ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the decisions that news organizations and personnel made regarding coverage of the same-sex marriage movement and the outside pressures that may have affected their decision-making processes, using the hierarchy of influences model as a theoretical framework. It focuses primarily on three of the five levels of influence: the individual, routines/practices, and media organizational levels. Evidence suggests that news coverage of the movement has been influenced by shifting societal-level ideologies regarding sexuality, gender, and the institution of marriage; shrinking resources available to journalists; changing newsroom routines and demographics. Journalists were not asked explicitly about same-sex marriage in David Weaver's surveys, but they were queried about other social issues. Organizational-level influences can also be seen in approaches to coverage of same-sex marriage taken by digital native media outlets such as The Huffington Post and BuzzFeed. Characteristics of the individual media practitioner comprise the most micro level of influence on media content contained in the original hierarchy of influences model.
