Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy garnered the maximum media coverage in the run up to the elections while Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief N Chandrababu Naidu and Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) president Chiranjeevi ranked second and third respectively.
Of the trio, Rajasekhara Reddy got the most coverage in Telugu news dailies during the recent electioneering.
He, however, received more negative coverage, particularly in popular vernacular dailies ‘Eenadu’ and ‘Andhra Jyothi’, and completely positive coverage in `Sakshi’ owned by his son Y S Jaganmohan Reddy. The Centre for Media Studies (CMS) tracked and analysed the entire campaign coverage of the three largely circulated Telugu dailies -- ‘Eenadu’, ‘Andhra Jyothi’ and ‘Sakshi’.
Rajasekhara Reddy got the most coverage, particularly negative, in `Eenadu’ and ‘Andhra Jyothi’ during the recent poll campaign, while Chandrababu Naidu and Chiranjeevi cornered about one-third of the election coverage.
`Sakshi’ gave the maximum negative and marginal positive coverage to Naidu.
As for actor-turned-politician Chiranjeevi, all the three papers gave him positive coverage, and the negative coverage given to him was almost negligible.
With regard to other leaders, both Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) president K Chandrasekhara Rao and Lok Satta Party (LSP) chief Jayaprakash Narayan received more coverage than national and other regional leaders. However, Chandrasekhara Rao received more negative than positive and neutral coverage. Interestingly, Jayaprakash received completely positive coverage for his election campaigning.
Among the national leaders, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, UPA chairperson and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, BJP leaders LK Advani, M Venkaiah Naidu and CPM leader Sitaram Yechuri got more neutral coverage. BJP member Varun Gandhi got more space than these leaders, but the coverage was mostly negative.
As for the political parties, the ruling Congress got the most coverage (31 per cent), while the TDP and the PRP were also prominently covered by the three dailies. All the three parties shared more than half of the political news, while the remaining parties got 14 per cent coverage.
‘Eenadu’s coverage of the LSP was more than the other two papers.
Both `Eenadu’ and ‘Andhra Jyothi’ gave more negative coverage to the Congress, while ‘Sakshi’ gave more negative coverage to the TDP. The PRP got more positive coverage in all the three dailies. The TRS was given more negative coverage in ‘Andhra Jyothi’ and neutral coverage in ‘Sakshi’. Campaign coverage of all the dailies was mostly from the State capital, while ‘Eenadu’ devoted more space from outside Hyderabad.
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