Media Bias? The 1990 Croatian Elections in the Croatian Press

Abstract

The paper deals with the coverage of the election campaign of the first free parliamentary elections in Croatia in the Croatian press. The aim is to establish whether media bias existed in the coverage of the election campaign of the first round of the parliamentary elections in 1990. It analyses how the dailies Vjesnik [Herald] and Večernji list [Evening Paper] and weeklies Danas [Today] and ST covered the political parties and coalitions in the examined period. Three subdivisions of media bias are defined: gatekeeping bias, which is a tendency of the media to give a disproportionate amount of space to the election favourites; content bias, which exists if the relevant options are not given an equal amount of space; and statement bias, which exists if some relevant parties are portrayed in a more favourable way than the others. The first aim of the research is to demonstrate whether media bias existed in the coverage of the election campaign, and the second to determine whether media pluralism existed after almost half a century of a one-party socialist system. Quantitative content analysis is used to analyse a total of 1,185 articles included in the research. It is shown that media bias existed in all analysed media, but the favoured and marginalised parties were different.