The Jeremiad Over Journalism

Yet, the relatively infrequent use of the personalization frame among American and Danish political
reporters means that the results are not statistically significant. USA Today once again goes against
the overall tendency of The New York Times and Los Angeles Times‘ coverage between 1968 and
2008. For USA Today there is clearly a decline in the use of personalization frames from 1988 until
2008, which fits well with the newspapers pronounced focus on hard news from the early 1990‘s
and forward as mentioned above. Also for the Danish news outlets is an uneven trend of
personalization coverage apparent. Ekstra Bladet focuses most on the personal characteristics of
politicians, but also here, as within the American outlets, the coverage peaks in 1988.
Percent
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Personalization frame
1971 1981 1990 2001
Table 21 - Percentage of personalization frame in Danish news coverage between 1971 and 2001.
The lack of personalization frames in Danish election coverage corresponds well with research from
Germany, where Esser finds that, there has only been slight to no significant rise in personalization
coverage, though an increase in personalization coverage would be assumed, if one expects an
increasing tendency towards tabloidization, which Esser defines as, ―the direct result of
187
Politiken
Berlingske Tidende
Ekstra Bladet