Issue obtrusiveness and negative bias: exploring the moderating factors for asymmetric news coverage of the economy

This study investigates whether the negative asymmetry in economic news coverage is influenced according to the obtrusiveness of an issue. The numbers of positive and negative economic news articles in two South Korean newspapers were compared to the actual economic situations. Consumer prices/unemployment and the gross domestic product/trade balance were studied as obtrusive issues and as unobtrusive issues, respectively. As a result, the obtrusive issues showed typical asymmetry through which negative changes were followed by a significantly greater amount of news coverage, while positive changes were not paid attention to by the news media. In the case of the unobtrusive issues, the newspapers followed neither positive nor negative economic changes. Only one newspaper covered one of the unobtrusive issues, the trade balance, in an asymmetric way. The investigation of the spectrum of journalistic attention and examination of moderating factors for journalistic asymmetry is discussed.