Politicians need media coverage to get their message through to the public, but how do they do that? According to the agenda-setting literature, politicians can influence which issues the media talk about, but how they talk about them is still a puzzle. Contributing to the rising frame building literature, this paper argues that the more in line a political frame is with journalists’ previous construction of an issue, the more likely it will be in succeeding as a media frame. This was examined in a case study using a content analysis of political input to the media (debates in parliament) and media output (television and newspaper stories) on a politicized issue in Denmark, June 2009 – February 2011. The results implies that a political frame that trespasses with the journalists’ previous construction of the issue will most likely make it as a media frame. However, changing the media frame requires political frames that consistently engage in a dialogue with the journalist’s previous construction of the issue instead of talking pass it. Research in framing building, therefore, needs to consider not only which political frames the journalists’ receive, but which kind they receive.
