Political Balance on Television

Abstract

This article compares news making on television during recent national election campaigns in the United States, Britain, and Germany and focuses on one of the most interesting problems confronting news professionals in modern democracies at election time: the concept of balance. The principle of balance conflicts with the principle of objectivity. Television news professionals are thus faced with a dilemma at election time: how to report the campaign impartially while adhering to news values as the basis for story selection. This article shows that this dilemma is resolved differently in each country, based on data from observation and interviews in TV newsrooms as well as content analysis of main evening news coverage during the final weeks of recent election campaigns. The article argues that the way in which the dilemma is resolved in each country is influenced by journalistic culture, itself shaped by systemic factors, institutional rules, and political culture.