Newspapers, Impartiality and Television News

This thesis addresses contemporary debates in the sociology of science, the sociology of media and the public understanding of science by examining the UK television and print media coverage of three substantive scientific issues. The first case study follows the debate as to whether a Martian meteorite (ALH 84001) provided evidence of ancient bacterial life-forms that could prove primitive life had once existed on Mars. The second case study tracks the use of cell nucleus replacement to “clone” mammals. The third case study examines the scientific and political controversy over the existence, symptoms, causes and response to “Gulf War syndrome”. The empirical research employed methodologies developed at the Glasgow Media Group, providing a comparative analysis of the production, content and reception of news media coverage of the case studies. The methods included interviews with scientists, journalists, media professionals and interest groups, a two-year content analysis of press and television news and focus group interviews. The content analysis discovered that media coverage of the case studies was extensive, unevenly distributed over time and emphasised scientific and science-based controversy as news values. The production analysis highlighted the importance of the interaction between scientific institutions and the media. For example, science journalists regularly draw on scientific journals as credible source material. The scientific community actively maintained this situation through information subsidies as a way of generating science news. The reception analysis demonstrated that news media, especially television news, provided an important source of information for audience members. Audience members were active consumers of science news, based on their education, gender, age and personal experience of science. Motivation to consume science news was also a key factor for audience members, varying according to the scientific issue being covered by the media. Overall, this thesis has highlighted the contested interactions that construct and interpret news media coverage of science. By analysing these complex interactions, this thesis contributes to contemporary concerns about the public presentation of science.

A growing number of legacy news organizations are experimenting with ways to address the widespread perception that news is too negative. While many of these initiatives claim to apply traditional news values with a solutions-oriented twist, this study explores one that makes no such claims: the BBC’s The Happy Pod. Using a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of one year of Happy Pod episodes, we analyze the topics and news values the podcast applies and discuss normative democratic implications of this happy-news-only initiative. We find that it is almost the inverse of a traditional news program, covering primarily soft news stories and applying few traditional hard news values (suggesting that some traditional news topics and values are more straightforwardly compatible with happy news). Instead, it applies a host of humanistic news values often downplayed in mainstream news. We conclude that, as a sole source of information, The Happy Pod falls short of democratic ideals, but in other ways, particularly in taking seriously the affective aspects of the news experience and including common citizens, it surpasses most traditional news sources.

How events become news has always been a fundamental question for both journalism practitioners and scholars. For journalism practitioners, news judgments are wrapped up in the moral obligation to hold the powerful to account and to provide the public with the means to participate in democratic governance. For journalism scholars, news selection and construction are wrapped up in investigations of news values and newsworthiness. Scholarship systematically analyzing the processes behind these judgments and selections emerged in the 1960s, and since then, news values research has made a significant contribution to the journalism literature. Assertions have been made regarding the status of news values, including whether they are culture bound or universal, core or standard. Some hold that news values exist in the minds of journalists or are even metaphorically speaking “part of the furniture,” while others see them as being inherent or infused in the events that happen or as discursively constructed through the verbal and visual resources deployed in news storytelling. Like in many other areas of journalism research, systematic analysis of the role that visuals play in the construction of newsworthiness has been neglected. However, recent additions to the scholarship on visual news values analysis have begun to address this shortfall. The convergence and digitization of news production, rolling deadlines, new media platforms, and increasingly active audiences have also impacted on how news values research is conducted and theorized, making this a vibrant and ever-evolving research paradigm.

Time is at the centre of our understanding of the relationship between television news, television per se, and the culture within which television content is produced. In the weather commercial above, CNN appeals to viewers with reference to different temporalities. It offers 'real-time' weather reports, 'historical perspective', and 'forecasts' of weather to come. Moreover, bringing to bear the present, past, and future upon weather is a service framed as integral to the viewer's security — enabling them to be informed and prepared, we might infer, for the worst. CNN promises a premediation of potential weather catastrophes, reminding us of the potential for catastrophe while rendering the notion contained by CNN's own capacity to prepare us. In this chapter, we explore the principles underlying the CNN weather broadcast as they apply to television and television news in particular. We outline the 'economy of liveness' underlying television broadcasting. This forms the basis for a medium-specific alternative to Johan Galtung and Mari Holmboe Ruge's (1965) 'news values' paradigm which has endured in much media analysis to this day.

Public and commercial news follow distinct logics. We evaluate this duality in television news coverage on immigration. First, by means of a large-scale content analysis of Flemish television news ( N = 1630), we investigate whether immigration coverage diverges between both broadcasters. Results show that, despite an overall negativity bias and relative homogeneity between the broadcasters, commercial news contains slightly more sensational and tabloid characteristics than public news. The latter promotes a more balanced view of immigration. These differences are stable over time. Second, using cross-sectional and panel data, we assess whether a preference for public versus commercial news is associated with an attitudinal gap in anti-immigrant attitudes. Findings demonstrate that individuals who prefer commercial news are more negative towards immigrants. We suggest that differences in news content may explain this attitudinal gap. In light of the debate around ‘public value’ offered by public service media across Europe, we tentatively conclude that public broadcasters have the potential to foster tolerance and provide balanced information by prioritizing a normative view over a market logic. The linkage between news coverage and the gap in attitudes between commercial and public news viewers warrants closer investigation in the future.

In this paper, we present a schema for content-based analysis of broadcast news video. First, we separate commercials from news using audiovisual features. Then, we automatically organize news programs into a content hierarchy at various levels of abstraction via effective integration of video, audio, and text data available from the news programs. Based on these news video structure and content analysis technologies, a TV news video Library is generated, from which users can retrieve definite news story according to their demands.

Like quantitative content analysis, qualitative content analysis is an empirical method of social sciences for analyzing live or recorded human communication such as → Newspaper articles, protocols of → television news or programs, transcripts of → interviews, or protocols from → observations (→ Content Analysis, Quantitative). This written or transcribed material is called text material in this context (→ Text and Intertextuality). From a general perspective, there are two main differences between quantitative and qualitative content analysis. First, quantitative content analysis works deductively and measures quantitatively. In this respect, quantitative content analysis decomposes the text material into different parts and assigns numeric codes to these elements or parts. Of course, such parts are not just words, but are rather issues, statements, arguments, or bundles of → meaning. By contrast, however, qualitative content analysis works inductively by summarizing and classifying elements or parts of the text material and assigning labels or categories to them. In this respect, qualitative content analysis searches rather for “coherent” meaning structures in the text material.

In a study of Swedish news media, 1912-84, a distinction is made between news values, regarded as more or less permanent, and changing news ideologies, conceived as an outflow of other ideologies. In statements concerning the broadcasting media three periods of different news ideologies are identified. They all seem to have had a strong impact both on the selection of news and on the selection of perspectives applied in the news.

Many claim that populism in the Netherlands has grown over the last 10 years; that it spreads among mainstream parties; that its success has to do with the media, who pay more and more attention to populist parties and immigration issues; but that it is difficult to distinguish between political populism intended for the media and populism by the media. In a longitudinal content analysis of newspapers, television news, talk shows and party political broadcasts, covering seven elections in nearly 20 years, these claims are put to the test. The picture that emerges is far more ambiguous than publicized opinion suggests, with no clear trend but a downward one in 2012.

Environmental journalists, as gatekeepers, often become arbiters of risk and benefit information. This study explores how their routine news value judgments may influence reporting on marine aquaculture, a growing domestic industry with complex social and ecological impacts. We interviewed New England newspaper journalists using Q methodology, a qualitative dominant mixed-method approach to study shared subjectivity in small samples. Results revealed four distinct reporting perspectives—“state structuralist,” “neighborhood preservationist,” “industrial futurist,” and “local proceduralist”—stemming from the news value and objectivity routines journalists used in news selection. Findings suggest implications for public understanding of, and positionality toward, natural resource use and development.

Crime is central to the public debate about the state of American society. Citizens consistently express great concern about the issue and are increasingly calling for punitive policies, such as “three strikes” and the death penalty. In response, politicians and policymakers have allocated larger and larger shares of their budgets to crime control. This is ironic given that the population-adjusted crime rate has declined in recent years. This article addresses the paradox by focusing on the role of television news. A content analysis of local television news in a major media market demonstrates that coverage of crime features two important cues: Crime is violent, and criminals are nonwhite. We translate these media biases into an experimental design that manipulates the level of violence and the race of the perpetrator to test the relevance of these cues to public thinking about crime. The results indicate that race works independently and in conjunction with racial stereotypes to influence people's concern about crime and their willingness to attribute criminal behavior to breakdowns in the African-American community. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for race relations, the practice of journalism, and public policy.

International audience

This multi-method study investigates how news media in Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands covered the Convention’s preparation of the European Union Constitution. The study draws on interviews with Brussels correspondents and a content analysis of television news and national newspapers. Results show that the Constitution entered and vanished from the media agenda, the tone of the coverage was predominantly negative, and the issue was reported from a European angle. Explanations of these results come from journalists’ relations with EU institutions, their home news organizations, and their perception of the audience.

The role of the media in the creation of distrust is much debated in political communication. Will negative news, for example, relentless attacks on political authorities, result in political cynicism or in a stimulation effect? By and large the media may stimulate political participation,but it is less clear when negative news will nullify this effect. Negative news may not only have short-term behavioral effects but also effects on underlying attitudes such as trust in politicians, which may produce their “sleeper effect” on political behavior only in the long run. This article addresses two related research questions.Will negative news discourage trust in political leaders? Will trust have a sleeper effect for future party choice and future turnout within the months to come? The 2002 Dutch election campaign,being an unprecedented negative campaign as compared to other Dutch campaigns, provides a good case to investigate these questions. On the basis of a biweekly seven-wave panel survey study and a daily content analysis of television news and newspapers,negative news was found to have a significant effect on trust in party leaders in addition to prior vote preference and education.The distrust in party leaders also had a significant sleeper effect in the long run on turnout and on the actual vote in addition to previous intentions.In general,these findings support the malaise theory. They are helpful to explain why the Christian Democrats could win the elections in defiance of the polls.

Studies on news values have provided many insights into what gets reported in the media. In this study we use the concept of news values to examine how journalists perceive the newsworthiness of party messages. Taking an innovative approach, fictional party press releases are used to test for the influence of five important news values in the context of political news in a factorial survey experiment. This allows us to study those news values in relation to one another in a controlled experimental setting, an advantage over traditional gatekeeping studies. Political journalists in Switzerland and the Netherlands were asked to indicate whether they would consider these press releases for reporting or not. Findings show that the power status of the party, unexpectedness, and the magnitude of the political action announced influence journalists’ perception of newsworthiness. Messages from parties that were part of government were more likely to be selected for coverage in the Netherlands, whereas the party did not matter in Switzerland, where power is distributed more evenly. This shows that political system characteristics influence the work of journalists. Opposed to results from content analyses of news output, some news values (personal status, conflict) did not prove to be relevant. In the conclusion section we elaborate on potential explanations.