Framing the Trump Administration’s “Zero Tolerance” Policy: A Quantitative Content Analysis of News Stories and Visuals in US News Websites

Abstract

ABSTRACT A quantitative content analysis was employed to study how websites of newspapers (The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal) and cable news (CNN, MSNBC, Fox News) framed the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy in stories (N = 477) and visuals (N = 501). Overall, Attribution of responsibility was the most used frame and the news content was much more thematic then episodic, with the exception of the Human interest frame. The New York Times and the Washington Post used more frequently the Morality frame, while CNN and MSNBC had more Human interest stories and The Wall Street Journal focus more on the Economic frame. Crime was prominent only on Fox News. The visuals predominantly focused on immigrants in shelters and children stopped at the border, and they portrayed more negative than positive emotions. Fox News was the only news outlet to publish images of immigrants trying to force the border and to release more visuals of men alone. CNN and MSNBC used more frequently images of immigrants looking directly at the camera. Surprisingly, The New York Times, whose stories criticized the policy, published the lowest number of images portraying children behind bars.