In the United States most newspapers follow news priorities of the New York Times. Based on this knowledge most scholars use the New York Times index to determine media coverage in agenda-setting (Baumgartner and Jones 1993, 2005). How newspapers react to each other in other countries and thereby causing a cascade of responses is unknown. In this case study the similarity between the amounts of media coverage given to the issue animal welfare are compared among three Dutch newspapers. The results show no punctuated increase in attention for animal welfare, although the amount of attention is on the rise for all three newspapers. The attention seems to come in waves with increasing intensity, where low and high levels of attention are equally important. We observed that newspapers tend to peak partly on different times. And those newspaper that have spikes in attention at the same time, differ in tone and framing. Once the attention was growing, we also observed an increasing amount of related topics that are linked to the issue of animal welfare, broadening and fragmenting the debate. Apparently, different newspapers do not pay equal amount of attention to animal welfare at the same time and in the same tone. The debates in newspapers are not focused at the issue at hand; the focus is scattered over time and tone. Therefore, a cascade effect will be limited, as well as the influence of newspapers on the political agenda. The absence of a strong animal welfare policy is telling