This article provides the first systematic cross-country analysis of interest group appearances in the news media. Focusing on three countries—the UK, Spain, and Denmark—each representing one of Hallin and Mancini’s three overall models of media and politics (liberal system, polarized pluralist system, and democratic corporatist system)—this research investigates how the news media covers organized interests. The findings highlight important similarities across countries with high levels of concentration in media coverage of groups, more extensive coverage of economic groups than citizen groups, and differential patterns of group appearances across policy areas and between right- and left-leaning papers. Country Variation: Spanish newspapers show the highest degree of concentration among group appearances, while Danish outlets give the most attention to economic groups. This nuanced pattern reveals how national media systems influence which interests get covered—and why.
| Diversity in the News? A Study of Interest Groups in the Media in the UK, Spain and Denmark was authored by Anne Skorkjær Binderkrantz, Laura Chaqués Bonafont and Darren R. Halpin. It was published by Cambridge in BJPS in 2017. |
