Newspaper Coverage of Government Contracting in the United States: Fueling a Narrative of Distrust and Incompetence

Abstract

The individual interpretations of purchasing policies weaken fair government purchasing practices. However, this does not fully account for the nature of the media’s coverage of government contracting, taken as a whole. The authors seek to understand better framing in newspaper stories on government procurement, with the government as a force that creates opportunity and fraud. The paper focuses on an area of cognitive uncertainty in understanding portrayals of public procurement in newspaper articles as positive or negative, and, assuming a lack of balance, what interest or group do articles favor in their portrayal of this public function? Sentiment analysis of a corpus of newspaper articles focusing on government contracting was conducted. This analysis suggests that the negative perception of government contracting is reinforced and exacerbated by sensationalized media coverage, a negative impact on the policymaking process and public discourse, and public trust in government results.

Keywords

• public procurement
• newspaper coverage of government
• negative reinforcement