Editorial Control? National Newspaper Characteristics, Substantive News Coverage, and the 1960s Civil Rights Movement

• In Event: 1545 - Media Influences on Social Movements

Abstract

Which characteristics of newspapers and articles influence the nature of movement coverage? Does a news organization’s editorial orientation matter or the type of article in which movement actors appear? Scholars addressing the consequences of movements have focused recently on the causal influence of the institutions and organizations movement actors target. News coverage is a key potential cultural consequence of movements and movement organizational forms and actions have been shown to influence the quality of their coverage, but few attempts have been made to address the influence of newspapers and article types on this outcome. We argue that a series of newspaper and article features will influence the quality of coverage. The quality of news coverage is central to movement actors’ bids to influence public debates. These features include the editorial orientation of the newspaper, the type of article, and whether movement actors initiate the coverage. To address these issues, we examine all front-page articles in extensive runs of coverage of five prominent African American rights organizations across four national newspapers in the 1960s. Through regression analyses of more than 1000 individually coded articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal, we find strong support for our claims about the influence of newspaper characteristics on the quality of coverage for these movement actors.

Authors

• Edwin Amenta, University of California, Irvine

• Thomas Alan Elliott, University of California, Irvine

• Nicole Clorinda Shortt, University of California, Irvine

• Amber Celina Tierney, University of Maine

• Didem Turkoglu, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill