År 2009 hade dokumentärfilmen Bananas!* premiär. Filmen skildrar rättegången i en långdragen konflikt mellan nicaraguanska bananarbetare och fruktföretaget Dole, där skadliga bekämpningsmedel anses ha gjort bananarbetare sterila. Bananas!* skapade debatt inför premiärvisningen vid Los Angeles filmfestival, då Dole ansåg att filmens innehåll bar på osanning, och ville stoppa filmen. Efter visningen stämde Dole filmens regissör Fredrik Gertten, producenten Margarete Jangård och filmbolaget WG Film. Detta blev starten på en kamp mellan ett företag och ett journalistiskt arbete, och en medial uppståndelse blev till. Den här uppsatsen undersöker hur tidningar i USA och Sverige rapporterade om konflikten kring Bananas!*. Tidningarna Los Angeles Times och Sydsvenskan analyseras för att ta reda på hur olika karaktärer i konflikten framställdes. Breven och den stämningsansökan som Dole skickade, där företaget uttryckte sin misstro gentemot filmen, analyseras även för att ta reda på hur Dole ramade in händelsen och hur detta kan ha påverkat tidningarnas rapportering. Detta med hjälp av teorier som framing, nyhetsvärdering och nyhetsretorik. Resultatet av denna undersökning visar att framställningen av karaktärerna skiljer sig åt i de två tidningarna. I Sydsvenskan är den generella framställningen av Fredrik Gertten positiv och av Dole negativ, medan framställningen av bananarbetarna och advokaten Juan Dominguez blir något positiv. Los Angeles Times framställer Dominguez, och delvis bananarbetarna, på ett negativt sätt, medan Dole och Gertten till stor del blir neutrala i dessa artiklar. Undersökningen visar även att Doles inramning av konflikten kan ha påverkat vad tidningarnas rapportering fokuserade på, där Sydsvenskan fokuserade mer på Doles felaktiga agerande och deras stämningsansökan medan Los Angeles Times rapportering överensstämmer med Doles inramning.

Previous research suggested Election 2004 involved many issue regimes and wedge issues (Kaplan, 2004; Drum, 2004; Fagan & Dinan, 2004). Preceding research proposed that the American perception of presidential candidates has been somewhat based on the mass media's increasing priming and agenda setting techniques (Scheufele, 2000; Kiousis & McCombs, 2004). Hence the research addressed two questions: Is there a bias for or against either candidate in the headlines of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Times? If there is bias, which issues tended to produce the most positive, negative and neutral results? All election headlines, from February to November 2004, pertaining to a specific candidate were recorded and analyzed. The researcher chose to study headlines because they convey the newsworthiness of the story and former research confirms that reader perceptions of a news account can depend on the headline (Pfau, 1995; Tannenbaum, 1953). This study utilized content analysis to assess the word choices and biases of the headlines of the two newspapers. The researcher created definitions for coding, trained two coders, and analyzed and discussed the results. The main findings were the Washington Times contained more headlines that were pro-Bush, while the Los Angeles Times contained more headlines that were pro-Kerry. The key issues that reflected bias included that candidate's campaign, homeland security, and values.

Thesis (M.A.)--Baylor University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-78).

Most Americans, whether consciously or unconsciously, associate certain defining traits with the contemporary American press: a broad definition of news, an emphasis on analysis, a skeptical tone, and adherence to a specific definition of objectivity. None of these elements characterized American newspapers in 1960, but all were firmly in place by 1980. Remaking the News examines how that remarkable transformation occurred, and how it influenced politics and society. While focusing mainly on two newspapers—The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times—it attempts to analyze the media business as a whole. Chapter 1 describes the rise of interpretive reporting. A response to competition from other news media and to the changing demographic profile of newspaper audiences and staffs, interpretation contributed to the disintegration of the Cold War consensus and to a reappraisal of American journalism’s bedrock principle, objectivity. As Chapters 2 and 3 show, objectivity came under attack simultaneously from the right and the left, launching a debate that has persisted to this day but that, paradoxically, reinforced most news-industry leaders’ faith in the ideal. Chapter 4 examines how newspapers began giving readers what they wanted to know, rather than telling them what (in the editors’ view) they needed to know. This resulted in a greater focus on soft news and service journalism, which helped validate a broader shift in the primary identity of the American public, from citizens to consumers. These changes occurred amid powerful political and social currents in the journalism profession and the country at large. Chapter 5 describes how challenges from minorities and women forced the press to adjust its discriminatory employment practices as well as its dismissive treatment of women and non-whites in news coverage. The social movements and political turbulence of the late 60s and early 70s also led journalists to take a more adversarial approach to news subjects, as Chapter 6 discusses. In addition to providing a novel interpretation of how the press assumed its contemporary form, this dissertation suggests that the evolution of American politics and society since 1960 cannot be understood without considering the evolution of journalism from 1960-1980. / 2018-08-11T00:00:00Z

The current heated national debate over immigration policy is a reminder of the contentious relationship the United States historically has had with its immigrant population, especially those who enter the country without proper documentation. For example, a major issue confronting California voters in 1994 was Proposition 187, a plan to deny social services to the state’s undocumented immigrants, the vast majority of whom were nonwhite. In this study, I argue that this issue took place during an immigration “panic,” one of several that took place in the United States during the 20th century. In these “panics,” which also occurred in the 1930s, the 1950s and the 1970s, undocumented immigrants served as convenient scapegoats for larger social ills. A significant and under-researched aspect of these events was the role played by the major U. S. mainstream media in perpetuating this scapegoating process. The study takes an in-depth look at how the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times covered the 1994 debate over Proposition 187, which occurred during the most recent of these immigration panics. It concludes that these newspapers’ coverage of 187 was shaped by the discourse of California’s elite politicians (both liberal and conservative) that focused on the predominantly non-white population of undocumented immigrants as “the problem.” By framing the undocumented as deviant, this coverage helped perpetuate the elite “blame the victim” discourse that diverted public attention from other issues facing the state, such as the fact that California was enduring its most significant recession since the Great Depression. / text

This Master's thesis is analyzing the media portrait of Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto in two American newspapers - The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. In this thesis, you can find the quantitative and the qualitative analysis of the image of Mexican president in the newspapers since his election in 2012 until the end of 2017. Peña Nieto is a member of Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which was in power from 1929 till 2000. Peña Nieto is the first president after 12 years break who brought this party back to power. American presidential elections also took place during his administration and Barack Obama was replaced by Donald Trump. The thesis focus on three topics which are for many years the most critical parts of the U.S.-Mexican relationship: illegal immigration, the war on drugs and NAFTA. The analysis shows that Peña Nieto's image is portrayed in two opposite ways depends on the topic. He is presented as a competent leader in the questions of illegal immigration and NAFTA renegotiation. On the other, his leadership failed in the matter of drug issues in Mexico. The analysis also shows that Peña Nieto's image in the NY Times and the LA Times changed after Donald Trump's victory in the presidential elections. The difference of his image between the NY Times and the LA Times...