TV News Bias during General Election: Polish and Slovak Cases From 2023

The article provides a comparative analysis of political bias in six television news services during the parliamentary election campaigns of 2023 in Poland and Slovakia. Additionally, it introduces a tool designed to measure the political bias of traditional media. Despite the majority of contemporary research focusing on political communication via the internet, particularly through social media, studies on traditional media are becoming increasingly scarce. Nonetheless, in many nations, including Poland and Slovakia, television, particularly news broadcasts, continues to serve as a significant source of political information. The study utilized manual content analysis, with the results used to compute indicators of visibility, exposure, and overtone for the major electoral committees featured in the broadcasts. Furthermore, a political bias index tool was applied, allowing for a comparison of the degree of bias across news services from different television stations in both countries under investigation.