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News journalists are charged with documenting current events in an objective manner. As a by-product of this role, journalistic accounts are often seen outside of the cultural realm, as third-party reports that are free from personal bias or cultural influences. There is a growing body of scholarship that refutes this categorization, arguing that journalism is distinctly inside the cultural realm and necessarily influenced by societal factors. This study draws on collective memory theory, and seeks to understand how the collective memory of Major League Baseball's history influenced journalistic accounts of baseball's Steroid Era from the late 1990s up to the year 2013. Utilizing a grounded theory methodology, this study qualitatively analyzed 226 news articles from both national and local newspapers and sports magazines in the years 1998, 2002, 2004, 2007, and 2013. The researcher identified articles' narrative structures and transformations of collective memories over time. Both of these aspects were then measured against the study's stated goal of objectivity, which was to "to "reach the highest degree of correspondence between journalistic assertions and reality" (Boudana, 2011, p. 396). The study found that the historical values with which the baseball collective identified--namely, that baseball had historically been a game of integrity--strongly influenced media coverage of the scandal. The partiality of collective memory negatively affected journalistic objectivity, as journalists often compared the current era to inherently incomplete versions of the past. / Media Studies & Production

A content analysis and post hoc content analysis of 362 news articles in national newspapers, regional newspapers, and Internet news Web sites investigated the prevalence of issue-specific and generic frames, frame valence, and the personalization of media coverage of the steroid scandal in Major League Baseball. Research guided by framing theory found 2,353 frames present in the initial analysis and 2,834 frames present after the post hoc analysis. Generic frames were more prevalent than issue-specific frames in coverage in initial analysis. The post hoc analysis, however, indicates that issue-specific frames were more prevalent than generic frames in terms of times present. Frames are valenced negatively more frequently than neutrally or positively in coverage. Media coverage was focused on the individuals more often than on the organization, however, both the individuals and organization were treated similarly in terms of valence of frames. The findings of the analyses supported scholarship calling for more analysis of generic and issue-specific frames, the presence of valence in frames, and the personalization of media coverage in the political communication context that in this case is present in the sports media context as well. Findings merit further scholarship on broader source comparison in coverage of this scandal, agenda-setting in various forms, and further frame analysis in the sports media contexts and other contexts outside of the political communication context as well. / Master of Arts