Election Coverage

This entry looks at media election coverage to highlight the advantages of an international perspective, looking across a number of European contexts. It draws attention to a number of common themes and challenges in the relationship between journalism and the political process. These include journalism’s self-image as public watchdog, compelled by a shared expectation that media will occupy the center of the political public sphere. Another factor is the persistent influence [Page 542]of public service media—frequently, though not always, assumed to establish professional standards for political events such as elections—and the extension of public service-oriented aspirations to neutrality into dynamic commercial news environments.

The entry then looks to the various qualities of election coverage across national settings. There is, first, the extensive use of a competitive ...