The New York Times' Coverage of Executions

Abstract

This article addresses two general questions: 1) Is the news media consistent regarding the coverage given executions? and 2) Does the content of news reports on executions provide information relevant to fairness/ unfairness issues associated with the death penalty? With the New York Times as the single data source, researchers used the total words written for each execution, and the story's presence or absence on the front page, as dependent variables. The authors argue that the prestige andinfluence of the Times makes it an acceptable sole data source and provides areasonable basis for drawing initial conclusions about newspaper coverage of executions. Theonly variable found to influence New YorkTimes' coverage ofexecutions was the number of days passed since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld death penalty statutes. Specifically, the more recent the execution, the fewer words written. Also, news coverage was not found to contain information which could be used to draw conclusion about the fairness/ unfairness of the death penalty.