ABSTRACT
There is evidence that media coverage of political scandals—defined as “intense public communication about a real or imagined defect that is by consensus condemned, and that meets universal indignation or outrage” (Esser & Hartung 2004: 1041)—has increased during the last decades. Several long-term studies across the world indicate that the share of media reports about norm violations of political actors has become larger over time (see, e.g., Allern et al. 2012; Kepplinger 1996; Kumlin & Esaiasson 2012; but see Basinger et al. 2014; Morris & Clawson 2005; Nyblade & Reed 2008 for less clear-cut results). However, the cause for this trend is unclear. Whereas some argue that politicians nowadays get in trouble more often (e.g., Esser 1999), not least because society has become more complex due to differentiation processes as norms may vary in different social systems and sometimes become more strict (see, e.g., the #MeToo movement), increasing the likelihood of transgression (Hondrich 2002), others doubt that norm violations of politicians have become more frequent (see, e.g., Tumber & Waisbord 2004; Waisbord 1994). Instead, they claim that the media is responsible for the observed shift (e.g., Hallin & Mancini 2004, 278). Besides the commercialization of the media, that is an increasing necessity to adjust news production to strict cost–benefit calculations (which in the end means to align the media content to the needs and preferences of the public in order to attract the audience; see Kalb 1998; Thompson 2000; Tumber 2004), the main reason for the increasing media attention to political norm transgressions is seen in changing selection criteria and an altered professional role of journalists (van Dalen, de Vreese & Albæk 2012). In particular, modern journalists consider themselves as Cerberus—controlling politics, but with limited respect and a high level of dominance and cynicism, and setting the political agenda (Brants & van Praag 2006). If they sense there might be a potential political norm transgression, they behave “like sharks in a feeding frenzy” (Sabato 1991, 1).
