Tracking Leaders' Coverage
Just last month I started keeping tabs on New Zealand's mainstream media coverage of Christopher Luxon and Jacinda Ardern.
This is not because I subscribe to conspiracies about media bias -- in fact, most such accusations amount to little more than projections of the accusers’ own biases.
Likewise, I am not interested in exploring the biases of particular outlets because that's not telling me anything I don't already know.
Instead, I'm curious about how the tone and tenor of coverage shifts over time, particularly as an election nears, and especially when it comes to leaders early on in their tenure when voters are still getting to know them. Rather than rely on my own intuitions (themselves biassed), I scrape the internet for news stories as well as opinion pieces in mainstream outlets (i.e. not partisan blogs or media release aggregators) that feature Luxon and/or Ardern as protagonist, antagonist or otherwise featured voice in a given story. I then make an admittedly and unavoidably subjective assessment as to whether it qualifies as favourable or unfavourable.
Once again I tried to navigate around my own worldview and policy preferences by asking this question: overall, is the leader’s team likely to be broadly happy or unhappy with the story?
That means, for example, even though I personally detest with every bone in my body National’s proposed bootcamps, I will rate a story featuring Luxon’s promotion of them -- or even his defence against critics of them -- as positive.
Obviously it remains a subjective exercise, but my assessment is drawn from many years in political jobs both here and in Australia where I developed a fairly sophisticated understanding of how political operatives assess media coverage.
One key way that differs from average readers is an ostensibly negative story may be rated a win if the subject matter is positive territory for the party under attack, e.g. principals laying into Luxon on truancy may look bad but, to his office, this is pretty decent framing. (There are limits to this: if the criticism spirals, if factual claims come under siege, they have lost control and, positive terrain or not, it warrants a negative rating).
I make no claim my subjective assessments will even approximate perfection. That said, I think, over time, this will provide a broadly accurate sense of the coverage environment for New Zealand's two main political leaders.
There's less than a month’s data so far so the findings don't tell us much yet. (I’ve only crunched Luxon’s media from October 25th to date), And while I make no grand claims about the work -- for one thing, I don’t have the capability to cover social media or talkback radio -- over time peaks and troughs and long term trends may offer insights.
This is purely for my own interest -- and possibly yours if you enjoy as much time on your hands as I do