How Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report covered Gorbachev and Deng before and after The Tiananmen Massacre, 1988-1990

This study used content analysis to investigate the volume and treatment Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report gave to Mikhail Gorbachev and Deng Xiaoping from June 1988 to May 1990. The theoretical construct of this study claims that both changes and regularities in media content reflect or report some feature of the social reality of the moment. Gorbachev was apparently more newsworthy than Deng for the three news magazines, because there were 309 stories about Gorbachev and only 54 about Deng. The results of the content analysis did not support the research hypotheses that Gorbachev would be treated more favorably than De~g nor that Deng would be treated more unfavorably in the second year after the Tiananmen Massacre. In fact, the three magazines treated Gorbachev significantly more unfavorably in the second year than in the first, and treated Deng unfavorably both years. Deng's treatment by the magazines in the second year was more unfavorable, but not significantly more unfavorable. As to each magazine's direction of attitude, Time showed more favorableness to Gorbachev than the other two, but all three showed strong unfavorableness to Deng. Multiple regression tests were used to see which variables contributed more to the direction of attitude about the two leaders. On the other hand, the hypotheses on the difference of topics and volume of coverage were supported by the results.