Is "Man Bites Dog" Still News? Trump-v-GOP Spats in a Partisan Media Milieu

Traditional norms of newsworthiness include favoring conflict and unusualness. In political news, this arguably results in greater emphasis on same-party conflict or partisan infighting between officials in “man bites dog” fashion. However, given the recent rise of partisan or more aligned media outlets, the incentive for this behavior may be altered. This study examines two sets of parallel case studies of within-party and cross-party conflict across three outlets: Fox, MSNBC and ABC – two opposite partisan and one neutral – in a tentative attempt to see if news norms on this dimension are different in today’s slanted media. While it does not find stark differences, it does raise new questions for future research.