Understanding the influence of journalists and politicians on content: A cross-longitudinal analysis of Chilean political news coverage

Abstract

By means of a cross-longitudinal quantitative content analysis of the Chilean national press, this article analyses the changes in reporting styles and the framing of politics in news coverage between 2006 and 2011, exploring whether the features of political reporting found in studies of Western countries are evident in the case of Chile. According to the data, while politicians trigger the majority of political news stories, political coverage originates significantly more from events than from statements or issues. Likewise, although framing politics as a game is a dominant and significant characteristic of the Chilean press, there is a systematic increase in the public policy frame. The results also indicate low levels of interventionism in covering political news, showing the practice of journalism where politicians have a strong influence on news content. The research allows for discussion on how politicians are adapting to the needs of the media and presents a deeper understanding of the characteristics that define political journalism in new democracies.

Keywords

Chile framing journalism media logic mediatization news politicians

Introduction

News media coverage of politics and the relationship between politicians and journalists are central to the democratic process. This is not surprising given the importance of the media as a source of political information.

In this article, we are interested in examining how the relationship between journalists and politicians materializes in a Latin-American context with a specific focus on the situation in Chile. It has been argued that there is ‘an inherent bias’ in scholarly communications research as published work privileges ‘Western concerns and anxieties’ (Cushion, 2012: 12). We find evidence of this situation in empirical research examining the relationship between journalists and politicians in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other European countries. Nevertheless, it has been suggested that understanding the relationship between journalists and their political sources is country specific (Strömbäck and Nord, 2006). In the latter respect, it is likely that given their recent histories, coverage of politics in new democracies and post-dictatorial regimes will have some distinctive features that lead to unique patterns of political communication (Porto, 2008; Hughes, 2006).

Different national studies—mostly agenda setting and news-framing research—have paid attention to the practice and roles of Chilean journalism in the political sphere (Porath and Portales, 2012; Porath, 2005, 2007; Valenzuela, 2013). In this study, we are interested in exploring whether the features of political reporting found in studies of Western countries are evident in the case of Chile. By means of a cross-longitudinal quantitative content analysis of national print press, this article analyses the changes in reporting styles and the framing of politics in news coverage in Chile between 2006 and 2011. The study investigates the extent to which news stories originate from statements, events, or issues triggered by journalists versus politicians, the tendency of the media to frame politics as a game over a focus on policy issues, as well as the level of interventionism of journalism in covering political news.

We contend that developments in political systems and media markets across Latin America can provide a rich set of research questions that are relevant not only for understanding local and regional phenomena but also in tackling more universal theoretical issues (Waisbord, 2009). Wider debates on globalization, cosmopolitanism, and new institutionalism also impact on Latin-American journalism. In the latter regard, analyzing interactions between journalists and politicians offers an excellent opportunity to advance our understanding of the wider relationship in great depth (Hughes, 2006; Porto and Hallin, 2009; Waisbord, 2009). Specifically, this study with its focus on Chilean political coverage allows us to test the universality of conclusions from the Anglo-American and European literature.

Chile as a study case

There are country-specific historical characteristics in the Chilean case, which must be acknowledged before focusing on the 2006–2011 period subject of content analysis in this study. A stable democracy has existed in Chile since the end of military dictatorship in March 11, 1990. The country has exhibited elements of ‘imposed transition’—where the military uses its dominant position to establish a unilaterally civilian rule—and elements of ‘pacted transition’, where strong elite actors engaged in strategic compromises, determine stable democratic rules (Boylan, 1996: 10). The outcome of this hybrid transition also impacted the media and, specifically, the practice of journalism. Some media scholars have talked about the shifting of a more diverse press in the latter stages of the Pinochet period (pro-regime and alternative press) to a press that is marked by little critical political content (Dermota, 2002; Paley, 2001).

Since the end of the Pinochet regime, Chilean journalists have seemed to professionalize within a typically Western media system with constitutional protection for freedom of speech and a dominance of private ownership of media companies. Unlike more developed democracies, however, the media market in Chile is still relatively small primarily due to few economies of scale, a conservative advertising market, and small audience size (Mellado, 2012: 382). The Chilean media market also has one of the highest concentration rates in media ownership in all of Latin America (Becerra and Mastrini, 2009; Bresnahan 2003). Property concentration was not as pronounced before the 1990s. However, during the last two decades, the country witnessed the closure of several newspapers and magazines that had been partially financed by subsidies from international organizations opposed to the regime (Dermota, 2002). New media outlets have appeared too, both in print and online form (The Clinic, El Mostrador, CIPER, among others), although their level of distribution and readership does reach the level of large conglomerates.

In the case of the press, the country faces a duopoly structure comprising two dominant companies: El Mercurio and Copesa (Consorcio Periodístico de Chile). Both belong to conservative families strongly linked to the country’s political right, who almost unconditionally supported the military regime during the dictatorship (Dermota, 2002). They manage almost 90% of the national newspaper circulation and receive 80% of the revenue generated by advertising in print media (Checa et al., 2012). In the broadcast market, television is a mix of public and private undertakings (following the same model of Channel 4 in the UK, the public television station Televisión Nacional de Chile (TVN) has political autonomy, but it does not receive public funding and is self-financing like the private television networks (Mellado et al., 2012), while radio is dominated by a small number of consortiums.

Like many other countries in Latin America that have experienced a return to democracy, commercial media in Chile have assumed a strong position ‘in articulating the contours of the public sphere’ (Murphy and Rodríguez, 2006: 269). A market-driven ethos permeates down to the sense of newsworthiness expressed by journalists. Survey data show that although Chilean journalists see their role as focusing on citizens, monitoring society, and holding those with power to account, they also strongly support and defend the need to satisfy journalism’s commercial needs, such as winning larger audiences and satisfying audience demand for trivial and entertaining content (Mellado, 2012: 397).

Likewise, they acknowledge a high degree of freedom in making news decisions. Studies have shown that while Chilean journalists perceived political influences as one of the most important factors influencing their autonomy, they naturalize restrictions associated with the growing commercialization of the country’s media system (Mellado and Humanes, 2012). Nevertheless, there are many legal areas left unresolved in terms of press freedom. For example, the current Ley de Prensa (Press Law) is still far from guaranteeing a free media, since potential punishments for slander and defamation, as well as sanctions for secret recording of images or sound, remain part of the legal system (Mellado, 2012). Another important characteristic of the country is the presence of high levels of political parallelism, evidenced by close links and overlaps between the media, political, and economic elites. Media owners are involved in political life, a situation most recently seen during the 2010 presidential election of Sebastián Piñera, a successful businessman whose interests included owning a national broadcasting network.

The time frame for our study (2006–2011) is the presidential administration of Michelle Bachelet, the last of four consecutive presidents from the Concertación, the coalition of center, and center-left parties that successfully negotiated the end of the military regime in 1989 and then won presidential elections until 2010. We also include the first year of the presidency of Sebastian Piñera of the conservative coalition Alianza por Chile.

During the Bachelet administration, the Concertación’s base constituencies took to the streets in the largest protests seen in Chile since the military left the presidential palace. They protested exclusion from policymaking and decisions that favored a concentrated market and macro-economic growth rates over social equity, education, environmental protection, or indigenous rights to ancestral lands (Fernández and Vera, 2012; Teichman, 2011).

From the beginning of her presidential period, Bachelet had to deal with sharp public criticism arising from ongoing problems associated with the new train transport system. She also had to deal with the post-2008 global economic collapse, and while national financial reserves lessened the full extent of the impact of the international recession in Chilean economic growth decline, unemployment increased. In the 2010 presidential contest, ‘intra-coalition splits and a gradual realignment of political forces after 20 years of Concertación rule’ facilitated the election of Sebastián Piñera. During his first year as President, social unrest continued. Politics in this period consisted of an interaction between policy formation, implementation, and protest.

Uneasy mutual dependency

Media coverage of politics, and interactions between politicians and journalists, are key areas of political communication research (Strömbäck and van Aelst, 2013). Among the various journalistic beats, those journalists who cover politics are afforded a special status (Mair, 2004; Nimmo and Combs, 1990), who are said to work in the most sacred part of the profession (Neveu, 2002: 23). The relationship between the two sides has been compared to a ‘tango dance’ in which journalists and politicians engage in a ‘tug of war’ (Gans, 1980). There is a necessary interdependence underpinning the relationship between journalists and politicians (Blumler and Gurevitch, 1981; Davis, 2009; Ross, 2010; Strömbäck and Van Aelst, 2013). Journalists need stories while politicians—their sources—need exposure. Politicians can provide journalists with news while journalists, in turn, can provide politicians with access to the public. Yet, while the relationship between the two sides has been defined as mutually dependent, it is a working relationship characterized by conflict and cooperation.

In his study of British politicians and journalists, Davis (2009: 210) found that their relations could be defined as ‘cautious co-operation that benefited both sides’. A similar qualitative interview-based study in New Zealand found a complicated, and often contradictory, relationship between journalists and politicians but one that was marked by an acknowledgment of the need to maintain ‘at least cordial relations’ (Ross, 2010: 287). These research findings very much fit the description of Blumler and Gurevitch about ‘two sets of mutually dependent and mutually adaptive actors, pursuing divergent (though overlapping) purposes’ (1981: 479).

In this type of working environment, journalists have to develop sources while simultaneously ensuring that they do not compromise their independence (Davis, 2009; Ross, 2010; Voltmer and Dobreva, 2009). Ideally, journalists are able to maintain sources so as to provide the public with information to assist in making informed decisions while, when required, also providing the public with critical commentary about government decisions (McNair, 2011; Schudson, 2008). Thus, in their work, political reporters would perform a variety of journalistic functions including proving information and the aforementioned ‘watchdog’ role (Donsbach and Patterson, 2004; Waisbord, 2000). As described by Schudson, ‘the job of the media… is to make powerful people tremble’ (2008: 14). Politicians, however, do not always welcome this type of coverage, as their specific objective is to obtain positive headlines for their actions (Franklin, 2004).

Such is the powerful role that journalism plays in the relationship between politicians and the public that it has been argued that politicians have adjusted their strategies to the needs and requirements of the media (Kaid and Strömbäck, 2008; Mazzoleni and Schulz, 1999; Strömbäck and Van Aelst, 2013). Evidence for this media logic is seen in the behavior and tactics of politicians and in the near permanent involvement of media advisors and ‘spin doctors’ in all facets of the political process (Gaber, 2000; Louw, 2010). The growth of political public relations is matched by a sense of manipulation of journalists by their sources ‘to a degree that is unhealthy for and damaging to the democratic process’ (McNair, 2011: 148).

News making, news content, and the framing of news stories

In this section, we focus on the relationship between journalists and sources and the outcome of their interactions. We do so by separating the process of news making from the framing of news stories and journalistic discourse. We draw on an important distinction made by Strömbäck and Nord (2006: 149) when they observed of the journalist-political source relationship that ‘it is quite possible that the news sources lead the tango when it comes to the process of news making, without necessarily leading the tango when its comes to the content of the news stories’.

In the first case—the process of news making—we focus on inputs arising from journalist-source interaction, specifically the extent to which news stories originate from statements, events, or issues, and the extent to which news stories are triggered by journalists’ vis-à-vis politicians. In the second case, we examine the outputs from journalist-source interaction, specifically the tendency of the media to frame politics as a game over a focus on policy issues and the level of interventionism in political journalists reporting styles. This article contributes to a better understanding of these processes by showing how through a separation of the news making into different phases—classified as inputs and outputs—we can better understand how politicians are adapting to the needs of the media. Ultimately, given the focus of this study, the analysis offers a deeper understanding of the characteristics that define the mediatization of politics in a Latin-American country such as Chile.

Input: News triggers

The nature of the relationship between journalists and sources both influences and impacts upon the shape of news content and, ultimately, on what the public understands of politics (Davis, 2009: 205). In terms of the ‘dance’ between the two sides, many studies have concluded that sources lead journalists on the dance floor in that they instigate the majority of stories (Davis, 2009; Strömbäck and Nord, 2006). With the expansion of political public relations, expertise journalists have come to depend upon politicians and their ‘spin doctor’ advisors for ‘insider’ information and news stories (Franklin, 2004). Yet, while it can be argued that journalists have become increasingly captured by their sources, there are differences in the degree of control exercised by sources especially as other factors influence the ‘raw material’ of a news story in its development into the finished product received by the audience (Strömbäck and Nord, 2006).

Published news stories emerge from a process of negotiation that ultimately determines their newsworthiness (Cook, 1998). The factors determining newsworthiness extend beyond the journalist and the source. News selection and the gatekeeping function of journalists and editors are among the most important tasks of the news media (Shoemaker and Vos, 2009). Various taxonomies of news values emphasize properties such as frequency, unexpectedness, and elites (Harcup and O’Neill, 2001). But these properties are not the only factors that determine if an event becomes news. Other factors include consideration of format, resources, the requirement for a news editorial mix to attract audience interest (Shoemaker and Reese, 1996), as well as ownership structures and advertising considerations (Hanitzsch and Mellado, 2011).

Most of the research from different countries in the West has shown that in terms of the power relationship between journalists and their political sources, it is the latter group that is considered to be more influential in terms of the news-making process (Bennett, 2003; Strömbäck and Nord, 2006). Cook (1998) concluded that this outcome arises from the ability of political sources to instigate news and the capacity to point journalists toward specific statements, issues, and events.

With politicians increasingly considering the needs and requirements of the media, and with an important number of journalists who need to write more articles per day and for less pay, there is a likelihood that the impact of politicians on news coverage, as the trigger of that news, would be predominant and would increase over time. Such activity has been classified as providing ‘an indicator for a broad variety of mediatized activities’ of individual politicians and political parties (Kepplinger, 2002: 983). Putting this assumption to test in the Chilean context, we pose the following hypothesis:

H1: Politicians are more likely to trigger stories about politics than journalists, and this feature of Chilean political news coverage increase over time.

Explaining the reasons why certain subjects are covered by the media led Bruggemann (2012) to identify four broad ‘trigger constellations’—the occurrence, the trigger source, the evaluation, and the editorial context—all of which interact to move an event, issue, or statement onto the news page. More specifically, in a German context, Kepplinger (2002: 975) tested the context underpinning the factors, which trigger articles about politics by distinguishing between statements, events, and issues. This model of inputs triggering news articles about politics permits a focus on the dance between journalists and their political sources and on the portrayal of politics in the media. Kepplinger’s study focused on three national German newspapers between 1951 and 1995 and found that most articles about politics in this period were triggered by events followed by statements with very few triggered by issues. The increased presence of statements was taken to indicate an enhanced responsiveness of politicians to the media and as a consequence of the mediatization of politics. The initiators of these statements reported in that study were predominately politicians with the number of news stories triggered by politician’s statement almost doubling between 1951 and 1995, and a clear indication that politicians have became more successful at using comments to generate media coverage (Kepplinger, 2002: 980).

In a related study from Sweden, it was found that, with the exception of one newspaper, between 65 and 77% of news stories contained at least one politician as a source (Strömbäck and Nord, 2006). The fact that one newspaper deviated from the other media examined stressed the powerful discretionary role of the news media in deciding which politicians should be used as source triggers for news stories about politics.

Based on an understanding that journalists will seek to display their independence, we also expect that in spite of politicians triggering more stories about politics than journalists, news professionals will seek to put distance from the political sources. This exercise may not be a characteristic that is unique to new democracies or one confined only to electoral periods, but rather a shared global phenomenon. This then leads us to formulate our second hypothesis:

H2: Chilean political news are predominately triggered by events rather than statements or issues, and this feature of news coverage should increase over time.

Output: Framing politics

Beyond the issue of source inputs into news story formation, a considerable body of political communication literature has examined the extent to which media coverage frames politics as a strategic game or as an arena for public debate on policy issues (Aalberg et al., 2012; Cappella and Jamieson, 1997; Patterson, 1994). Work on how the media frames stories is concerned with the how different issues, events, and people are reported (de Vreese and Semetko, 2002; Shoemaker and Reese, 1996). The media have the ability to exert influence over what the public perceive as important issues. Journalists prefer some types of information and some types of interpretation over others (Walter and Vliegenhart, 2010).

A prominent criticism of political reporting in many countries arises from the idea that factual policy-focused news reporting has been replaced by game coverage driven by discussion of opinion polls and ‘horse race’ stories (Cappella and Jamieson, 1997). This tendency may in part be explained by news values driven by a focus on drama and personality as well as commercial pressures on news media to deliver coverage that delivers readers and audience (McMenamin et al., 2013).

Much of the research on game framing originated in the United States but has, in more recent times, generated a significant number of studies of political coverage, or more specifically coverage of politics at elections times, in several European countries (McMenamin et al., 2013; Strömbäck and Dimitrova, 2006; Strömbäck and Luengo, 2008). All of these studies show a significant presence of the game frame in media coverage of elections in countries such as Sweden, Denmark, Spain, and Ireland. In turn, some previous studies in Latin America have shown a decline in horse race coverage. For example, an analysis of presidential election journalism between 1989 and 2006 on Brazil’s TV Globo showed ‘a clear decline of horse race coverage’ (Porto, 2008: 265).

One of the gaps in the game frame literature has been identified as the absence of analysis in non-election periods to better understand why journalists stress the game of politics in some contexts and not in others (Lawrence, 2000). This study focuses on political news but it does so beyond an election period. Given our Chilean data focused on routine phases and its cross-longitudinal nature, the analysis presents an opportunity to extend and deepen our understanding of the media’s use of game frames to wider, more general, political coverage.

The framing of politics as a game is represented by journalism dominated by ‘horse race’ coverage and by a focus on how candidates are performing in opinion polls, as most previous studies have found. Accepting the argument that by focusing on strategic aspects of the political game journalists maintain an apparent stance of independence and objectivity (Aalberg et al., 2012; Zaller, 2003), we can also reasonably expect that the game frame in routine phases of political coverage would be evident. It is also possible to venture that a relationship between politicians as triggers and increased events that can result in game framing being more common than policy. We therefore state the following hypothesis:

H3: The framing of politics as a game is more common than the policy frame in Chilean journalism, and this orientation increases over time.

Output: Reporting styles

One of the features identified in studies of political coverage has been an ‘increasingly journalistic-centered reporting style’ (Blumler and Gurevitch, 1995; Esser, 2008), where the journalist summarizes, contextualizes, and evaluates what politicians are saying. Two elements have been commonly related to this more interventionist approach: taking sides and interpretation. In political coverage, the way journalists take sides in their reporting has been related to the partisan role of journalism (Blumler and Gurevitch, 1995). To measure its presence, previous studies have examined the tone of the article (Poletti and Brants, 2010), at the level of statements bias (D’Alessio and Allen, 2000; Hofstetter, 1976; Van Dalen et al., 2012), and the implicit or explicit evaluation in the narrative of the journalist (Benson and Hallin, 2007; Semetko and Schoenbach, 2003).

In a comparative study of French and US national press, Benson and Hallin (2007: 38) found that opinions, and normative and partisan discourses in the journalistic voice, were more common in French than in US news stories. Meanwhile, interpretation has been understood as something opposed to a descriptive, fact-based journalism. In their study of election news coverage in Spain and Sweden, Strömbäck and Luengo (2008) showed that Swedish news journalism was more interpretive than the Spanish coverage. Benson and Hallin (2007) also found that fact-based discourses were more prevalent in the US press, while interpretive/evaluative discourses were more present in news stories in the French press.

Interventionism characteristics have been identified and measured as an increasingly prevalent element in American and European news cultures in general (Esser, 2008; Patterson, 1994). Political coverage in new democracies, in turn, may show a different picture. In repressive regimes where the media is governed by strict rules and freedom of expression is curtailed, journalists will generally take their lead from political sources. In such an environment, news arising from journalistic initiative will be less visible. Some of these characteristics may be evident in transitional democracies as fear of confrontation, critique, and debate persist (Dermota, 2002). As in other areas of democracy building, ‘creating a more open media system is a complicated task’ (Hughes and Lawson, 2005: 16). Moreover, concentration of ownership and overlapping relations between media owners and political elites may also be a factor in influencing the passive orientation of journalists. Specifically, we expect that the inheritance from the Pinochet era has been a detached journalism represented by non-involvement and fact-based discourses. Moreover, the highly commercial nature of the Chilean media system and high levels of ownership concentration should tend to favor a more passive, detached form of journalism. This leads us to pose that:

H4: The levels of interventionism of Chilean political press are low across all of the studied period, with explicit value judgments or evaluations absent from journalists reporting style.

Method

Sampling

To address our hypotheses, we conducted a cross-longitudinal quantitative content analysis of the Chilean national press between 2006 and 2011. All five general-interest Chilean national newspapers were content analyzed: El Mercurio, La Tercera, Las Últimas Noticias, La Cuarta, and La Nación (La Nación will only be considered up to 2010, which is when the printed newspaper was halted, per the decision of the current government.). These newspapers were chosen because they represent different content orientation (quality/popular media), the two conglomerates that dominate print press in Chile (El Mercurio and Copesa) as well as the only national state-owned newspaper.

Since the main purpose of this study is to analyze how journalism covers politics on a regular basis, each year from 2006 to 2011 was studied. Through the constructed week method, a stratified-systematic sample of each newspaper was selected (Riffe et al., 2005: 112–117). In each media outlet, a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday edition were selected for each semester of every year, making sure that every month of the year was represented by at least 1 day, and in that way, assuring no over-representation of a particular period. This means that two constructed news weeks were sampled per newspaper per year, which is considered statistically sufficient to allow for ‘reliable estimates’ (Riffe et al., 1993: 139). All five newspapers were analyzed during the exact same constructed weeks. Since daily and monthly variations are important factors to have in mind when conducting a news content analysis, we divided each year into two sets of 6 months, randomly selecting a starting date for each period. Then, and using a 3–4-week interval, we selected the next day, which was the following day of the week, 3 weeks later. After that, we selected the third day, which was the following day of the week, 4 weeks later, and so forth. At the half-year point, we started the process again from the beginning. In that way, our sample included 7-week days with regular intervals—three and four—between the weeks, and avoided periodicity (for example, for one semester, the randomly selected starting date was Wednesday 20 February; 3 weeks + 1 day later is Thursday 14 March, 4 weeks, and 1 day later is 12 April).

The unit of analysis was the news item. All stories associated with the national desk that deal with national politics were coded. National politics include information related to the formal and institutionalized power, including the State’s activities, international relations/diplomacy, Parliament, Judicial Power, and also, stories about elections for government posts at local, state, and national levels, or stories focused primarily on the actions of political parties. All news items that refer to specific and sectorial topics such as health, housing, and education were considered within this category when they were associated to public policies promoted by the government/State.

We did not include supplements and/or magazines or the features sections. We also make a distinction between news and opinion, and so articles in the newspaper’s editorial section as well as letters to the editor and opinion columns were excluded.

A news item was understood as the group of continuous verbal and visual elements that refer to the same topic. Photographs with only a caption, single quotes, and headlines only were not considered as news items. An event, topic, or statement may be covered by a news media in more than one news item. Therefore, if the same event/statement/topic is covered in two news items, they were considered as individual items and, consequently, were coded separately. In total, 3,005 U per units of analysis were identified and coded within the selected sample.

Coding procedure

Seven independent coders—undergraduate (senior level) and graduate journalism and mass communication students—were trained for 40 h in total—over a period of 12 weeks—in the application of a common codebook-containing operational definitions for each variable. The codebook also includes measures on journalistic role performance not reported by this particular study. The coding was done manually between January and June 2012. To control bias, coders were randomly assigned to the news item selected, so each coder analyzed a similar percentage of content, but from different newspapers and different years. When the coding was completed, new coding on a randomly selected 10% of the total sample was undertaken to determine intercoder reliability. Coders who participated in the process analyzed to equal parts the selected subsample. Based on Krippendorf’s alpha formula, overall, inter-coder reliability was .82 (see report of IR for individual variables in the measures section).

Measures

In order to assess who triggers Chilean political news, coders were asked to indicate if the news item arose because of the journalist/editorial staff’s initiative or because of politicians (Wolfsfeld and Sheafer, 2006) (Kα: .79).

Factor-triggering political news were defined as the stimulus (what) that most likely caused the news item. Following Kepplinger’s (2002: 975) operationalization of triggering factors of news stories, we differentiate between issues, statements, and events (Kα: .81).

To measure how political journalism frames politics in Chile, we differentiated between game frame and public policy frame (Aalberg et al., 2012; Strömbäck and Dimitrova, 2006) (Kα: .87).

In order to assess the level of interventionism of the press, we used two indicators: taking sides (Kα: .86) and interpretative reporting style (Kα: .78). Interpretation is not the same as opinion. While the latter makes a reference to the author or authors’ explicit personal perspective, interpretation deals with the explanation of a fact, without necessarily giving a value judgment (Benson and Hallin, 2007).

Finally, we also examined differences on trigger factors, game-policy frame, and interventionism levels of the press by focusing on media orientation, with popular press (LUN and La Cuarta) and quality press (El Mercurio, La Tercera, and La Nación).

Coding instructions can be found in the Appendix 1 of this article.

Findings

Who and what triggers political news

H1 predicted that Chilean political news was predominately triggered by political actors rather than by the journalists. We also examined whether there was significant change over time in this regard through bivariate analysis using crosstabs and the analysis of adjusted standardized residuals. The results give mixed support to our assumption, with an overwhelming presence of news stories triggered by politicians −90.2% of all news items published by the five national newspapers between 2006 and 2011 (one-way χ²= 1654.1, p < .001). Nevertheless, the data does not show significant changes across time (χ² = 8.737, p = n.s.).

The results also indicate that there were no significant association between triggering source and media orientation (χ² = .136, p = n.s.), showing similar predominance of stories triggered by political sources. Thus, H1 is partially supported.

Since we did not find meaningful differences between the individual newspapers regarding the findings reported here, we also used the combined scores of the five different newspapers included in our sample in the following analyses—with the exception of level of interventionism, where differences were found.

H2 predicted that political news coverage would be predominately triggered by events rather than statements or issues. We also assumed that news stories triggered by events would increase over time, while conversely news stories triggered by statements would decrease over time.

The results provided strong support for our expectations, showing that Chilean political news is predominantly triggered by events (one-way χ² = 1279.46, p < .001). Seventy-three percent of all stories in our sample were triggered by events, followed by statements (19.6%) and issues (7.4%). The results are shown in Table 1.

Table 1.

Framing of politics and reporting styles in news coverage (% and adjusted standardized residuals).

	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011
Indicators
Triggering source (politicians)	90.9	87.6	90.3	88.8	90.0	91.7
Triggering source (politicians)	0.4	−1.7	0.1	−1.2	−0.2	1.9
News stories triggered by statements	42.1	21.0	19.2	22.4	18.0	12.0
News stories triggered by statements	6.5	−0.8	−1.9	−0.3	−1.7	−4.9
News stories triggered by events	36.8	67.6	72.9	71.1	73.8	83.7
News stories triggered by events	−12.5	−1.3	0.6	0.4	0.7	6.8
News stories triggered by issues	21.1	11.4	7.9	6.5	8.2	4.4
News stories triggered by issues	8.9	1.3	−1.4	−2.6	0.5	−3.5
Game framing (yes)	78.2	73.2	68.6	61.5	54.6	57.8
Game framing (yes)	4.7	3.9	2.4	−1.2	−5.1	−2.8
Public policy framing (yes)	21.8	26.8	31.4	38.5	45.4	42.2
Public policy framing (yes)	−4.7	−3.9	−2.4	1.2	5.1	2.8
Taking sides (yes)	4.9	7.6	6.3	5.1	7.3	6.1
Taking sides (yes)	−0.9	1.0	−0.6	−1.4	0.8	−0.7
Interpretation (yes)	36.4	34.5	37.6	34.7	32.4	37.9
Interpretation (yes)	0.7	−0.7	1.4	0.0	−0.4	1.4

The value and sign of the adjusted standardized residuals (see Table 1) also show a significant shift in the factors that trigger news over time (χ² = 88.080, p ≤ .001). Stories triggered by events significantly increased and stories triggered by statements significantly decrease from 2006 to 2011 in a systematic way. While at the beginning of the period statements surpassed events (42.1% versus 36.8%), at 2001, news stories triggered by events represented more than 83.7% of the total political coverage published by Chilean national newspapers. Meanwhile, news items triggered by issues also show a persistent and significant decrease over time, from 21.1 to 7.4.

Game—Public Policy Frame

Hypothesis 3 predicted that coverage of Chilean politics would be framed as a game rather than public policy and that this trend would increase between 2006 and 2011. The results provided mixed support for our prediction. Overall, the data showed that framing politics as a game is a dominant and significant characteristic in the Chilean press (one-way χ² = 192.50, p < .001). In average, 6 out of 10 news stories frame politics as game. Nevertheless, the data showed a systematic decrease (from 78.2% to 57.8%) in the presence of game framing and an increase (from 21.8% to 44.2%) in the public policy frame in the coverage of Chilean politics, where the difference between both ways of framing politics has been reduced to 13.5% (χ² = 66.430, p ≤ .001) (see Table 1). Thus, the hypothesis is partially supported.

Levels of interventionism

H4 predicted that levels of journalistic intervention in the Chilean political press were consistently low over the 2006–2011 period. Specifically, we predicted that political journalists would be mostly neutral and free of explicit value judgment or evaluation in their reporting.

The data largely supported our expectations. As can be seen in Table 1, Chilean political journalists are overall predominantly non-partisan in their writing of news stories (one-way χ² = 1944.56, p < .001). Indeed, less than 7% of the news stories sampled by this study take sides in political disputes or issues. This characteristic remains stable between 2006 and 2011 (χ²= 10.236; p = n.s.).

Explaining causes, meaning, or consequences of events or facts is an aspect comparatively more present in Chilean political journalists reporting styles. Nevertheless, the most common scenario is where the journalists do not get explicitly involved in the story. Overall, only 33.7% of the news stories analyzed presented some element of interpretation (one-way χ² = 244.13, p < .001). This characteristic remains stable between 2006 and 2011 (χ² = 12.476, p = n.s.).

Chi square t-test shows a significant association between media orientation, the presence of value judgment (χ² = 31.91, p < .001), and interpretation of the journalist in the news stories (χ² = 9.28, p < .01). The comparison shows that popular media used an interpretive (42.1%) and partisan (13.1%) style more than elite media (33.6% and 5.4%, respectively). Both associations have a similar direction over time.

Discussion

This article has focused on the reporting of politics in Chile between 2006 and 2011. A cross-longitudinal quantitative content analysis of national news coverage allowed us to examine news triggers, changes in reporting styles, and the framing of politics. While a unique country-specific study, this work contributes in research on the journalist-politician relationship outside the United States and Europe, allowing us to test conclusions from the Western literature.

A specific strength of this study is its cross-longitudinal nature and focuses on the coverage of politics beyond a defined election period. Different to most studies on political news that are interested in electoral processes, we turn our attention to regular and non-electoral political coverage.

The findings provide evidence not just about the changing nature of coverage of politics in a relatively new democracy. We can also examine important similarities and differences from findings of similar studies in the international literature.

In many respects, our results point to the experience of politics in Chile mirroring results from studies in the United States and in Europe.

In terms of the news making input phase, homogenizing tendencies are evident in the finding where political news stories originate significantly more from events than from statements or issues. As a means of asserting independence in a democratic era, journalists seem to acquire a more sophisticated vision of making news and in the conception of what is defined as news. This movement toward autonomy in press coverage in Chile may also reveal a process of increased professionalization and mediatization of politics, where politicians are forced to respond to media needs and being more creative by constructing events regularly to gain coverage.

Regarding the news making output phase, we see the predominance of politicians as trigger sources for the majority of political news stories in this study. In this sense, we can see that in spite of the attempts at achieving greater independence, Chilean journalists are increasingly captured by their sources, as have been found previously in other studies worldwide. While newspapers have been forced to cut costs by shrinking newsrooms around the world, and journalists often work in precarious working conditions, the professional and well-resourced public relations’ machinery has become a feature of contemporary politics internationally. In the case of Chile, the high-ownership concentration as well as levels of political parallelism may also explain this result (Becerra and Mastrini, 2009; Mellado et al., 2012), where deals can be made between politicians and media owners.

We also found that framing politics as a game was a dominant and significant characteristic of newspaper coverage of politics in Chile. This result is, in some respect, also in keeping with other international studies (Aalberg et al., 2012), but we did identify a distinctive patter in terms of the trend in game-policy coverage. Factors such as commercial pressures on media and a blurring of ideological distinction between politicians and parties are seen as influencing the dominance of the game frame. Although we see evidence of the dominance of the game frame, interestingly, the gap between the dominant game frame and the lesser policy frame significantly decreased between 2006 and 2011. Porto’s (2008) findings of Brazil presidential elections are similar to our findings and point to the need for greater cross-national studies in Latin America to explore if any regional issues are evident. One argument for an increased focus on public policy has been that this feature occurs at times of crisis (O’Malley et al., 2012) when policy matters to citizens and the media follow this expectation in terms of the orientation of coverage. In the protests faced by the Bachelet administration post-2006 from students and over transport policy, for example, we see evidence of a greater public willingness to confront the political system. Although Chilean culture has been described as parochial (Mellado et al., 2012), there is evidence of a more empowered society with a greater interest in policy change. In addition, in the post-2008 period, the economy growth in Chile slowed, and unemployment tended to increase. In such an environment, it is probably not unsurprising to see an increased focus on policy. Another possible explanation lies in the increasing presence of technocrats at ministerial levels during the last presidential periods, which may have contributed to the orientation of the journalistic discourse toward policy issues.

Finally, we found that Chilean political journalists have a non-interventionist reporting style: they are predominantly non-partisan and tend to apply a fact-based rather than an interpretative style in covering political news. These features were relatively constant between 2006 and 2011, although we found a difference according media orientation. Indeed, the popular press comparatively uses a more interventionist reporting style than the quality press. The low levels of interventionism of the Chilean political press may be a legacy from the Pinochet era as well as being a factor influenced by an increasing commercial orientation of the media market in Chile. Over the last two decades, Chilean journalists have had to adjust to a new democratic system and lose the fear that prevailed under the previous era of military repression (Mellado, 2012). Nevertheless, tendencies toward self-censorship as well as the naturalization of different constrains remain part of the Chilean journalistic realm (Dermota, 2000; Mellado and Humanes, 2012).

Our findings show that press passivity as a mode of political reporting that transfers agenda-setting functions to the political elite did not change as civic protest re-appeared on the Chilean scene, but news frames did move from the game-framing of elite political contests to public policy-oriented frames emphasizing decision-making options and outcomes. In this sense, it did succeed in creating a space for questioning of policy and policymaking practices. However, it is important to bear in mind that the increase in public policy framing over time appears dependent upon politicians’ news management decisions in the face of political crises rather than an increase in autonomous news gatekeeping by professional journalists in a public interest media.

Our results are very important in understanding the mediatization of politics as well as the journalist-politician relationship beyond previous research in an Anglo-American and European context. There are, however, some limitations that need to be highlighted.

First, the operationalization of triggering factors may have overshadowed a possible interrelationship between the categories that are part of the variable. Indeed, events, statements, and issue categories can be elusive, since political actors, for example, can create an event to highlight an issue or to make a statement. Second, the analyzed frame-period is relatively short, which could make the proportion of variation to hide the real weight of each year within the analysis. Future national studies need to address this issue, extending the number of years included, making the use of techniques such as Time Series analysis easier. Third, this is a monocultural study, and as such, we did not consider the societal level in our measures. In this line, further systematic efforts are necessary to statistically test how different political systems shape the relationship between politics and journalism. Also, this study highlights the need for further research to help establish more specific information on the factors influencing political coverage in different media types. Specifically, how online journalism and digital media may be changing the patterns identified here.

Footnotes

Funding

Research for this article received funding from Fondecyt Grant No. 1110009.

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