General Election 2015: the media campaign [report 3 covering 30th March- 22nd April]

This is the third of a series of reports by the Loughborough University Communication Research Centre on national news reporting of the 2015 General Election. The results in this report are derived from detailed content analysis of election coverage produced on the weekdays (i.e. Monday to Friday inclusive) between 30th March and 22 April from the following news outlets: Television: Channel 4 News (7pm), Channel 5 News (6.30pm), BBC1 News at 10, ITV1 News at 10, BBC2 Newsnight, Sky News 8-8.30pm Press: The Guardian, Independent, Times, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Mirror, Sun, Star and Metro We analysed all election news found in the entire duration of all television programmes. For the press, we included election news found on the front page, the first two pages of the domestic news section, the first two pages of any specialist election section and the page containing and facing the papers’ leader editorials. The results are organised into four sections: 1. Stopwatch balance 2. Directional balance 3. Top 20 politicians in coverage 4. Top issues over the last wee