Donald Tusk tops media ranking of EU non-stars

Brussels seldom breaks through in markets such as Germany, France and the UK, research shows.

Donald Tusk is the European Union institutional leader with the biggest media profile right now, significantly outperforming Jean-Claude Juncker and Mario Draghi.

The European Council president’s prominent role in the negotiations with David Cameron and Europe’s response to the refugee crisis meant Tusk was more visible than his colleagues on popular TV news bulletins in six major European markets, according to a new analysis.

Yet the takeaway from the research by Media Tenor International, a monitoring firm, for EU leaders collectively is worrying: For the most part, they’re failing to make an impression on European voters.

Despite its importance, Brussels seldom breaks through into the news agendas in those media markets. When it does, it’s usually reported negatively.

Even when combined, the screen time devoted to the most important figures in the EU, the likes of Tusk, Juncker, and foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, was less than that of national political leaders — or Donald Trump.

The political leader who has received the most coverage across the six leading TV bulletins since the start of the year was a surprise: Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish socialist.

Angela Merkel was second, followed by François Hollande, Mariano Rajoy and David Cameron.

The researchers examined tens of thousands of reports on news bulletins in Austria (ORF ZIB 1), France (TF1 Le Journal), Germany (ARD Tagesschau), Italy (RAI 1 Telegiornale), Spain (TVE 1 Telediario), and the U.K. (BBC One News at Ten).

Among EU commissioners, Juncker has by far the biggest media profile, followed by Mogherini, Pierre Moscovici, Margrethe Vestager, Dimitris Avramopoulos, and Günther Oettinger. As a group, however, “The great majority of EU commissioners get so little coverage … that they remain unknown to the European public,” Media Tenor said.

In 2015 just five EU commissioners received net positive media coverage (Vestager, Johannes Hahn, Miguel Arias Cañete, Oettinger, and Cecilia Malmström), and in 2016 so far only Valdis Dombrovskis and Mogherini are in net favorable territory.

Between January 2012 and March 2016, the share of reports on the TV bulletins focused on the EU never topped 3 percent of all news coverage.

Of the little reporting on the EU there was, much of it framed the union as a failure, Media Tenor International said.

The tone has skewed more negative in the last couple of years as the migration crisis contributed to perceptions of the EU as helpless, the company said. More than a quarter of all reports on the TV news programs so far this year have framed the EU as a failure, compared to around 5 percent that portrayed the union in a positive light.

Important European institutions such as the European Central Bank, the European Parliament, the Frontex agency, and the European Court of Justice, are virtually invisible on the most influential news bulletins, the research showed.

Of the six bulletins, the Austrian public broadcaster ORF’s ZIB 1 broadcast featured stories about the EU most often, followed by Tagesschau, on Germany’s ARD. Least interested in the EU among the group was France’s TF1.

The BBC’s nightly ten o’clock TV news bulletin has featured the most positive coverage about the EU so far this year, although, like the others, the tone was more often negative than positive, the researchers said.

Germany’s Tagesschau has reported barely anything positive about the EU this year, Media Tenor International said.

The research also looked at coverage in two financial newspapers with influence among decision-makers, the Financial Times and Handelsblatt.

Again, EU commissioners failed to get much attention, although the ECB’s Draghi was more prominent. Merkel was the political leader mentioned most often in their reports so far this year, followed by Trump.

The data come from studies presented at conference in Brussels Thursday. Media Tenor partnered with universities to watch and read hundreds of thousands of news articles on issues such as the U.S. election and Brexit.

How the EU institutional leaders rank so far in 2016:

(based on 1,342 reports about the EU in TV news bulletins)

1. Donald Tusk
2. Jean-Claude Juncker
3. Mario Draghi
4. Federica Mogherini
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5. Martin Schulz
6. Pierre Moscovici
7. Johannes Hahn
8. Jeroen Dijsselbloem
9. Frans Timmermans
10. Phil Hogan