The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the impact of corporate structure on editorial-page coverage of global warming. Employing a macro-social perspective, this dissertation posits that, contrary to the corporate media critics’ claim of pro-industry bias, newspapers become more critical of dominant economic and political elites as they acquire the characteristics of the corporate form of organization. A national probability survey of daily newspapers in the United States was employed to test following hypotheses:H1: The more a newspaper exhibits the characteristics of the corporate form of organization, the more editorials it will publish about global warming and the Bush administration’s policies toward global warming.H2: The more a newspaper exhibits the characteristics of the corporate form of organization, the more critical its editorials will be of the Bush administration’s policies toward global warming.Survey data supported both hypotheses. Corporate structure was positively related to the number of editorial. Also, corporate structure was positively related to the editorial vigor. Regression analysis was conducted to determine whether the corporate structure would still remain predictors of editorial vigor when controlling for newspaper’s political ideology and ownership type (public vs. private). The findings suggest that 1) structural complexity has direct effects on editorial vigor; 2) newspaper ideology mediates effects of public ownership on editorial vigor, and 3) newspaper ideology is directly related to editorial vigor
