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This study incorporates the issue-ownership concept into the aggregate president in approval literature. A content analysis of media coverage from the Reagan through Clinton administrations of four party-owned issues--Social Security or Medicare, environmental protection, national defense, and size of government--demonstrates that when the agenda is dominated by issues on which the president's party enjoys credibility, approval increases, controlling for the typical economic and event variables. Similarly, increased coverage of issues owned by the opposition party leads to decreased approval, all things equal. Thus, when the media primes a party-owned issue, the public responds by evaluating the president consistent with his credibility on the issue. These relationships are robust across the typical functional forms used to model approval. Keywords: presidential approval; issue ownership; priming; media coverage

The paper seeks to establish a simple three-stage argument. It is argued, first, that the critical proximate economic source of party preferences is heavily valenced--that what matters most to voters are the relative economic management capabilities of the main rival parties. Second, these 'valenced' perceptions of party competence are themselves derived primarily from voters' economic evaluations, and in particular from their personal prospective evaluations. Third, these evaluations derive more from the way in which the media, and in particular television news programs, present economic developments than they do from 'objective' changes in the 'real' economy. These propositions are tested against monthly time-series data drawn from the United Kingdom during the first period of New Labour government 1997-2001. The data set employed combines aggregate-level opinion poll data, 'objective' measures of the macroeconomy, and data derived from a systematic content analysis of television news coverage of the economy. The empirical results provide preliminary support for all three propositions.

What did Newt Gingrich do to deserve such awful coverage? Although the Contract With America moved at unprecedented speed through the House of Representatives, statements about Gingrich from national reporters [...]

A scientific contribution to the process of self- reflection by the press, which tries to find whether, and in which way Fortuyn was demonized, is presented. Similarities and differences in the treatment of Pim Fortuyn and the extreme right are studied.

The relationship between three types of political personalization, namely institutional, media and behavioral, is studied by means of a comparative analysis of the Israeli case (1949-2003). It shows that political personalization can be better understood by employing Wolfsfeld's politics-media-politics (PMP) model which states that institutional personalization leads to personalization in the media which in turn leads to personalization in the behavior of politicians.

A study is conducted to analyze if the Flemish media contributed to the success of the Vlaams Blok by emphasizing the themes of the party. The analysis shows that especially immigrant topics and crime receive extensive and growing media attention, and time series analysis shows that the rise parallels the electoral growth of the Vlaams Blok.

The Nepalese government is caught in a bloody war against the Maoist Party since the collapse of peace talks in November 2001, since the government introduced a State of Emergency, which had a devastating impact upon the media. The International Press Institute launched a mission to Nepal and met the minister of information, who agreed to improve communications between the government and media, thus cementing the relationship between IPI and Nepalese journalists.