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Diversity of Journalisms. Proceedings of ECREA/CICOM Conference, Pamplona, 4-5 July 2011
Method
A comparative content analysis of news media in five European countries was
conducted. In France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom, 1125 news
items (articles and television news items) mentioning “Wikileaks” between December 1
and December 31, 2010 in two printed newspapers and one public television news
programme per country were analyzed. Variables included, apart from formal criteria:
the form of the item (report, commentary, interview), the acting persons (multiple
values possible), the topic (multiple values), the main country reported about, the frame
of reporting (risks, chances of Wikileaks publications), the bias (e.g. security concerns
vs. freedom of information), the content (.g., opinion statements, document analysis,
actions against Wikileaks etc.), news values (multiple choices), research level
(documents quoted directly, second-hand, no mention of documents), sources used
(e.g. documents, other media, press releases, unconventional media, interviews). 16
Table 1
Country Media type Media included in
the sample
Official
cooperation
with Wikileaks
Number of
items
“Wikileaks”
December
2010
France public tv TF 1 no 5
France newspaper Le Monde yes 55
France newspaper La Libération partially
65
Germany public tv
Germany newspaper
Germany newspaper
Tagesschau
(ARD)
Westdeutsche
Allgemeine (WAZ)
Frankfurter
Allgemeine (FAZ)
(host website)
no 32
no 30
no 45
Germany news
magazine
Der Spiegel yes 17
Spain public tv La 1 (TVE) no 22
16 The analysis was conducted by the author herself with the support of three student assistants (Hendrikje Brüning,
Ainhoa Masid, Anna Morgenroth) who are either native or fluent speakers in French, Spanish and Swedish. The
assistants were trained thoroughly with regard to interpreting and applying the variables; a part of the material was
analyzed together with the author and each assistant to ensure reliability. Consistency of the instrument was tested
for by analyzing comparable items (e.g. Guttman-Split-Half-Coefficient 0.663, Spearman-Brown-Coefficient 0.768,
“source”, “research level”). Consistency is seen as acceptable since the items measure similar, but not identical
concepts.
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