Lights, Camera, Conflict: Newspaper Framing of the 2008 Screen Actors Guild Negotiations

This study examines coverage of the 2008-2009 negotiations between the Screen Actors Guild and the Alliance for Motion Picture and Television Producers, through 148 articles published in the Hollywood Reporter, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times. News coverage tended to focus on actions, strategies, and procedures; unions’ actions against management, rather than management’s actions against unions; intra- and inter-union conflict rather than conflict within management; and economic consequences only in a broad sense.