A production and textual analysis of the reporting of EU news in the UK national press

Abstract

This thesis combines analysis of the production of EU news with analysis of EU news texts appearing in the UK national, daily press. It identifies key forces shaping EU news production and seeks to explain how and why they influence the content of EU press coverage.
Forces shaping news production are explored through interviews with Brussels correspondents, UK based journalists and EU press officials. Findings emerging from these interviews are then examined, revised and further explored through a combination of the quantitative and qualitative analysis of newspaper texts. The resulting conclusions provide a number of
original and substantial contributions to our understanding of the nature and causes of EU press coverage in the UK.
First, the thesis provides the most comprehensive study to date of the roles of UK based journalists in the production of EU news. It identifies a number of ways in which these under-researched subjects are crucial in shaping the nature of EU reporting. Second, the thesis provides new findings about the role of the EU Commission in influencing the coverage of EU news, being the first major study to examine recent reforms of the European Commission's communication strategies and their impacts on the way the press service operates. Third, the study produces a new framework for analysing EU news
texts in UK newspapers based on the empirical study of their production. In doing so, it is able to provide new findings about some of the causes of EU news in the UK press, about which previous textual studies have only been able to speculate. Finally, this thesis offers a new means of classifying EU press coverage. It will argue that existing means are inadequate, and develop an alternative which better accounts for the complexities and characteristics of EU news production.