ABSTRACT
This chapter sketches what we know about how print and television news stories frame policy issues, considers the implications of these patterns for public opinion, and explores how evolving technology may be changing public policy coverage as newspapers and TV networks steadily shift their content online. It illustrates these framing patterns with an analysis of both traditional and online print and television news coverage of several important economic and social welfare policy debates from 1981 through 2017. Television and print media framing is important because the broad reach of these outlets into the American public gives their coverage a big role in setting the terms of political debate. However, the television news can often be a more powerful force than newspapers in shaping public opinion, both in affecting our policy views and influencing our perceptions of the broader political system that generates public policy.
