French news magazines on America, 1974-1984: Influence of political ideology on media content

This study examines the coverage of the United States by three ideologically different weeklies: Le Nouvel Observateur, L'Espress and Le Point, from 1974 to 1984.;Research conducted in the perspective of the political economy model found that news media are subjected to market constraints resulting in an increasingly standardized content. Yet, French opinion surveys and analyses of political parties showed that ideological orientation affected the perception of the United States. This suggested that it might also affect the weeklies' American coverage. The three magazines have historically been involved in intellectual and political debates. They are broadly diffused, address similar audiences, and represent major political trends: Socialist and Right of Center. An overview of their commercial, organizational and political itinerary pointed to constraints which might have affected their content, and situated them ideologically.;A content analysis based on Osgood's Evaluative Assertion Analysis extracted evaluations of American politics, economy and society from a random sample of 305 articles, and gave them ratings on a scale ranging from ;All magazines showed a fairly constant interest in the United States, and strongly focused on the presidential function and US international relations. But significant differences were found, which suggested an influence of ideology: the left wing paper showed a greater interest in the liberal presidency (Carter), and in economic and social issues.;No relationship was found between amount of coverage and level of favorability. But results indicated a link between favorability and ideology, especially for the major political topics--the executive branch of the government, and international relations. The left wing magazine had the most negative coverage of those topics, in line with French Left's anti-Americanism, while the "Atlantist" l'Express was the most positive. When those topics were analyzed by presidency, the main trend was a positive shift towards the US, except for the left wing paper's negative shift during the Reagan presidency. A trend towards standardization was also observed in the middle of the decade, which did not persist into the last period.;The analysis showed that some aspects of the political economy model were supported by the data. But persisting ideological differences proved that a "cultural" approach was also necessary to fully understand the paper's evolution. It also suggested that domestic ideologies can influence the coverage of foreign news.