In 2007, over a thousand candidates campaigned for office – over 60 per cent of them from outside the major parties. Interest groups, social movements, lobbyists and members of the public also proposed a large range of topics and expressed many different views. Every day of the campaign, events were held in electorates across the country. Between them, the two major parties put out over 80 separate policies and their leaders conducted more than 200 media interviews and press conferences. From this kaleidoscope of material, what was judged to be ‘newsworthy’ and included in the final product of news is an important matter.

According to agenda-setting theory, by making decisions about what stories to cover and how much prominence and space to give them, the media have great power to influence the public agenda – what people find important, what they think about, discuss with others and use as a basis for their decision-making. But if this is true, as we saw in the previous chapter, it is tempered by the power that politicians and their advisers have to influence news content. This chapter considers what is reported in election news and where those selections stem from. It tests whether politicians have ‘hijacked’ the news agenda but also whether the Australian media, as they are often accused, tend to hunt as a ‘pack’, following the same stories and interpretations.