The Jeremiad Over Journalism

H2b: From 1968 and forward news stories in Danish newspapers increasingly abandon one-
source articles in coverage of political stories.
H2c: From 1968 and forward news stories in Danish newspapers increasingly utilize a hard
news lead based on answering who, what, when, where, why and how in the first
paragraphs.
5.2 Method and reliability
Having described the research design, the following section will now turn to the ―data making,‖ part
of content analysis, meaning a description of the units of analysis, how the sampling was conducted,
how the results were recording as well as how the results are ―reduced‖ in the presentation. 492
Commercialization and discussions over the ideal of objectivity play a central part in consideration
of American influence on Danish journalism. Writers like Schudson, Ward, Chalaby, Hallin and
Mancini, have all pointed to the ideal of objectivity and increased commercial influence as key
variables in explaining change in news reporting as the consequences of these two developments are
argued to be present in actual journalistic content. 493 Hence, both concepts serve as a useful starting
point for a longitudinal comparative content analysis studying American influence on Danish
journalism.
The content analysis focuses on identifying the ―overall frame,‖ 494 the proportion of soft news and
the level of interpretative reporting in order for the researchers to study the claim of ―form over
substance‖ 495 in Danish and American news, a development argued to be associated with
492
Krippendorff, Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology. Page 86. Krippendorff emphasizes making
clear how one samples from the many available units, as well as making sure the coding instructions are clear and
finally ―reducing‖ the results by simplifying their presentation, in the present case through graphs.
493
See for example Chalaby, "Journalism as an Anglo-American Invention: A Comparison of the Development of
French and Anglo-American Journalism, 1830s-1920s." Jeremy Tunstall, The Media Are American: Anglo-American
Media in the World (London: Constable, 1977; reprint, Second Edition 1994). Daniel C. Hallin and Paolo Mancini,
"Americanization, Globalization and Secularization: Understanding the Convergence of Media Systems and Political
Communication in the U.S. And Western Europe," in Comparing Political Communication: Theories, Cases, and
Challenges, ed. Frank Esser and Barbara Pfetsch (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
494
As described in Chapter 2, the present study uses Entman‘s definition of frames and definitions of the six frames
coded for will be provided later in the chapter.
495
Soft news and interpretative reporting are coding options within the variables ―news technique‖ and ―journalistic
style‖ which are defined below.
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