradigm that convey facticity and balance: the use of hard-facts-first story structures, the use of direct and indirect quotes of those involved in an event, the use of detached expert sources, the balanced use of pros and cons, and the formal separation of facts and opinion.

Cross-national H1a: We expect the use of practices demonstrating adherence to the ideals of facticity and balance to be reflected most strongly in newspapers from the United States (followed by Britain and then Corporatist systems) and the least in newspapers from Polarized Mediterranean press systems (with Italy ranking behind France).

Cross-temporal H1b: Due to trans-border diffusion (assisted by democratization, commercialization, and professionalization), the use of these practices has grown throughout the Western press system over time.

Another component of the hard-news paradigm—an emphasis on verifiable facts and attributed sources—refers to the authenticity and transparency of news reporting. It dovetails with the ideal of a detached, evidence-based reporter. Because interviews with eyewitnesses play such a prominent role, we will measure authenticity and transparency by the amount of direct quotations and named sources.²⁶ In accordance with the rationale of H1, we expect the following:

Cross-national H2a: The use of direct quotations and attributed sources is highest in stories from U.S. newspapers and lowest in newspapers from Polarized Mediterranean press systems (traceable to lower levels of journalistic professionalization and rational-legal authority in those systems).

Cross-temporal H2b: Due to diffusion (and further assisted by rising training levels and a growing recognition of transparency to increase credibility), the use of these practices has grown throughout Western press systems over time.

The third hypothesis addresses the expansion of the news paradigm to incorporate elements of analysis and opinion. Because of the different journalistic traditions outlined earlier we expect the following:

Cross-national H3a: The proportion of “opinionated” stories is highest in newspapers from Polarized Mediterranean press systems and lowest in the U.S. newspapers; British papers and those from Corporatist systems take middle positions. Conversely, we expect the proportion of information-centered “news” stories to be highest in U.S. newspapers and lowest in papers from Polarized Mediterranean systems.

Cross-temporal H3b: Due to diffusion of the new ideal of “critical scrutiny,”²⁷ we expect “analysis” stories have become more widely used throughout Western newspapers over time. Furthermore, due to a diffusion of “European advocacy,”²⁸ the use of “opinionated stories” has risen significantly in U.S. newspapers until the present.

The transition of the hard-news paradigm lets us further assume that even if we focus only on that subset of stories classified as “news” (thereby excluding “analysis-centered” and “opinionated” stories), a shift has taken place toward more interpretative elements. This may include growing efforts by news reporters to address the “why” question and to place political events in a broader “context.”

H4: Over the course of time, the understanding of “news items” has changed throughout the Western press system to also include elements of analysis and contextualization.

Finally, we pose a research question with regard to a potential shift toward more interpretative content. Such a trend seems justifiable if it provides deeper meaning and explanation of political substance and issues (“policy”),²⁹ but it seems more disputable if it focuses merely on politicians’ strategies and tactical maneuvers (“process”).³⁰

RQ: Do interpretative stories relate more to aspects of “policy” or “process” in the various press systems?

Method

We conducted a quantitative content analysis of twelve news outlets from six press systems (see Table 1). The rationale was to include all those press systems that feature prominently in the literature on the diffusion of the news paradigm. We will refrain from squeezing the American and British press into one shared model and consider them separately. The German and Swiss press systems are good examples of what Hallin and Mancini have termed the Corporatist Model, at least the liberal variant of it, and France and Italy are prototypical representatives of the Polarized Mediterranean Model.³¹ Further specifications and restrictions will be considered where relevant. We begin our examination in the early 1960s, an era of high professionalism in U.S. journalism and intense diffusion of U.S. principles through Western press systems.³²

Table 1.

Sample of News Outlets.

			No. of articles		Article length^a
Models	Countries	News outlets	1960s	2000s	1960s	2000s
Anglo-American	USA	New York Times	130	88	679	1,123
		St. Louis Post-Dispatch	101	86	576	484
	GBR	The Times	124	64	675	586
		Birmingham Mail	79	44	120	268
Corporatist Germanic	GER	Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung	120	186	269	400
	SWI	Rheinische Post Neue Zürcher Zeitung	14159	14395	160167	189550
		Berner Zeitung	49	101	260	236
Polarized Mediterranean	FRA	Le Monde	74	124	577	643
Polarized Mediterranean		Ouest France	88	72	447	431
	ITA	Corriere della Sera	59	196	870	546
		Resto del Carlino	57	142	876	435

Note. Sample N = 2,422 articles. USA = The United States; GBR = Great Britain; GER = Germany; SWI = Switzerland; FRA = France; ITA = Italy.

Median words per article.

We sampled political news stories from two news outlets—a national and regional newspaper—per country in the years 1960/1961 and 2006/2007. In the United States, we selected the New York Times (a national newspaper of record) and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (a large independent regional newspaper founded by Joseph Pulitzer). We decided in favor of regional and against tabloid newspapers because with the exception of Great Britain all other press markets have historically been shaped more by regional than tabloid newspapers. In Britain, we selected the Birmingham Mail, which used to be the largest regional tabloid paper until its decline began in the 1990s, mirroring the general descent of the British regional press.

We categorized as “political” all news stories that discussed the actions of at least one regional, national, or international political actor or political institution. In every second month of the two periods under study (1960/1961 and 2006/2007), one random issue of each news outlet was examined. In line with common practice in cross-temporally and cross-spatially comparative news research,³³ we treated the front page as the main locus for observing prevalent practices of national news culture. Hence, in the selected issues, all political articles starting on the front page (including those continued on inside pages), plus all those stories whose headlines are listed on the front page (but actually published on inside pages) were included in the analysis.³⁴ The goal was to identify those articles that are given the greatest prominence and have maximum potential to reach a large audience. This procedure yielded a total of 2,422 news items (see Table 1), which form the universe of our analysis.

Bilingual coders were trained intensively and supervised closely throughout the content analysis. We made every effort to observe the principles for conducting cross-national content analyses as laid out by Rössler.³⁵ Training included detailed discussions of individual articles, cultural references, key concepts, and operationalizations. Successive intercoder reliability tests were run for all language groups, based on the coding of at least thirty articles. We used Cohen’s kappa as a rather conservative measure that gives credit only to agreement beyond chance. The average (Cohen’s kappa) coefficients were calculated separately for all language groups (English, French, German, Italian) and separately for format-based story elements (e.g., placement, story genre) and content-based elements (e.g., style elements, frames). Landis and Koch characterize values between .61 and .80 as substantial and between .81 and 1.0 as almost perfect agreement.³⁶ For all format-based variables, the average level of agreement was in the “almost perfect” range (.83-.91) and for the content-based variables in the “substantial” range (.62-.70) in the four language groups. These values are in line with kappa-tests reported in other cross-nationally comparative content analyses.³⁷

Results

For all subsequent analyses, we combine both newspapers per press system to one aggregate indicator of national reporting style. We have a theoretical and empirical reason for this. Theoretically, we follow neo-institutionalist arguments that treat individual news outlets as components of one collective transorganizational field that within each society follow similar norms and practices due to historically developed professional consensuses, intermedia co-orientation, embedding in the same political and economic system, and aligning products to the same national audience.³⁸ Empirically, a preliminary test (two-factorial analysis of variance) showed that for the following analyses, the effect sizes (partial eta squares) are greater between national press systems than newspaper types.³⁹

H1: Facticity and Balance

The coding categories for examining H1 draw on Tuchman’s research on the strategic routines used by journalists when deciding how to write hard-news stories.⁴⁰ Five story attributes were coded as dichotomous variables: a “hard-facts-first structure” (instead of a literary or narrative story intro), the use of “direct and indirect speech” (to let sources drive the story and not reporters’ preconceived ideas), the use of “experts” (to support evidence in an authoritative and detached way), the presentation of “pros and cons” (to give a balanced account of both sides), and the formal “separation of facts and opinion” (to help readers recognize news and commentary by using different presentational styles or other differentiating markers). Similar to Tuchman, we combine the indicators to a composite index that ranges from 0 to 1 (based on a standardized formula).⁴¹

As can be seen from the findings in Table 2, H1a was clearly supported. Papers from the United States make the greatest use of practices demonstrating adherence to the ideal of facticity, followed by those from Britain and the Corporatist press systems. On the other hand, papers from the Polarized Pluralist systems use them considerably less—least often in Italy. Instead of fact-heavy introductions, stories in France and Italy use literary or narrative leads more often. Italian news coverage appears as the least balanced and the least inclined to separate news and opinion. H1b predicted an overtime increase in the use of facticity-related news practices but was only partly supported: the facticity indices rise for four of the six press systems—the United States, Germany, Switzerland, and France—between 1960/1961 and 2006/2007, but they decrease slightly for British and Italian papers (see Table 2). This decrease is mainly due to British and Italian papers having drastically reduced their use of hard-facts-first story structures and having softened the boundaries between news items and opinion items.

Table 2.

Reporting Conventions in Pursuit of Facticity and Balance (means of dichotomous variables).

Inclusion of:	Periods	USA	GBR	GER	SWI	FRA	ITA
A hard-facts-first structure	1960/19612006/2007	.87.78	.90.76	.86.79	.91.86	.69.71	.72.57
Direct and indirect speech	1960/19612006/2007	.91.98	.81.88	.68.77	.73.87	.68.89	.89.85
Expert sources	1960/19612006/2007	.17.59	.15.08	.27.33	.36.48	.06.19	.01.04
Pros and cons	1960/19612006/2007	.53.86	.45.57	.40.80	.53.70	.47.46	.29.33
Separation of facts and opinion	1960/19612006/2007	.94.82	.96.83	.95.97	.86.92	.86.83	.66.62
Index	1960/19612006/2007	.69^a .81^a	.66^ab .64^c	.65^b .73^b	.69^ab .75^ab	.55^c .62^c	.52^c .50^d
Change in Index		+.12***	−.02	+.08***	+.06	+.07**	−.01
Total N = 2,226 articles	1960/19612006/2007	230172	198106	220309	75138	155188	113322

Note. The mean scores of the standardized index range from 0 to 1. Means with different superscript letters are significantly different; means with the same superscript are not statistically different (post hoc LSD test [1960/1961 for equal group variances] and post hoc Dunnett’s T3 test [2006/2007 for unequal group variances] at p < .05 level). Totals in row “Change in Index” can be different from the means of the Index due to rounding. Statistically significant differences between the 1960s and 2000s: if one of the five dichotomous sub-variables was missing in an article, the article in question was excluded from the Index (196 articles). USA = The United States; GBR = Great Britain; GER = Germany; SWI = Switzerland; FRA = France; ITA = Italy.

p < .05. **p < .01. *** p < .001.

Interestingly, these long-term trends have not led to a convergence of facticity-related reporting conventions. To test this, we compared whether the summary indices reported in Table 2 differed more strongly in the 1960s or in the 2000s across the six systems. This can be demonstrated statistically by univariate analyses of variance which reveals that the differences grew over time, indicating greater cross-national variation (and thus the exact opposite of convergence).⁴² This means that despite growing trans-border diffusion and interconnectivity, newspapers in the six systems have not become more similar in their use of facticity-related news practices.

The overall picture confirms earlier survey results by Donsbach and Klett who found U.S. journalists to be the most and Italian journalists to be the least committed to objective news.⁴³ Our results show, however, a questionable shift under the surface at the U.S. papers: they demonstrate their objectivity increasingly through an excessive use of pundits (experts) and not through a hard-facts-first orientation or the separation of news and views. Findings in Table 2 also provide support to Mancini’s characterization of the British press as being in important ways increasingly more European than American.⁴⁴

H2: Transparency and Authenticity

This brings us to reporting conventions in pursuit of transparency and authenticity. We operationalized transparency as the amount of direct quotations and authenticity as the amount of named or otherwise specified sources in an article (reported in percentages; see Table 3). Table 3 shows that in the 1960s, as expected, newspapers in the United States used direct quotes and specified sources more frequently than newspapers from the other systems. However, this is no longer true in the 2000s. Moreover, it is not newspapers of the Polarized Pluralist systems that use direct quotes the least but, surprisingly, papers of the Corporatist systems. Both findings contradict our expectations and lead us to dismiss H2a.

Table 3.

Reporting Conventions in Pursuit of Authenticity and Transparency (in percent).

Periods		USA	GBR	GER	SWI	FRA	ITA
Total length of quotations in relation to total length of article	1960/19612006/2007	16^a 16^b	14^abc 21^ab	5^d 8^c	8^cd 6^c	9^bc 18^b	15^ab 24^a
Change		0	+7**	+3***	−2	+8***	+9***
Total N = 2,422 articles	1960/19612006/2007	231174	203108	261329	108196	162196	116338

Proportion of specified sources out of all sources in article	1960/19612006/2007	89^a 83^bc	82^ab 78^bc	82^ab 85^ab	75^b 75^c	72^b 83^abc	82^ab 89^a
Change		−6**	−4	+3	+1	+11**	+8**
Total N = 2,132 articles	1960/19612006/2007	228172	172103	201279	85164	139186	104299

Note. Means with different superscript letters are significantly different; means with the same superscript are not statistically different (post hoc Dunnett’s T3 test at p < .05 level). Totals in row “Change” can be different from the country indices due to rounding. Statistically significant differences between the 1960s and 2000s. USA = The United States; GBR = Great Britain; GER = Germany; SWI = Switzerland; FRA = France; ITA = Italy.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Overall, the use of transparency and authenticity-related practices has increased in most systems. The most notable exception is the United States, where newspapers since the 1960s have resorted more often to the use of unnamed sources (see Table 3). This lets us consider H2b only partly confirmed. Across all six systems, the use of direct quotations and unspecified sources again provided no clear indication of convergence—reporting styles have not grown more similar over time.⁴⁵

We find two aspects particularly striking: The verbatim reproduction of statements by those at the center of political events—sources—has only limited value in German and Swiss press reporting. This seems a clear misunderstanding of the premises of the hard-news paradigm. However, it confirms previous studies that had discovered a disinclination, particularly among German reporters, to grant politicians greater opportunities to speak uninterruptedly on television news programs, thereby reflecting a tendency to value journalistic voice more than political voice.⁴⁶ The second intriguing aspect is that the casual use of unnamed sources (“an official said,” “according to sources close to”) seems to be practiced similarly across Western press systems—although slightly more often at British and Swiss papers. Follow-up studies may investigate this further because for normative reasons the use of unnamed sources should be limited to only those cases “of compelling public importance,” or where it is required “to protect an innocent or wrongful party.”⁴⁷ Overuse of anonymous sources, on the contrary, may undermine the credibility of the news media and the ethos of the hard-news paradigm.

H3: Preference for News, Interpretation, and Opinion

To examine H3 we coded each newspaper story for its main function. Developing further a classification originally suggested by Benson and Hallin,⁴⁸ we distinguish between “news items” (stories offering concise descriptions of events or—if longer—additional background information and broader circumstances), “information mixed with interpretation” (stories offering explanation, investigation or speculation about the motivations, tactics, and consequences of political events), “information mixed with opinion” (stories offering peripheral commentary, opinionated perspectives, or subjective viewpoints despite not being marked as commentary), and “commentary” (editorials, leaders, opinion columns).⁴⁹

The results reported in Table 4 show a mixed pattern for H3a: Support is clear with regard to “opinionated” stories, but rather ambiguous with regard to “news” stories. A detailed look reveals that, as predicted by the different traditions, the largest share of opinionated stories in the 1960s appeared in newspapers from the Polarized Pluralist systems and the lowest share in U.S. papers: The combined score for “information mixed with opinion” and “commentaries” in 1960/1961 was 31% in the French and 23% in the Italian papers, but just 1% in the U.S. papers. Conversely, the French and Italian papers carried the smallest amount of “news” stories in the 1960s, which is all clearly in line with H3a. However, contrary to prediction the U.S. papers were surpassed in their emphasis on front page “news” by British, Swiss, and German papers in the 1960s—meaning that H3a can be considered only half-confirmed.

Table 4.

Type of Article (in percent).

Periods		USA	GBR	GER	SWI	FRA	ITA
News items	1960/19612006/2007	7154	8269	7765	7864	5864	6140
Information mixed with interpretation	1960/19612006/2007	2836	1116	814	1415	1013	1632
Information mixed with opinion	1960/19612006/2007	010	56	27	56	119	87
Commentaries	1960/19612006/2007	01	110	1313	415	2013	1621
Total N = 2,422 articles	1960/19612006/2007	(n = 231)(n = 174)	(n = 203)(n = 108)	(n = 261)(n = 329)	(n = 108)(n = 196)	(n = 162)(n = 196)	(n = 116)(n = 338)

Note. Totals per decade can be different from 100% due to rounding. USA = The United States; GBR = Great Britain; GER = Germany; SWI = Switzerland; FRA = France; ITA = Italy.

The expansion of the hard-news paradigm went in two directions: one toward “information mixed with interpretation” (reflecting U.S.-style critical scrutiny), and the other toward “information mixed with opinion” and “commentaries” (reflecting European-style advocacy). In line with H3b, the trend toward “information mixed with interpretation” has risen to the highest levels in the U.S. papers (to 36% in 2006/2007), thereby confirming a long-standing debate in the American research literature. The use of opinion, particularly “commentary,” has remained a hallmark of European newspaper journalism (see bottom row of Table 4). Interestingly, the U.S.-led trend toward critical professionalism has also spread in Europe, where stories “mixing information and interpretation” increased between 1960 and 2007, too (see Table 4). However, not only did European papers become more American (by the inclusion of interpretative journalism), but American newspapers have also become more European (by including elements of opinion). These indications of cross-fertilization can be regarded as further confirmation of H3b.

Interestingly, these transnational preferences for a more interpretative style reveal first traces of convergence. The differences in the use of “items mixing information and interpretation”, “items mixing information and opinion” and “commentaries” decreased between the 1960s and 2000s in all six systems, thereby making them more homogeneous.⁵⁰

H4: Spread of Interpretative Journalism

To demonstrate how the understanding of hard news has widened—and thereby potentially transformed Western journalism—we examined how the fabric of pure news stories has changed. Our previous analysis (reported in Table 4) showed how the use of “news items” had decreased to make room for other types of stories that allow journalists to add interpretation and opinion. Our next step of analysis focuses only on those stories that Table 4 identified as “news items.” Drawing on Barnhurst and Mutz’s concept of event versus analysis-focus,⁵¹ we examined each “news item” for whether it included indications as to why a political event happened, thereby addressing causes and interpretations. In addition, we examined each “news item” for whether it was framed in contextualized or decontextualized terms.⁵² Contextualized reporting refers to stories that place events in a broader framework, indicate possible consequences of occurrences and show connections to other events.

As can be seen from Table 5, even pure news items have become more interpretative over time. In addition to the classic questions of who, what, where, and when, news items in all Western press systems have increasingly come to address the why question as well (see upper part of Table 5). In addition, newspapers have come to contextualize their news reports with additional elements of analysis (lower part of Table 5). The cross-national differences are small overall and have become even smaller over time.⁵³ This is the second indication that, with regard to interpretative journalism, we do find evidence of transnational convergence.

Table 5.

Interpretative Elements within Pure News Stories (in percent).

Periods		USA	GBR	GER	SWI	FRA	ITA
Why-reporting	1960/19612006/2007	82^ab 88^ab	68^bc 85^ac	61^c 74^c	61^c 74^bc	76^ac 93^a	86^a 85^ac
Change		+ 6	+ 17**	+ 13**	+ 13*	+ 17***	−1
Total N = 1,551 articles	1960/19612006/2007	16594	16774	202214	84125	94126	71135
Contextual reporting	1960/19612006/2007	19^b 37^a	32^ab 54^a	24^b 36^a	23^b 52^a	29^b 52^a	52^a 51^a
Change		+ 18**	+ 22**	+ 12**	+ 29***	+ 23**	−1
Total N = 1,547 articles	1960/19612006/2007	16594	16674	201214	84123	94126	71135

Note. This in-depth-analysis is confined to those N = 1,552 articles that were identified as “news items” in Table 4. Means with different superscript letters are significantly different; means with the same superscript are not statistically different (post hoc Dunnett’s T3 test at p < .05 level). Statistically significant differences between the 1960s and 2000s. USA = The United States; GBR = Great Britain; GER = Germany; SWI = Switzerland; FRA = France; ITA = Italy.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

We conclude that the increasing expansion of the hard-news paradigm is not only reflected in the growing popularity of story genres that allow journalists to include opinion and interpretation in political affairs coverage (see Table 4), but is also reflected in a redefinition of classical, supposedly pure news items, which are becoming more analytical and contextual in their discursive composition (see Table 5). In sum, H4 (more interpretation in news) is clearly supported for all press systems under study.

RQ: Topical Focus of Interpretative Journalism

To assess what to make of these trends and answer our research question, we took a more detailed look at which topics are primarily covered in interpretative style. We selected only those stories for this analysis that were identified in Table 4 as “items mixing information and interpretation.” We will further focus our attention particularly on those two press systems in which “items mixing information and interpretation” occur most frequently—the United States and Italy (see again Table 4).

This in-depth analysis reveals a decisive difference between the two countries as can be seen from Table 6: while the Italian newspapers primarily report “process”-related topics in interpretative style (e.g., the strategies and maneuvers of individual government politicians and party politicians), the interpretative journalism in the U.S. newspapers also relates strongly to “policy”-related fields (examining substance in issue areas such as the military, justice, terrorism, social problems, economy). Interestingly, this difference remains clearly visible even when the very few election-related stories are removed from our sample.⁵⁴ Along with the United States, newspapers in most Western press systems devote interpretative reporting mostly to “policy” discussions—except for Italy (see Table 6).

Table 6.

Topical Focus of Interpretative Stories (in percent).

Periods		USA	GBR	GER	SWI	FRA	ITA
Process-related^a	1960/19612006/2007	1721	1133	2129	2126	0820	2738
Policy-related^b	1960/19612006/2007	6556	5550	4739	5544	5554	4031
Government-related^c	1960/19612006/2007	714	2110	1825	1518	2916	2722
Other^d	1960/19612006/2007	12 9	13 8	14 7	913	811	7 9
Total N = 446 articles	1960/19612006/2007	(n = 64)(n = 62)	(n = 22)(n = 17)	(n = 21)(n = 47)	(n = 15)(n = 29)	(n = 17)(n = 26)	(n = 18)(n = 108)

Note. This in-depth analysis is confined to those N = 446 articles that were identified as “items mixing information and interpretation” in Table 4. Totals can be different from 100% due to rounding. Percentages are based on topics mentioned in stories; up to three topics per story were coded. USA = The United States; GBR = Great Britain; GER = Germany; SWI = Switzerland; FRA = France; ITA = Italy.

Parties, Politicians, Elections, Polls, Media.

Economy, Finance, Education, Justice, Science, Environment, Social Problems, Social Welfare, Political Corruption, Crime, Military, Terror, Diplomacy, War.

Government (individual representatives or collective actors).

Unions, Employers, Social Movements, Churches, Ethic Groups; Political Structures.

Interpretative journalism that focuses mainly on aspects of “politics”—as is the case in Italian papers—has been criticized as an unnecessary departure from the hard-news paradigm.⁵⁵ If interpretative journalism mainly relates to “policy” areas, on the other hand, it potentially contributes to informed citizenry and, by implication, to democracy.⁵⁶ We conclude that interpretative journalism which explains complicated “policy” matters in ways that help broader publics to comprehend the world of politics is not only a defendable, but laudable, press practice.⁵⁷ However, it must be pointed out that over time “process”-centered interpretation has grown and “policy”-centered interpretation dropped in all six press systems under study (see Table 6), hence justifying concerns voiced by many scholars about a growing popularity of the wrong kind of interpretative news.

Conclusion

Cross-national research on the history of journalism has argued that the conception of news in Western press systems is the result of lengthy trans-border diffusion processes. Since its origination in the second half of the nineteenth century, the news paradigm has undergone various transformations both in how it was adopted across press systems and how its meaning evolved within press systems. The successful diffusion of the paradigm was subject to certain conditions—like longtime press freedom, liberal democracy, a substantial newspaper market with strong demand, openness toward Anglo-American press principles—and this context dependency explains why it had been adopted faster in some systems than in others. While no study has ever systematically explored this development in full, our own content analysis tries to make a modest attempt at tracing some of the aspects involved.

Based on a definition derived from the relevant research literature, we operationalized the hard-news paradigm as consisting of reporting conventions in the pursuit of facticity, balance, transparency, and authenticity. Over time, two components were added—interpretative analysis and expression of opinion—thereby reflecting a widening in the understanding of what kinds of elements fall under the rubric of news coverage.

This widening, as our study has indicated, occurred at two levels. First, Western newspapers experienced a substantial increase in so-called news analyses (stories mixing information and interpretation) and opinion-based stories (in the form of unequivocal commentaries or more subtle items blending information and opinion), while at the same time the share of traditional news items dropped remarkably. Second, the discursive composition of traditional news items has changed considerably over time. In the 2000s, they have been geared much more toward analysis (answering why-questions) and contextualization of political events (addressing causes, consequences, connections). While our study may be the first to demonstrate this multilayered development for several press systems and decades, we have also sounded a cautious note on how to evaluate this trend. We have argued that a more interpretative news style is not bad per se and may even contribute to an enriched public sphere as long as it is applied more to covering “policy” than “process”—and we have identified only one press system (Italy) where this was not the case. However, our cross-temporal analysis has also shown that “process”-related interpretation is on the rise everywhere while “policy”-related interpretation is on the decline—a trend that warrants future attention.

Our comparison indicates further that the implementation of the news paradigm has developed differently across countries, and has undergone transformations within countries. If we bring together our study’s various findings in a way that allows us to draw broader conclusions about the underlying news cultures in these press systems, we recognize three distinct yet interrelated reporting styles (backed up by additional correspondence analyses not shown here for reasons of space).

What distinguishes American from continental European journalism is its distance to commentaries and other forms of opinion expression on the news pages. This was true in the 1960s and continues to be true in the 2000s. On the other hand, U.S. journalism, more than any other national reporting style, represents a preference for mixing information with interpretation. The U.S. style of interpretative journalism has special characteristics: it relies heavily on experts, direct quotations, and considerations of pros and cons. None of the European newspapers examined here was found in the immediate vicinity of this specific reporting style. It thereby represents a distinct, stand-alone realization of the news paradigm.

A second independent and peculiar realization of the paradigm is the Italian style. Of all press systems under study, it is furthest removed from the principles of facticity and balance. A hard-facts-first structure, separation of facts and opinion, the use of expert sources, and consideration of both sides remained rather extraneous elements in the reporting of Italian newspapers of the 1960s and the 2000s. On the other hand, political sources are quoted extensively, which could be interpreted as indicating a persistently strong press-party parallelism.

A third approach to implementing the news paradigm is found in the reporting style of the newspapers of the Corporatist systems; in fact, Swiss and German journalists seem to have come to a similar understanding of news-making. The Corporatist press systems are known for their characteristic coexistence of commentary and objectivity—an inclination clearly reflected in the content of their newspapers. Swiss and German papers seem to have attentively adopted many facticity-related principles of the hard-news paradigm, but they also display a marked aversion to direct quotes from sources. Instead, German and Swiss journalists prefer to take the lead in their stories themselves, thereby opening the door to opinion and analysis.

Finally, French journalism was situated between the Italian and the Corporatist style, both in the 1960s and 2000s. British journalism was placed between Corporatist and American style in the 1960s and then moved to a middle position between the American and Italian style in the 2000s. It follows from this analysis that the three major reporting styles of the 1960s and the 2000s (American, Italian, Corporatist) could be described as a triangle that stayed fairly stable (with the exception of the British shift from an Anglo-Corporatist to an Anglo-Polarized style), but that the triangle drifted in its entirety more toward interpretative journalism as the decades passed by.

These findings complement in important ways a preliminary analysis by Esser and Umbricht.⁵⁸ Although the study at hand is limited to daily newspapers, it takes into account the long-term development from the 1960s to the 2000s and the gradual transformation of the objectivity ritual toward a more interpretative approach. More generally, our findings show that Hallin and Mancini’s media system typology⁵⁹ may be a useful starting point for determining news cultures, but it represents by no means the end point. Reporting styles vary in more complex ways, which can only be discovered by careful content analysis. Hallin and Mancini have acknowledged this weakness in their own work and stated recently that “content analysis across systems, guided by comparative theory, is in our view one of the most fundamental needs in our field.”⁶⁰

Because the historical adaptation of the news paradigm was so contingent on contextual factors, it led to what Høyer calls “hybrid” forms of journalism,⁶¹ in which old (tradition-bound) and new (border-transgressing) elements were freely mixed. These idiosyncratic mixtures explain the continued diversity of reporting styles in the press systems of Europe and North America, even though we observe certain indications of transnational homogeneity. It goes without saying that these trends are too complex to be addressed by a simple “Americanization” thesis. It is certainly true that U.S.-led reporting conventions in pursuit of facticity, balance, and critical professionalism have spread to many European systems. On the other hand, American newspapers have slowly moved along a more opinion-oriented trajectory that is more in line with the European tradition. In sum, all Western news systems have experienced a shift from journalists being observers to becoming more autonomous interpreters of politics. Changes in market dynamics, levels of education, and the status of the profession have contributed to this development. These cultural shifts have manifested themselves in changes of layout, whereby newspapers have been moving away from running shorter items on their front pages to making space for “new long journalism”⁶²—a style that contains a much richer discursive texture and whose evolution we have tried to trace across space and time.⁶³

Not only is this knowledge of historical relevance, but it also offers a baseline assessment for understanding contemporary differences in Western journalism, and facilitates the classification and interpretation of future trends of convergence and divergence in international multichannel news environments.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

This study was supported by the National Center of Competence in Research on ‘Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century’ (NCCR Democracy), funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.