It's the debates, stupid! How the introduction of televised debates changed the portrayal of chancellor candidates in the German press, 1949-2005

Media election campaign coverage is said to have changed fundamentally in recent decades. Among the trends identified are personalization, negativism, more interpretive coverage, deauthentication, and horse-race coverage. Usually, U.S. studies are cited as empirical evidence for these developments. Recent studies of European campaigns have shown, however, that the picture seems to be different there in various respects. This article argues that one of the reasons for the differences might be the lack of some central campaign events in European elections. Taking Germany as an example, it investigates how the introduction of American-style televised debates in 2002 and 2005 changed media coverage of the major candidates. On the basis of a long-term content analysis between 1949 and 2005, several dramatic effects of this new campaign event are shown.