Superficial Friends A Content Analysis of Nonprofit and Philanthropy Coverage in Nine Major Newspapers

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector
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Superficial Friends: A Content Analysis of Nonprofit and Philanthropy

Coverage in Nine Major Newspapers
Matthew Hale
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 2007 36: 465
DOI: 10.1177/0899764006296849
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Superficial Friends: A Content Analysis
of Nonprofit and Philanthropy Coverage
in Nine Major Newspapers
Matthew Hale
Seton Hall University
Hundreds of empirical studies indicate that the media can tell us not only what to think
about but what to think. It is therefore likely that media coverage of nonprofits may
have profound effects on the public’s perception of the voluntary sector. Unfortunately,
there is little empirical research about media coverage of nonprofits and almost none
that is framed by communication theories. This article uses two such theories, agenda
setting and media framing, to explore how nonprofits are portrayed in the media. A
content analysis of 1,034 randomly sampled newspaper stories reveals that although
nonprofit coverage is generally quite favorable, it is often episodic and not thematically
framed. In addition, the results indicate that on the comparatively rare occasions when
newspaper stories focus on the nonprofit sector as a whole instead of individual non-
profit organizations, the proportion of stories favorable toward nonprofits declines.
Keywords: nonprofit; philanthropy; media; newspapers
THE “POWER” OF THE MEDIA
For many years, the dominant theories of media effects conceptualized

the power of the media to influence public opinion as indirect and limited by
larger social trends (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur, 1976; DeFleur & Ball-Rokeach,
1989) or by the individual psychological characteristics of media consumers
(Blumler & Katz, 1974; Noelle-Neumann, 1974, 1984). As evidenced by Bernard
Note: The author wishes to thank Dr. James Ferris and the USC Center on Philanthropy and
Public Policy for funding this research, Dr. Naomi Wish for her comments on early drafts of the
article, the NVSQ reviewers for their thoughtful comments, Fred Kameny for his expert copy
editing, and Anthony Colgan, Micheal Day, and Alexander McDonald for their outstanding
research assistance.
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 3, September 2007 465-486
DOI: 10.1177/0899764006296849
© 2007 Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action
465
466 Hale
Cohen’s (1963) famous quote, much of the early work on agenda-setting

theory also takes this limited affects position. Cohen wrote,
The press may not be successful in telling us what to think but it is

stunningly successful in telling us what to think about. (p. 45)
The central idea behind this so-called first-level agenda-setting work is that
because editors, publishers, and reporters choose which stories to include in
the newspaper or newscast, the media act as a gatekeeper, telling media con-
sumers which issues are important. As Wanta, Golan, and Lee (2004) explain,
News selection is at the heart of the agenda-setting process since the

issues that fail to pass through the gatekeepers of the news also fail to
give salience cues regarding the relative importance of the issues. (p. 365)
The underlying and virtually universally accepted premise of first-level

agenda setting is that the more frequently a topic (or media object in the lit-
erature) appears, the more important it seems to media consumers (see
McCombs, 2004).
SECOND-LEVEL AGENDA SETTING:

STORY ATTRIBUTES VERSUS MEDIA OBJECTS
More recently, however, the empirical focus has moved beyond this basic
idea to “second-level” agenda setting (Dearing & Rodgers, 1996; McCombs,
2004; Wanta et al., 2004) and the companion concept of media framing (Finkel
& Geer, 1998; Goldstein & Freedman, 2002; Iyengar, 1996; Just et al., 1996;
Shaw, 1999). The primary theoretical importance of this work is that it moves
away from focusing on media “objects” to examine the “attributes” within
media content. An example helps clarify these concepts. A number of studies
have examined the quantity of media stories about crime and compared the
prevalence of these stories with survey data showing the importance of crime
as an issue (Klite & Barwell, 1997; Lipshultz & Hilt, 2002; Trautman, 2004). In
this research, crime is the object of the media story. That crime is a compara-
tively frequent media object and is positively related to the salience of crime
as an issue is offered as support for first-level agenda setting.
Within a crime story, however, there are a number of potentially impor-
tant attributes. For example, the attributes of a crime story might be the
racial makeup of those committing crimes, of those victimized by crime, and
of those solving crimes. Studies focusing on these attributes (Dixon & Lintz,
2000; Entman, 1992; Romer, Jamieson, & deCoteau, 1998) show that African
Americans and Latinos are more likely to be portrayed as perpetrators of
crime than as victims or police officers. In experimental settings, these attri-
butes have been found to be related to perceptions of race and the potential
threat posed by people of other races (Armstrong & Neuendorf, 1992;

Nonprofit and Philanthropy Coverage in Newspapers 467
Gilliam & Iyengar, 1998, 2000; Gilliam, Iyengar, Simon, & Wright, 1996;
Johnson, Adams, Hall, & Ashbaum, 1997; Pelfrey, Shields, & Williams, 1996;
Valentino, 1999). That the media are more likely to show minorities as per-
petrators of crime, in turn influencing perceptions of race, is an example of
second-level agenda setting. Wanta et al. (2004) summarize the distinction
between first- and second-level agenda setting:
Second-level agenda setting implies that the attributes linked to the

object in the news media are mentally linked to the object by the public.
Thus, while first-level agenda setting suggests media coverage influ-
ences what we think about, second-level agenda setting suggests
media coverage influences how we think. (p. 367)
MEDIA FRAMING
Simply identifying attributes within a media story does not necessarily

help us to understand how attributes influence how we think. To take this
next step, scholars often turn to the related concept of media framing, which
Tankard, Hendrickson, Silberman, Bliss, and Ghanem (1991, cited in Waters,
Kiousis, Hall, & Kelly, 2005) describe as follows:
The central organizing idea for news content that supplies a context
and suggests what the issue is through the use of selection, emphasis,
exclusion and elaboration. (p. 2)
According to Ghenem (1997), the media-framing literature generally posits

that the media influence consumers through both affective and cognitive fram-
ing, which are described below. Although there is still a significant debate over
whether affective or cognitive frames play a greater role in influencing public
opinion (Waters et al., 2005), several studies suggest that both are important
(Rhee, 1997; Shah, Domke, & Wackman, 1996; Takeshita & Mikami, 1995).
AFFECTIVE FRAMING
Affective framing uses emotional attributes, which influence the media

consumer’s emotional perceptions of and connections to media objects. For
example, a news story may characterize a political candidate as an “inspir-
ing leader” or a “suspected womanizer.” Both of these are affective attri-
butes, but they clearly lead the media consumer to different perceptions of
the media object, in this case a political candidate.
The primary method of measuring affective framing is to record whether
or not a media object is portrayed in a positive, neutral, or negative way
(Dearing & Rogers, 1996; McCombs, 2004). The conventional wisdom is that
the media are more likely to negatively frame objects (e.g., a candidate is a
suspected womanizer) than positively (e.g., candidate is an inspiring leader;

468 Hale
Addatto, 1994; Bartels, 1993; Bennett, 1988; Cappella & Jamieson, 1997;
Farnsworth & Lichter, 2003; Graber, 2001; Just, Crigler, & Buhr, 1999; Just
et al., 1996; Kahn & Kenney, 1999).
COGNITIVE FRAMING
Cognitive framing uses substantive attributes to influence the media con-

sumer’s intellectual understanding of and connection to a media object
(Tedesco, 2000). For example, a news story might focus on candidate Smith’s
tax plan or how his tax plan substantively compares to one put forth by can-
didate Jones. The primary method for measuring cognitive framing comes
from the work of Iyengar (1991, 1996), in which he describes two types of
cognitive frames: episodic and thematic. An episodic frame emphasizes a
specific event and often excludes significant connections to a larger context.
For example, a news story simply describing candidate Smith’s call for lower
taxes at a campaign rally would be an episodic frame. By contrast, a thematic
frame provides consumers with contextual information about how an object
fits within a larger narrative. For example, a news story explaining how can-
didate Smith’s call for lower taxes might lead to cuts in popular social
programs or how Smith’s tax plan substantively differs from Jones’s tax plan
would be a thematic frame.
According to Iyengar (1991), by emphasizing singular events and excluding
connections to a larger narrative, episodic frames may inform consumers that
the media object is of temporary importance. By contrast, in emphasizing how
a media object fits within a larger narrative instead of elaborating on a specific
event, thematic frames tell viewers that the media object plays an ongoing and
important role in a larger social or cultural narrative. If nothing else, thematic
frames give consumers more information with which to make value judgments
about the importance of a media object. Clearly, however, because thematic
frames signal to media consumers that a media object is of lasting importance,
they may also signal to consumers that the media object is worthy of more con-
sidered attention. In general, the literature indicates that episodic framing is
more common than thematic framing, and its predominance often leads to nor-
mative calls for media reform (see Addatto, 1994; Cappella & Jamieson, 1997).
As the examples above reveal, much of the research on second-level
agenda setting and media framing comes from politics and political cam-
paigns. Even so, according to McCombs (2004), there is reason to believe that
these core concepts are transferable to other topics, such as nonprofits. The
key question is how.
THE MEDIA AND NONPROFITS
To address this question, the following section examines the existing research
on media and nonprofits within the context of the communication theories
described above. Although clearly more first-level agenda-setting research
related to nonprofits is needed, several studies already suggest that non-

profits are somewhat successful in making it past the media gatekeeper
(Deacon, 1996, 1999; Gould, Lewis, Zamora, & Cesarano, 2003; Martens,
1996; Nowland-Foreman, 2005). Nowland-Foreman (2005), in fact, went so
far as to characterize nonprofit media coverage as “ubiquitous.”1 As Grosenick
(2005) points out, however,
There has been little academic work exploring the inherent meanings
to media coverage surrounding volunteerism. (p. 5)
The focus of this article is therefore on second-level agenda setting and

media framing because both more directly address the meaning of media
coverage to the nonprofit sector than first-level agenda setting does.
Before proceeding, it is important to reiterate that the study of media and
nonprofits is still in its infancy. Much of the previous research has focused on
Canada (Greenberg & Walters, 2004), Great Britain (Deacon, 1996, 1999;
Fenton, Golding, & Radley, 1993), and New Zealand (Nowland-Foreman,
2005), not the United States. Furthermore, the few studies that do focus on U.S.
media are limited to a single newspaper (Jacobs & Glass, 2002; Martens, 1996),
extremely restrictive search terms (Gould et al., 2003), or a limited number of
issues (Kensicki, 2004), all characteristics that may limit generalizability.
Despite these clear limitations, by framing the results of these studies in com-
munications theory, it is possible to derive some basic propositions about what
we might expect to see in media coverage of nonprofits.
THE ATTRIBUTES OF NONPROFITS IN NEWS COVERAGE
According to Waters et al. (2005), “An attribute can be thought of as a

property, characteristic, or quality that comprises an object” (p. 11). Interestingly,
although almost none of the available research on the media and nonprofits
is framed by communication theory, much of it actually describes some of
the properties, characteristics, and qualities of nonprofits in news coverage.
For example, three studies focused on the United States (Gould et al., 2003;
Kensicki, 2004; Martens, 1996) indicate that nonprofits are more likely to
appear in news stories that are locally as opposed to nationally oriented. In
addition, two of these studies (Gould et al., 2003; Martens, 1996) and a third
from Great Britain (Deacon, 1996) all show that nonprofit fund-raising activ-
ities are a comparatively frequent part of nonprofit news stories. Because it
is possible to conceptualize where a media object “performs” its actions and
descriptions of those actions as story attributes, it is also possible to pose the
following propositions:
Proposition 1: Stories featuring nonprofits will be focused on the local level

more often than on the state, national, or international level.
Proposition 2: Fund-raising will be the most frequent topic in media stories
about nonprofits.
470 Hale
A third example of this de facto identification of story attributes comes

from several studies finding that the organizational characteristics of non-
profits (size, number of paid staff members, age, budget, etc.) determine
what the media decide to cover (Bell, 1994, quoted in Deacon, 1999; Fenton
et al., 1993; Greenberg & Walters, 2004; Jacobs & Glass, 2002). The consensus
of this research is that large and well-funded nonprofits receive the majority
of news coverage.
Clearly, this is an important finding and avenue for future research, but
just as clearly it would require a separate paper to adequately pursue. It is,
however, possible in this article to compare how often news stories focus on
nonprofits as individual organizations with how often they focus on the
nonprofit sector as a whole. In addition to providing important descriptive
information about nonprofits in news stories, looking at this attribute of
nonprofits will help to inform the examination of cognitive framing. Because
there are no empirical studies specifically looking at this, it is phrased as a
research question and not a proposition.
Research Question 1: Will news stories featuring nonprofits focus more on

individual nonprofit organizations or on the nonprofit sector as a whole?
AFFECTIVE FRAMING AND NONPROFITS
As noted above, the primary method for measuring affective framing is

by recording how the media object is portrayed (McCombs, 2004). Again, the
literature indicates that the media are more likely to use negative frames
than positive frames (Addatto, 1994; Bennett, 1988; Cappella & Jamieson,
1997; Graber, 2001).
There is, however, some indication that this will not be the case in stories
about nonprofits. For example, Deacon (1999) found that just 1% of all news
stories in his study of nonprofits in the British media focused on what he
broadly describes as “maladministration/inefficiency” (p. 58). This com-
pares to the 36% of all stories focused on “seeking resources,” or fund-raising.
This lack of clearly negative news stories about nonprofits led Deacon to
characterize nonprofit news coverage as “indulgent.” In addition, two stud-
ies focused on the United States (Gould et al., 2003; Martens, 1996) also
describe media stories about nonprofits as generally more “positive” than
“negative” in tone. These results lead to the following proposition concern-
ing the use of the affective framing of nonprofits:
Proposition 3: Nonprofits are more likely to be positively framed than neg-

atively framed in news stories.
COGNITIVE FRAMING AND NONPROFITS
Cognitive media frames, as noted earlier, can be characterized as either

episodic or thematic. In general, the communication literature indicates that
episodic framing is more common than thematic framing. Although linking

cognitive framing to the previous research on media and nonprofits requires
some interpretation, the literature seems to suggest that the same will hold
true for nonprofit media coverage.
For example, Deacon (1999) describes the focus of the British media’s non-
profit coverage as follows:
Voluntary organizations were far more likely to receive coverage for their
deeds rather than their thoughts. There was twice as much coverage of
the actions of voluntary agencies (tending to people’s needs, fundraising,
doing “good works,” etc.) than their comments (raising topics, adjudicat-
ing upon the actions of others, providing information, etc.). (p. 57)
Furthermore, Deacon characterizes nonprofit news stories as having a
broad lack of interest in reflective debate about their (nonprofits)

actions, motives, opinions and functions. (p. 59)
It seems reasonable to suggest that “deeds” are more likely to be episodically

framed than “thoughts,” which Deacon sees as requiring the inclusion of
some connection to the larger narratives necessary for thematic framing.
Similarly, the lack of “reflective debate” can be seen as amounting to a lack
of the broader contextual information necessary to warrant characterization
as thematic framing.
Although clearly Deacon’s (1999) work is the most extensive to date, other
studies echo his conclusions. For example, Deacon’s characterization of non-
profit media coverage as a “combination of indulgence and neglect” (p. 59)
speaks to both an emphasis on the positive aspects of nonprofits in the
media and the exclusion of depth and context about nonprofits in the media.
Nowland-Foreman (2005) makes a slightly different but related point with
his characterization of nonprofit news stories in New Zealand as “ubiqui-
tous and invisible” (p. 1). Nowland-Foreman is commenting on the fre-
quency, not the valence, of nonprofit media coverage. However, like Deacon,
he is indicating that news stories generally provide little contextual or the-
matic information about nonprofits to media consumers.
This sense of duality—or perhaps, more directly, superficiality—about
nonprofits in the media is also evident in two studies conducted in the United
States. Martens (1996) characterizes media coverage of nonprofits as positive,
but he also found that more of the nonprofit stories in his sample emphasized
the issues facing nonprofits (e.g., health, education) rather than how the non-
profits tried to manage, solve, or address these issues. Similarly, Keniscki
(2004) reports that nonprofit organizations are rarely mentioned as address-
ing or attempting to solve three societal problems: pollution, poverty, and
incarceration. Instead, Keniscki (like Martens) finds that nonprofits more
often play supporting, if not minor, roles in news stories about these issues.

472 Hale
One interpretation of the findings of these studies is that nonprofits may actu-
ally be more likely to play the role of story attribute and not media object.
Clearly, however, the studies provide no reason to believe that nonprofits are
more likely to be thematically framed than other media objects.
This analysis of the media and nonprofit literature through the lens of
cognitive framing leads to two additional propositions. Coupling these
propositions with the previous discussion of affective framing leads to two
additional research questions. These are listed below.
Proposition 4: Nonprofits will be more likely to play the role of media story
attribute than of primary media object.
Research Question 2: Will characterizations of nonprofits become more or
rather less favorable when nonprofits are the dominant object in media
stories?
Proposition 5: Nonprofits will be more likely to be episodically than the-
matically framed.
Research Question 3: Will nonprofits be more favorably characterized in
stories using episodic frames or in stories using thematic frames?
METHOD
This article reports the results of a content analysis of 1,034 newspaper

articles that ran in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Boston Globe, Chicago Sun
Times, Houston Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, USA Today,
Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. These nine newspapers have a com-
bined circulation of more than 8.5 million readers.2 All stories ran between
April 1, 2003, and June 30, 2003, or between October 1, 2003, and December
31, 2003.3 Table 1 contains a breakdown of the stories by newspaper.
All stories were captured using online search archives and had to include
one of four keywords, philanthropy, nonprofit, charity, and foundation, in the
headline or lead paragraphs. For most of the newspapers, we used the Lexis-
Nexis search archive. The Wall Street Journal stories were captured using the
newspaper’s own Proquest search engine, which has the same functionality
and virtually the same design as Lexis-Nexis. Los Angeles Times stories were
captured using the newspaper’s own search engine, which is slightly less
sophisticated and precise. Despite the use of different search engines, only
minor differences appear in the Los Angeles Times stories, which are clarified
in the appendix.
Using the four keywords, we initially found 6,726 stories. On review, it
was discovered that many of these initial stories had little if anything to do
with nonprofits. After excluding obvious cases where this occurred (paid
obituaries, wedding notices, and stories that might use the word foundation
in referring to the construction of a building) and excluding stories of fewer

Table 1. Stories by Newspapers
Total Stories Total Valid Percentage of

Newspaper Sampleda Stories Codedb Valid Stories
Atlanta Journal 140 111 11

Boston Globe 138 115 11
Chicago Sun Times 66 44 4
Houston Chronicle 205 171 16
Los Angeles Times 349 192 21
New York Times 183 134 13
USA Today 51 47 5
Washington Post 171 139 13
Wall Street Journal 126 81 8
a. n = 1,429.
b. n = 1,034.
than 250 words, we still had a database of 4,919 stories. Because it seemed
likely that the filters described above would not exclude all stories only tan-
gentially related to nonprofits,4 we oversampled from the remaining stories
and randomly selected 1,429 stories, or 29% of the total. As expected, further
examination of these 1,429 stories revealed that many of them (395) had no
real relation to nonprofits. These were excluded from further analysis. The
final sample, therefore, consists of 1,034 articles. Table 1 contains a break-
down of the stories by newspaper.
CODING PROCEDURES
The content analysis instrument was developed by the author with the
assistance of three graduate students. The instrument was finalized over a
series of nine drafts. With each successive draft, the students would code a
small sample of stories in an attempt to find stories that were difficult to
answer using the draft instruments. This process also allowed for the for-
mation of coding conventions and rules. Once the final draft was completed,
a randomly drawn sample of 100 stories was coded by the three graduate
students and the author. Tests for intercoder reliability indicated an agree-
ment rate of 91% on this sample of stories.
During the coding process, each coder was randomly given some of the
same stories to code to check for coder drift. The agreement rate never fell
below 84% and in fact improved as the study progressed. In another attempt
to ensure reliability, each story was cross-checked by the author to eliminate
obvious errors because of coder fatigue or carelessness, which thankfully
were rare. Finally, the data themselves were checked and cleaned by the
author after they were entered into the database. This process was designed
to eliminate obvious data entry errors and any data inconsistencies.

474 Hale
Table 2. Where Nonprofit Stories Take Place
Number of Stories % of Number of Stories % of

Where Setting All Where Setting Was Ranked All
Story Setting Was Mentioned Stories as Most Important Stories
Local 611 59 583 56

State 113 11 65 6
National 396 38 295 29
International 134 13 92 9
RESULTS
THE KEY ATTRIBUTES OF NONPROFIT NEWS COVERAGE
The first step in our study was to identify the primary nonprofit attributes
evident in the news stories. This is a fairly straightforward and largely
descriptive exercise but a necessary one given the lack of research on media
and nonprofits. More important, describing the attributes of nonprofits in
the media provides the basis for the examinations of affective and cognitive
framing that make up the bulk of this article.
Proposition 1: Stories featuring nonprofits will be focused on the local level

more often than on the state, national, or international level.
To test this proposition, we coded each story according to whether it men-

tioned activities taking place at the local, state, national, or international
level. When the action in the story took place at more than one level, the
levels were ranked by order of importance.
Overall, the proposition is supported as the results show that stories with a
local angle receive the most coverage: fifty-nine percent of all stories included
some local reference, and it was the most important in 56% of the stories. It is
worth noting that only 5% of the news stories in the sample appeared on the
front page, and 22% appeared in the front section. The remaining 73% ran
across all other sections of the newspaper, with the majority appearing in the
local or metro sections. This again shows that nonprofits are generally a local
story because national and international news is more likely to appear in the
front section of newspapers. Table 2 contains these results.
Proposition 2: Fund-raising will be the most frequent topic in media stories

about nonprofits.
To test this proposition, we recorded the most important attribute about

nonprofits in each news story. The process for determining the most important
story attribute was an iterative one. For each story, coders were asked to write

a headline about the nonprofit involvement in the story. These headlines were
grouped into broad categories by the author. The stories were then reanalyzed
and grouped into smaller and more descriptive categories. Finally, these more
descriptive categories were coded as reflecting either affective or cognitive
attributes. As a result of this process, we obtained a variable that we could use
to evaluate the specific proposition and that could inform the later discussions
of affective and cognitive framing. To be clear, what we were measuring was
not necessarily the only nonprofit attribute contained in each news story, nor
was the attribute necessarily the primary focus of the whole story. Instead, the
aim was to identify the most important attribute about nonprofits in each
story, regardless of whether nonprofits were the primary media object.
As Table 3 shows, the specific proposition is supported. Fund-raising was the
most common central attribute about nonprofits, appearing in 30% of all stories.
Non-fund-raising activities of nonprofits were the central attribute in 21% of the
news stories, and in 12% of the news stories, nonprofits provided information
through expert opinion or by releasing a research report. As with the British
study by Deacon (1999), the results show that coverage of the “deeds” of non-
profits is much more common than coverage of their “thoughts.”
Looking at the findings more broadly, we see that cognitive attributes
were the most important nonprofit attribute in 63% of the news stories, com-
pared to 22% of the news stories where an affective attribute was most
important. In the remaining 15% of the stories, the primary nonprofit
attribute was actually one of exclusion (nonprofits played a minor role).
Although exclusion is neither a cognitive nor an affective attribute, it does
relate to the later discussion of episodic and thematic framing.
Research Question 1: Will news stories featuring nonprofits focus more on

individual nonprofit organizations or on the nonprofit sector as a whole?
For every story, coders recorded whether or not the story focused on a sin-
gle organization, a few organizations (more than 1 but fewer than 10), or the
nonprofit sector as a whole. The definition of a news story about the non-
profit sector is somewhat expansive. We included stories about sections of
the nonprofit sector as sector stories. For example, several newspapers
reported stories about increased congressional oversight of nonprofit credit
counseling organizations. Because these stories focused on the activities of
hundreds if not thousands of individual organizations, we coded these sto-
ries as being about an entire sector.
The results show that newspaper stories overwhelmingly focus on non-
profits as individual organizations. Overall, fewer than 1 in 10 stories focused
on the nonprofit sector as a whole, even as it is broadly defined here. The
remaining 92% of the stories focused on nonprofits as individual organiza-
tions. Breaking this down further, we see that 65% of the stories focused on a
single nonprofit organization and 27% on the activities of more than 1 but
fewer than 10. The overwhelming majority of these stories mentioned

476 Hale
Table 3. The Most Important Nonprofit Attributes
Number of % of All
Stories Storiesa
Cognitive attributes
Nonprofits raise money and need help 314 30
A single event hosted by a nonprofit 107 10
A listing of events hosted by nonprofits 77 7
Celebrities 53 5
Direct appeal for assistance from readers 43 4
“Big” donation given 34 3
Nonprofits are involved in activities 214 21
The strategy of nonprofits 61 6
Nonprofits acting with government 37 4
Nonprofits partnering to deliver a service 38 4
Nonprofits facing difficult times 31 3
Nonprofits as an example of a trend 25 2
Nonprofits acting in the courts 11 1
Nonprofits attacking an issue or group 11 1
Nonprofits are an information source 120 12
Nonprofit releases a report 69 7
Someone from a nonprofit comments as a source 51 5
or expert on the main story topic
Affective attributes
Nonprofits are saints and sinners 228 22
“Saint” stories 121 12
“Sinner” stories 107 10
Neither cognitive nor affective attributes
Nonprofits play only a minor or passing role in the story 158 15
a. n = 1,034.
Table 4. Coverage of Individual Organizations Versus Coverage of Nonprofit Sector
Number of Storiesa % of All Stories
Stories about individual organizations 950 92

A single organization 674 65
A few organizations (more than 1 but fewer than 10) 276 28
Stories about the nonprofit sector 84 8
a. n = 1,034.
between 2 and 5 organizations. In a very real sense, according to these results,

a key media attribute of nonprofits is that they are individual organizations
and not part of a sector in the economy. Table 4 contains these results.
AFFECTIVE FRAMING AND NONPROFITS
Proposition 3: Nonprofit news stories are more likely to be positively

framed than negatively framed in new stories.

Table 5. Affective Framing and Nonprofits
The Story Is . . . Number of Stories % of Stories
Very favorable toward the nonprofit sector 245 24

Somewhat favorable toward the nonprofit sector 114 11
Slightly favorable toward the nonprofit sector 109 11
Neutral 406 39
Slightly unfavorable toward the nonprofit sector 33 3
Somewhat unfavorable toward the nonprofit sector 52 5
Very unfavorable toward the nonprofit sector 75 7
A 7-point scale was used to measure how favorable or unfavorable each

story was to nonprofits. A score of 1 was used for a story very favorable
toward nonprofits, a score of 4 was used for a neutral story, and a score of 7
was used for a very unfavorable story.
Overall, the results support the proposition. Almost 1 in 4 news stories
was very favorable toward nonprofits, an additional 22% were at least
slightly favorable, and 39% were neutral or balanced (see Table 5). Just 15%
of the stories were more negative than positive, and fewer than 1 in 10 sto-
ries was at the most negative end of the scale.5
COGNITIVE FRAMING AND NONPROFITS
Proposition 4: Nonprofits will be more likely to play the role of media story
attribute than primary media object.
Another 7-point scale was used to measure how prominent nonprofits

were in each news story. A score of 7 indicates that more than 80% of the
story content was devoted to nonprofits. A score of 1 indicates that less than
20% of the story was devoted to the nonprofits. For simplicity, if more than
50% of the news story was devoted to nonprofits, we classified nonprofits as
the primary media object of the story. If 50% or less of the story was devoted
to nonprofits, we classified nonprofits as a story attribute.
Overall, the results do not support the specific proposition, as half of all
the news stories were predominantly about nonprofits. At the same time,
however, nonprofits were clearly not the primary object in 40% of all stories,
a sizable percentage. The remaining 10% of the stories were split evenly
between nonprofits and another media object. Because nonprofits essentially
share these stories with another media object, nonprofits play the role of
story attribute in these stories as well. In essence, the results show that non-
profits appear with equal frequency as primary media object and story
attribute with another media object. Table 6 contains these results.
Research Question 2: Will characterizations of nonprofits become more or

rather less favorable when nonprofits are the dominant objects in
media stories?

478 Hale
Table 6. Nonprofits as Primary Media Object or Story Attribute
Stories Where Nonprofits Are . . . Number of Stories % of Total Stories
The primary media object (> 50% of the 517 50

story is about nonprofits)
A story attribute (50% or less of the story 517 50
is about nonprofits)
Table 7. Characterization of Nonprofits as Media Objects and Story Attributes
Stories Where Nonprofits Are . . . n M SD Significance
The primary media object 517 2.91 2.14 t = 7.472 (1,032), p = .000
A story attribute 517 3.71 1.13
To answer this question, we compare the average characterization score in

stories where nonprofits are the primary media object with stories where
they play the role of story attribute. To review, the lower the characterization
scores, the more favorable the story was toward nonprofits.
The results show that nonprofits receive more favorable coverage when they
are the primary story object than when they play the role of story attribute.
The average score for news stories where nonprofits were the primary media
object was 2.9, whereas the average score for news stories where nonprofits
played the role of story attribute was 3.7. The difference was statistically sig-
nificant, t = 7.472 (1,032), p = .000. Table 7 contains these results.
Proposition 5: Nonprofits will be more likely to be episodically than the-

matically framed.
To review, an episodic frame focuses on a specific event or individual

story, whereas a thematic story either links a specific event to a larger narra-
tive or entirely focuses on a larger narrative. For example, a story about how
a homeless shelter helped a specific family find a stable place to live would
be coded as episodic, whereas a story about the rise (or fall) in the number
of people using homeless shelters would be coded as thematic.
Overall, the results indicate that episodic framing of nonprofits is more
common than thematic framing, and hence the proposition is supported. Of
the 1,034 stories in the sample, 754 (73%) were coded as episodically framed,
and 280 stories (27%) were coded as thematically framed. At first glance, this
looks like a dramatic difference, and although it is, a clarification is neces-
sary. As noted above, nonprofits played a minor or passing role in 158 sto-
ries (15%) of all the stories in our sample. Because nonprofits played such a
minor role in these stories, it is virtually impossible for these stories to have
thematically framed nonprofits. And because excluding these stories would

Table 8. Episodic Versus Thematic Framing in Nonprofit News Stories
Episodic Thematic
Frames Frames
n % n %
All stories (n = 1,034) 754 73 280 27

Cognitive attributes
Nonprofits raise money and need help (n = 314) 268 85 46 15
A single event hosted by a nonprofit (n = 107) 92 86 15 14
A listing of events hosted by nonprofits (n = 77) 72 94 5 7
Celebrities (n = 53) 40 76 13 25
Direct appeal for assistance from readers (n = 43) 40 93 3 7
“Big” donation given (n = 34) 24 71 10 29
Nonprofits are involved in activities (n = 214) 95 44 119 56
The strategy of nonprofits (n = 61) 22 36 39 64
Nonprofits acting with government (n = 37) 17 46 20 54
Nonprofits partnering to deliver a service (n = 38) 22 58 16 42
Nonprofits facing difficult times (n = 31) 17 55 14 45
Nonprofits as an example of a trend (n = 25) 7 28 18 72
Nonprofits acting in the courts (n = 11) 4 36 7 64
Nonprofits attacking an issue or group (n = 11) 6 55 5 46
Nonprofits are an information source (n = 120) 54 45 66 55
Nonprofit releases a report (n = 69) 31 45 38 55
Someone from a nonprofit comments as a source or 23 45 28 55
expert on the main story topic (n = 51)
Affective attributes
Nonprofits are saints and sinners (n = 228) 179 79 49 21
“Saint” stories (n = 121) 104 86 17 14
“Sinner” stories (n = 107) 75 70 32 30
Neither cognitive nor affective attributes
Nonprofits play only a minor or passing role in the story 158 100 0 0
provide a less comprehensive picture of nonprofit news coverage overall

(and even if they were excluded, episodically framed stories would still out-
number thematically framed stories by 2 to 1), it is appropriate for the sto-
ries to remain in the sample.
Before proceeding, it is helpful to provide a brief description of the type
of nonprofit news stories that tend to be episodically or thematically framed.
For this, we return to the analysis of primary nonprofit attributes and break
down those categories along the episodic–thematic dimension. The results
show that episodic framing dominates fund-raising stories and stories in
which affective attributes were the most important. Thematic framing is
more likely in stories that focus on the non-fund-raising activities of non-
profits and stories in which nonprofits are an information source. Finally, the
results show that stories about the nonprofit sector were almost exclusively
thematically framed, whereas stories about individual organizations were
primarily episodically framed. Tables 8 and 9 present these results.

480 Hale
Table 9. Framing of Individual Organizations Versus Nonprofit Sector
Episodic Thematic
Frames Frames
n % N %
Stories about individual organizations (n = 950) 753 80 197 21

A single organization (n = 674) 556 83 118 18
A few organizations (more than 1 but fewer 197 71 79 29
than 10; n = 276)
Stories about the nonprofit sector (n = 84) 1 1 83 99
Table 10. Characterization of Nonprofits When Framed Episodically or Thematically
n M SD Significance
Stories where . . .
Nonprofits are episodically framed 754 3.24 1.76 t = –1.962 (1,032), p = .05
Nonprofits are thematically framed 280 3.48 1.72
Stories about . . .
Individual organizations 950 3.23 1.87 t = –4.817 (1,032), p = .000
The nonprofit sector 84 4.19 1.72
Research Question 3: Will nonprofits be more favorably characterized in

stories using episodic frames or in stories using thematic frames?
To answer this question, we compare the average characterization score in

news stories coded as episodic with the average characterization score in
news stories coded as thematic. The results show that nonprofits receive
slightly better news coverage in stories that are episodically framed than
they do in stories that are thematically framed. The average characterization
score for an episodically framed story was 3.24, compared to 3.48 for a the-
matically framed story. Although this is a statistically significant difference,
t = –1.962 (1,032), p = .05, in relative terms it is actually quite small.
A primary reason why the overall results show any difference at all is evi-
dent when we compare the characterization of nonprofits in stories focusing
on the nonprofit sector with that in stories focusing on individual organiza-
tions. As noted above, stories focusing on the nonprofit sector, although
comparatively rare, were almost all thematically framed. By contrast, stories
about individual organizations, which make up the bulk of all stories, were
in general episodically framed. Comparing these two types of stories along
the characterization scale shows that stories focusing on the nonprofit sector
were significantly more unfavorable toward nonprofits than were stories
about individual organizations. The average characterization score for sto-
ries about the nonprofit sector story was 4.19, compared to 3.23 for stories

focusing on individual organizations. The difference was statistically signif-

icant, t = –4.817 (1,032), p = .000. Table 10 contains these results.
DISCUSSION AND FUTURE RESEARCH
This study is the first large-scale, systematic examination of nonprofits in

major newspapers in the United States and one of the first to apply the com-
munication theories of agenda setting and media framing to the subject. As
McCombs (2004) points out, these theories have been empirically tested in
hundreds of studies. The results of these studies generally show that the
media can tell us not only what to think about but also what to think. So the
obvious concluding question is What do the media tell us to think about
nonprofits? The results suggest several answers.
First, the examination of primary nonprofit attributes indicates that the
media tell us to think about nonprofits as local organizations that hold fund-
raising events. Although in many ways this is consistent with previous
research on media and nonprofits, it is also consistent with the perceptions
of Robert Eggers, a noted nonprofit activist and founder of the DC Central
Kitchen, who described nonprofit media coverage as follows:
In this industry [nonprofits], in the Washington, DC area alone, the public

gives $6 billion to charity a year. We are not talking about corporations or
foundations or government, just the public. The nonprofit sector generates
$13 billion, at least, in revenues a year. Yet, the best you get in all the media
is the Washington Business Journal’s “good deeds” section, which reports
the proceeds from the spaghetti dinner helped poor kids in Southeast
[DC]. (see http://cpnl.georgetown.edu/doc_pool/IF02Media.pdf)
Obviously, it is necessary to conduct research that directly tests this connec-

tion between the attributes evident in nonprofit media coverage and the
public’s perceptions of nonprofits. This study provides a framework for such
research.
Second, despite the obvious dissatisfaction with media coverage of non-
profits voiced by Eggers and others, the media clearly tell us that nonprofits
are a good thing. Given the conventional wisdom that media coverage is
almost inherently negative (see Cappella & Jamieson, 1997), this is a signifi-
cant finding. It is also significant in that positive media coverage of non-
profits is probably more likely than negative coverage to lead to increased
donations and greater trust in nonprofits. In fact, a recent study by Waters
and his colleagues (2005) found support for this contention with respect to
media coverage and relief donations for the recent Southeast Asian tsunami.
Clearly, testing this relationship between positive media coverage and
public support for nonprofits in other settings is an important avenue for
future research.

482 Hale
Third, the results show although the media generally portray nonprofits
in a positive light, they often portray them out of the spotlight altogether.
That nonprofits are as likely to play the role of story attribute as of dominant
media object in a sample designed to capture stories about nonprofits is an
important finding because it shows that the media often reveal how non-
profits are supporting players to other more important media objects. In
addition, the results show that when nonprofits play this supporting role,
they are also more likely to be negatively characterized than when they play
the starring role of primary media object. Future research should more
closely examine how the media portray the relationship between nonprofits
and other actors, such as government agencies, politicians, and the private
sector, that are often the primary media object in stories about nonprofits.
Fourth, the results show that episodic framing takes precedence over the-
matic framing. Although perhaps not unexpected, this finding suggests that
the media show nonprofits to be of temporary and not lasting significance.
Unfortunately, the results do not clearly indicate what this really means for
nonprofits. On one hand, because nonprofits receive somewhat better treat-
ment in episodic stories than they do in thematic stories, it is possible that
the episodic portrayal of nonprofits actually helps to improve the public per-
ception of nonprofits. On the other hand, it is equally plausible that because
thematic stories give readers significantly more contextual information with
which to make long-term value judgments, the stories with the most poten-
tial to affect public perceptions are more likely to do so in a negative way.
Obviously, this study cannot directly address the point, but once again
future research should do so, perhaps in experimental settings.
Fifth, this study indicates that by virtually excluding coverage of the non-
profit sector, the media tell us that it is not important. Perhaps even more
troubling, in the rare instances when news stories do focus on the nonprofit
sector, they often tell us that it is flawed. Taken together, these findings sug-
gest a signal from the media to the public, but more importantly to policy
makers, that more accountability and legislative oversight of the nonprofit
sector are needed. Future research should examine the relationship between
media coverage and policy makers’ knowledge or conception of the non-
profit sector. In addition, future research might examine the relationship
between negative media coverage and calls for increased regulation of non-
profits, particularly at the state level.
In conclusion, the systematic study of the media and nonprofits is still in its
infancy. However, given that we are living at a time when the voluntary sec-
tor is being asked to do more (Kuhnle & Selle, 1992) and a time of “dramatic
growth in the range of voluntary activity” (Deacon, 1999, p. 52), it seems clear
that relations with the news media will be an increasingly important topic in
the nonprofit world. By focusing on the specific attributes of nonprofit media
coverage and framing the discussion in the context of communications theory,
this study takes a significant step in explaining what the media tell the public
to think about nonprofits and outlines a research agenda for learning more.

Appendix
Los Angeles Times
This appendix explains how the differences between the search engine of the Los
Angeles Times and the other search engines used in the study may affect the sampling
and results. The primary differences are that users pay to use the Los Angeles Times
search engine and that it has less functionality than other search engines. Unlike the
other search engines used, the Los Angeles Times search engine
• does not allow users to print a list of stories and lead paragraphs,
• requires users to extract stories in which designated keywords appear in the
entire text or headline, not just the headline and lead paragraphs, and
• does not provide story summaries.
Because of these limitations, we were forced to sample from all the Los Angeles Times
stories initially extracted, not from a prefiltered universe of stories as with the other
newspapers. In a perfect world, we would have printed the full text of all stories,
eliminated those not meeting our criteria, and sampled from the remainder.
However, because the Los Angeles Times search engine is subscription based, doing
this would have been prohibitive. As a result, the Los Angeles Times is somewhat over-
represented in our sample. To see whether this overrepresentation biased the sample
in any way, we compared the Los Angeles Times stories to the stories in all other
papers on the major variables. In general, the differences were nonsignificant. In one
area, however, the differences were marginally significant. Nonprofits in Los Angeles
Times stories tended to be slightly less prominently featured than nonprofits in all
other stories. The Los Angeles Times had an average score on the prominence variable
of 4.05, whereas the average for all other stories was 4.38. This seemingly minor dif-
ference was marginally significant (p = .10).
Notes
1. Other studies, most notably Jacobs and Glass (2002) and Greenberg and Walters (2004),
directly contradict the idea that nonprofits receive a significant amount of news coverage.
2. Circulation calculations are based on data from Editor & Publisher International Year
Book 2003 (www.editorandpublisher.com).
3. The first period was chosen to provide a contrast to the second, when we expected an
increase in media coverage corresponding with the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays (dur-
ing which giving, fund-raising, and concern for the needy traditionally increase). The results
suggest only a small increase in stories during the second period. For a more complete descrip-
tion of these findings, see http://www.usc.edu/schools/sppd/philanthropy.
4. Other stories only tangentially related to nonprofits that the obvious filters failed to
exclude were mainly those in which one of the keywords was irrelevantly used. For example, a
news story about a corporate takeover might include a comment such as “We are in this to make
money, not give to charity.” In other stories, one of the keywords was correctly used, but only
in passing. For example, a story about a lottery winner might mention that she once worked at
a local nonprofit but contain no other relevant information. Because there was no systematic
way to find, let alone exclude, these stories before extracting the relevant ones, oversampling
was necessary.

484 Hale
5. At first glance, these results may appear to contradict the rough parity between “saint”
and “sinner” stories outlined in Table 3. It is important to remember, however, that the results
in Table 3 focused on the most important nonprofit attribute, whereas these results represent the
overall characterization of nonprofits in each news story. This means that nonprofits generally
receive favorable coverage of their fund-raising and other activities, even when affective attri-
butes are not the most important.
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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector

Superficial Friends: A Content Analysis of Nonprofit and Philanthropy

The online version of this article can be found at:

Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action

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Keywords: nonprofit; philanthropy; media; newspapers

THE “POWER” OF THE MEDIA

For many years, the dominant theories of media effects conceptualized

Cohen’s (1963) famous quote, much of the early work on agenda-setting

The press may not be successful in telling us what to think but it is

News selection is at the heart of the agenda-setting process since the

The underlying and virtually universally accepted premise of first-level

SECOND-LEVEL AGENDA SETTING:

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Second-level agenda setting implies that the attributes linked to the

Simply identifying attributes within a media story does not necessarily

According to Ghenem (1997), the media-framing literature generally posits

Affective framing uses emotional attributes, which influence the media

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Cognitive framing uses substantive attributes to influence the media con-

THE MEDIA AND NONPROFITS

related to nonprofits is needed, several studies already suggest that non-

The focus of this article is therefore on second-level agenda setting and

THE ATTRIBUTES OF NONPROFITS IN NEWS COVERAGE

According to Waters et al. (2005), “An attribute can be thought of as a

Proposition 1: Stories featuring nonprofits will be focused on the local level

A third example of this de facto identification of story attributes comes

Research Question 1: Will news stories featuring nonprofits focus more on

AFFECTIVE FRAMING AND NONPROFITS

As noted above, the primary method for measuring affective framing is

Proposition 3: Nonprofits are more likely to be positively framed than neg-

COGNITIVE FRAMING AND NONPROFITS

Cognitive media frames, as noted earlier, can be characterized as either

episodic framing is more common than thematic framing. Although linking

Furthermore, Deacon characterizes nonprofit news stories as having a

broad lack of interest in reflective debate about their (nonprofits)

It seems reasonable to suggest that “deeds” are more likely to be episodically

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This article reports the results of a content analysis of 1,034 newspaper

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Table 1. Stories by Newspapers

Total Stories Total Valid Percentage of

Atlanta Journal 140 111 11

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Table 2. Where Nonprofit Stories Take Place

Number of Stories % of Number of Stories % of

Local 611 59 583 56

THE KEY ATTRIBUTES OF NONPROFIT NEWS COVERAGE

Proposition 1: Stories featuring nonprofits will be focused on the local level

To test this proposition, we coded each story according to whether it men-

Proposition 2: Fund-raising will be the most frequent topic in media stories

To test this proposition, we recorded the most important attribute about

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Research Question 1: Will news stories featuring nonprofits focus more on

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Table 3. The Most Important Nonprofit Attributes

Table 4. Coverage of Individual Organizations Versus Coverage of Nonprofit Sector

Number of Storiesa % of All Stories

Stories about individual organizations 950 92

between 2 and 5 organizations. In a very real sense, according to these results,

AFFECTIVE FRAMING AND NONPROFITS

Proposition 3: Nonprofit news stories are more likely to be positively