Palgrave:
Many studies of political journalism in Europe claim that the quality of political journalism has deteriorated as a consequence of increasing media competitiveness and media commercialization. There is, however, a lack of longitudinal studies that compare news media across time. The study by Nord and Strömbäck fills this void by examining political journalism in leading television news programs in Sweden during the four most recent national election campaigns: 1998, 2002, 2006 and 2010. Nord and Strömbäck find no clear signs of continuous commercialization over time in terms of an increase in game-frame news stories and more interpretive reporting. The same patterns appear in both public service and private television. Overall, electoral events seem to be more important in determining the character of political TV news than media commercialization.