This article examines whether money talks in political campaign coverage. Analyzing news coverage about twenty-nine recent direct-democratic campaigns in Switzerland, it shows that votes involving expensive campaigns and populist proposals—and ideally both—correlate with high media attention. This favors especially Switzerland's largest party with the most resources, the right-wing populist Swiss People's Party (SVP). A case study of one vote on media policy confirms these patterns and shows that news coverage is also shaped by the vested (self-)interests of media organizations. The results imply that news media, affected by the crisis in journalism, fail to cover a truly wide diversity of actors and topics.

中文翻译：

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结构性危机时期直接民主运动的新闻报道

本文考察了政治竞选报道中是否涉及金钱问题。对瑞士最近 29 场直接民主运动的新闻报道进行分析，结果表明，涉及昂贵运动和民粹主义提案的选票——最好是两者——与媒体的高度关注相关。这尤其有利于瑞士最大的拥有最多资源的政党，右翼民粹主义的瑞士人民党（SVP）。对媒体政策一票的案例研究证实了这些模式，并表明新闻报道也受到媒体组织既得（自身）利益的影响。结果表明，受新闻业危机影响的新闻媒体未能涵盖真正广泛的参与者和主题。