The print media display the greatest diversity of all, in both ownership and content. They range from daily to weekly newspapers, from news magazines to a range of special interest publications. For the purposes of elections we are primarily concerned with newspapers, although many of the observations and standards might also apply to other types of print media.

Even in situations where the state retains a large stake in broadcasting, the print media are usually in private hands. The main exceptions are likely to be authoritarian or dictatorial systems under which free elections are unlikely to be on the agenda. But there are also countries, such as some in northern Europe, where a public subsidy is paid to newspapers to ensure the political diversity of the press. In countries emerging from dictatorship, aid donors sometimes subsidize private newspapers with a similar aim. By and large, however, newspapers derive their income from advertising and sales revenue (with the former usually much more significant than the latter).

The ideal of the "Fourth Estate" - the media keeping a check over government - is perhaps more effective in the print media than broadcasting. At least some newspapers in any country are likely to conduct serious news investigations and to comment in a reasonably sophisticated manner on political developments. The same is not always true of broadcasters.

But newspapers still have their own political agenda, which may not necessarily be a democratic one. A notorious example was the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio, which campaigned against the elected government in 1973 and in favour of a military coup - a clear case where the press dismally failed to promote political pluralism. The usual argument, however, is that the existence of a variety of newspapers reflecting different viewpoints will ensure a better informed public and a free interplay of political ideas. The Herman/Chomsky “propaganda model” of the mass media applies as much to mass circulation newspapers as to broadcasters.

Newspapers are perhaps more likely than broadcasting stations to endorse a political candidate or party explicitly. Political culture varies from country to country. In many countries explicit editorial endorsement of a political choice would be unthinkable; in others it is regarded as normal. Classical journalistic ethics would still demand that news reportage of fact be strictly separated from the expression of editorial comment. Nevertheless, a chosen political agenda will almost inevitably affect the selection of which news is to be covered.

In a more general sense the newspapers, along with other media, apply an overall selection of which are legitimate issues to be debated in an election campaign. The aspiration would always be that these are the issues of particular concern to voters. Unfortunately, it is often the cases that the media and political parties are complicit in their choice of the priority issues.