Diverse Politics, Diverse News Coverage? A Longitudinal Study of Diversity of Dutch Political News During Two Decades of Election Campaigns

Although diverse political news has been recognized a requirement for a well functioning democracy, longitudinal research into this topic is sparse. In this paper, we analyze the development of diversity in election coverage in the Netherlands between 1994 and 2012. We distinguish between diversity for party and issue coverage, and look at differences between diversity in newspapers and television news. Results show that news diversity varies over time. Diversity for party types increased over time. For diversity of issue dimensions, we did not find a clear trend. Television news is, compared to newspapers, more diverse for party types but less diverse on issue dimensions. The question whether these findings are an indicator of structural bias is discussed