Effects of Advertiser Pressure on Coverage: How Germany’s Leading Political Magazines Synchronize News and Ads

• In Event: Journalistic Autonomy and Perceived Influences

Abstract

Advertiser pressure has always been seen as a potential source of bias in the coverage of ad-financed media. The effects of advertiser pressure on journalism, however, have seldom been subject to systematic empirical research. Content analyses on the subject are particularly rare. This study for the first time scrutinizes on how the representation of firms by the leading German political weeklies DER SPIEGEL und FOCUS correlates with the amount of advertising by those firms. For this purpose all ads and the full news coverage on selected firms during the year of 2011 are being analyzed. Central findings show that firms will receive more coverage, friendlier coverage and a larger share of product coverage, the higher their share of advertising amounts both in SPIEGEL and in FOCUS.

Authors

• Lutz M. Hagen, TU Dresden

• Anne-Marie In der Au, TU Dresden

• Anne Flämig, TU Dresden