A critical study of how ideological bias affects a newspaper's receptivity to propaganda was conducted within the framework of the State Department's 1983-87 propaganda campaign concerning the United States-Nicaraguan conflict. Content analyses of State Department documents and newspaper articles from the Washington Post and Washington Times revealed that while many of the U.S. government's propaganda themes found their way into both newspapers, they were portrayed in different fashions according to each newspaper's ideological bias. In particular, a quantitative analysis of 1,539 articles in the Post and Times revealed significant differences between the two papers on almost every dimension measured--type of news, frequency of sources cited, and direction (positive, negative, or neutral) of unchallenged or challenged statements. The Washington Post was found to be much more skeptical of U.S. government propaganda about the Nicaraguan conflict than was the Times. / The results of the content analyses also lent credence to the notion that the U.S. press serves as a legitimator of the "government line." Despite significant differences between the papers, both relied chiefly on U.S. government sources for information; and both contained considerably more negative Sandinista policy statements than negative U.S. policy statements, and more positive U.S. policy statements than positive Sandinista ones. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-08, Section: A, page: 2284. / Major Professor: Gregg Phifer. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1989.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_78041 |
| Contributors | Dickson, Sandra H., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 199 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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