seems to have gotten through, along with concern about the impact and amount of tax
money headed toward private schools” (Detroit Free Press, Nov. 8, 2000). It is not for
certain whether a divide will occur or not, but the editorial board has put the idea into the
minds of its readers and predicts that the proposal may lead to a divide on the voucher
vote even in solid districts. The Detroit Free Press editorial board is consistent with their
use of interpretive framing before and after their endorsement.
Following the endorsement of the Democratic presidential candidate, Al Gore, on
October 20, 2000 by the Editorial board of the Detroit Free Press, it is hypothesized that
newspaper articles will show a significant increase in the use of evaluative framing in a
negative direction (in terms of not supportive of Proposal 00-1).
Data reveal that the Detroit Free Press Editors received a median score of 8
measured on the scale of 1 to 9 for evaluative framing before the newspaper endorsed
Proposal 00-1 on October 20, 2000 with an endorsement of non-supportive of the
voucher proposal. After the endorsement evaluative framing revealed a decrease in the
median score to 6 for editorials written by the editorial board. However, there is an
increase of 40% from 5 nonsupportive editorials written before endorsement to 7
nonsupportive editorials written after endorsement (See Graph 7 – Comparison of The
Detroit Free Press Editorial Framing for Vouchers Before and After Endorsement Oct.
20, 2000).
The median scores are calculated by using spread sheet analysis to obtain the
median scores of the 23 editorials. Graph 6 shows the changes in median scores. In
comparing the before and after median scores, there is an increase in the Analyzing and a
decrease in Explaining and Evaluating framing. These decreases and increases in types of
interpretive framing scores are considered substantial because of the manner in which the
before and after scores for this study are obtained. The before score is calculated by
analyzing the scores of each editorial published before the October 20, 2000 endorsement
date. The researcher obtained the after endorsement date median score by using all of the
editorials published from May 1, 2000 through November 30, 2000. This method
examines 15 editorials published before October 20, 2000 and the after scores were
Convention