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This article uses qualitative and quantitative methods to analyse the entire corpus of news articles published about North Korea by six major UK national newspapers from 2000 to 2020. It offers insights on how North Korea evolved from a relatively obscure subject to a mainstay in the world news section, particularly for the tabloids. Coverage grew exponentially, led by not only stories about nuclear development and missile programmes, but also by soft news items like football, and tourism. Notably, the tone of coverage shifted after Kim Jong-un came to power in 2011, leading to an explosion of stories focussed on the young leader and his family. Structural topic modelling reveals 12 key topic areas among elite and tabloid media. While elite media coverage spanned a wider range of subjects, tabloid media largely focussed on three topics: missiles, the Kim family, and football. Each theme was highly compatible with the traditions of tabloid coverage, supplying eye-catching images (missiles and Kim's eccentric appearance), a 'royal family' of sorts, and sports (North Koreans' feats during World Cup). Furthermore, qualitative analysis demonstrates that while tabloidization and sensationalistic reporting on the Kim family largely drove the increase in coverage, such stories also added colour and depth previously lacking in reportage on the enemy regime, thereby making the portrayal of North Korea more multidimensional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public and commercial news follow distinct logics. We evaluate this duality in television news coverage on immigration. First, by means of a large-scale content analysis of Flemish television news (N = 1630), we investigate whether immigration coverage diverges between both broadcasters. Results show that, despite an overall negativity bias and relative homogeneity between the broadcasters, commercial news contains slightly more sensational and tabloid characteristics than public news. The latter promotes a more balanced view of immigration. These differences are stable over time. Second, using cross-sectional and panel data, we assess whether a preference for public versus commercial news is associated with an attitudinal gap in anti-immigrant attitudes. Findings demonstrate that individuals who prefer commercial news are more negative towards immigrants. We suggest that differences in news content may explain this attitudinal gap. In light of the debate around ‘public value’ offered by public service media across Europe, we tentatively conclude that public broadcasters have the potential to foster tolerance and provide balanced information by prioritizing a normative view over a market logic. The linkage between news coverage and the gap in attitudes between commercial and public news viewers warrants closer investigation in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers whether 'sensational' news stories are intrinsically more likely to elicit emotional responses in audiences than other TV news stories. The research analyses a sample of British televised news in respect of empirically validated attributes, to identify the presence of particular content elements that audience research has shown to possess emotion-eliciting capabilities. The results show that news stories traditionally classified as 'sensational' - a term that implies a dramatic and therefore emotion-arousing imperative do not necessarily contain more emotionally arousing features than other types of news story. Only crime stories (among the most frequently occurring 'sensational' news categories) and. to a limited extent, political stories (a classic 'non-sensational' news topic) provide clear manifestations of the presence of high and low emotion-laden attributes. Moreover, those topics containing more emotion-laden material are not the same over time or across public and commercial TV channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]