Abstract
This paper examines the coverage of wealth and inheritance taxation in the early 21st century (2000 to 2018) in seven German daily and weekly newspapers (Welt am Sonntag, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, Die Welt, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung and taz). Rooted in the tradition of Political Economy of the Media, discourses in the media constitute preferences, not to the least for public policies.
Media are not neutral information provider, but active in constructing social reality, influencing the public via the discourses told. International empirical studies analysing the media coverage on economic inequality and redistribution policies serve as basis for the present study.
Building on corpus linguistics, this paper shows that wealth and inheritance taxation is a rather infrequent topic over the entire period, with the exception of a few months of intense, increased reporting. Content-wise, the coverage focusses on the political (party) level, has a clear monetary dimension and indicates an—albeit rather weak—connection to socio-political and economic debates.
The analysis of selected time periods reinforces the evidence that the political (party) level dominates, as controversies in the political sphere and debates on reforming the inheritance tax are the central occasions for increased coverage. Ultimately, the analyses of the single newspapers confirm the reporting between the different newspapers as quite similar; minor differences arise with regard to company-related aspects (Die Welt, Welt am Sonntag and FA Z ), a more detailed coverage of the tax design (Süddeutsche Zeitung), and a connection of inheritance and wealth taxes with crisis developments and climate change (taz).