Industrial relations in the New Zealand news media

A content analysis was performed upon items of industrial relations news from eight daily newspapers, three daily radio news programmes, and four daily television newscasts, over a period of two weeks in 1977. The analysis examined in detail the amount of coverage given to industrial relations, and the types of industrial relations events and issues which were presented as news. Also examined were the types of people and groups presented by the news media as being involved in industrial relations, and the particular manner of that presentation. From the results, patterns in the way the news media present industrial relations emerged that suggest that there are characteristic tendencies in the news media's portrayal of occupational life. These patterns were observed to be reasonably constant across all newspapers and programmes. The thesis closes with a discussion of the implications of the findings