News Content and Effects in an Historic Campaign

In the 1994 national election, parties and politicians in the Netherlands were, for the first time, confronted with a dual broadcasting system. Alongside the public service broadcasting channels, which by law and tradition had functioned as a politically balanced platform for political communication, a new commercial network had joined the broadcasting landscape. The commercial newscast, covering its first campaign, was expected to adopt a pragmatic approach, while the public service news was expected to continue a sacer dotal approach. We thus expected to find substantial differences between the two channels in the content of election news. Observation study and content analysis showed that there w ere fewer differences between the two channels than expected in the presentation of the election campaign. The public newscast showed an increasing trend toward reporting campaigns as hoopla and horse race and away from political substance. The commercial news did exhibit some features of a pragmatic approach but devoted very little attention to opinion polls. The differences between the campaign coverage of the two channels had little consequence for voters' perceptions of the candidates. An effects study indicated that being a regular watcher of either daily TV newscast had a significant positive effect on changes in the image of or trust in Labor party leader Wim Kok. As a consequence of the advancing media logic, the expectation is that the differences between the campaign cover age of both newscasts will be even less marked in the future. Key Words: election newshorse racehooplatelevision newsmedia and party logicNetherlandspolitics inbroadcast systemspublic service newscommercial newscontent analysisparticipant observationcampaign effects

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