Abstract
This study investigates California newspaper articles for evidence of priming about the death penalty and attempts to determine if there is evidence of priming within newspaper coverage of this specific issue. Rather than weighing the death penalty as an issue of importance verses another issue, this study looked at which side, if any of the death penalty debate receives the most favorable coverage in articles. Due to the large number of articles about the death penalty in recent years, and the diversity of ways that the subject matter is presented, it was necessary to restrict the population of articles to a more manageable size. As such, articles about California’s new death penalty protocols are studied from January 1, 2009 to September 30, 2009, and fifteen unique assertions about the death penalty protocols were discovered. Using a qualitative content analysis modeled after Kim and McCombs (2007), and an additional coding of the first quote found in each article for bias for or against the death penalty, this study found no evidence of priming.