Covering the Condemned | Undergraduate Honors Thesis
Spring 2015 | Thesis adviser: Rhonda Gibson | Honors level: With Highest Honors
Covering the Condemned: An examination of changes in North Carolina capital punishment coverage before and after the 2006 moratorium
by Brian Freskos '15
North Carolina has not carried out an execution since 2006 because a series of legal and policy hurdles led to a de facto death penalty moratorium. Despite efforts by the Republican General Assembly to restart capital punishment, executions remain on hold indefinitely. There is more than a century of evidence suggesting newspaper coverage influences death penalty policy. More recent scholarship established connections between certain frames and modes of coverage and public death penalty support. My study entailed analyzing a representative sample of 16 years of death penalty articles in four of North Carolina’s highest circulation newspapers to examine how the moratorium impacted coverage. I used a scoring scheme to calculate how much prominence death penalty coverage received pre- and post-moratorium, as indicated by article placement, word count and photograph and graphic inclusion. I also studied source choices and stances expressed by those sources, the inclusion of “innocence frames” and whether articles cited the death penalty’s alternative punishment: life without parole. I found that coverage has steadily declined since 2001 but dropped precipitously after the moratorium came into effect. My findings also demonstrated how articles post-moratorium received less prominence while references to innocence and life without parole trended downward. In sum, the moratorium had a profound impact on the amount of death penalty information newspaper readers receive. Future research should examine death penalty coverage in other states to help researchers develop a deeper understanding for how legal and policy developments impact widely disseminated information about this policy topic.
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The Hussman School Honors Program is available to students wishing to pursue an original and substantial research or creative project under direct supervision of a faculty adviser during their senior year. Learn more at mj.unc.edu/Honors.