Download A Study of Possible Links Between Environmental Reporting and

A Study of Possible Links Between Environmental Reporting and
Income Level of Target Audience
Samuel F. Willsea1
Our research proposition was to examine 4 different national newspapers for the purpose of
assessing their level of environmental reporting. This study was not meant to be exhaustive,
but merely a starting point for future research. In addition, we chose to study newspapers,
and not other media coverage. As Durrant et al. (2003) note, newspaper coverage is typically
highly correlated with coverage of the same issues in other media (such as radio and
television), and is additionally typically responsible for much of the news agenda during the
remainder of the day in other media.
We chose four UK newspapers: The Daily Mail, The Daily Mirror, The Times, and The
Guardian. The first two papers were chosen because their reader profiles have lower-income
levels, while the second two papers had higher-income levels, as determined by the NRS
Social Grading system (see Appendix A). Because only around 2% of the UK population
identifies as upper class (Glover, 2007), this group is not included in the classification scheme.
This was done to make our data more robust, as well as to provide for any possible
differences there might be in environmental reporting towards different target audiences.
This difference in readership profiles is also evidenced by the cost of each paper (45p, 45p,
90p, 90p; respectively).
The first three papers all contain the same page-size, but the Guardian is a broad-sheet paper,
and therefore has a larger page size. This doesn’t affect most of our data, which relies on
ratios and total number of articles. However, further analysis of any data dealing with the
absolute page space of articles should take into account that a given fraction of a page’s
content represents a larger physical printing area in the Guardian.
Our data gathering lasted four weeks2, and in collecting our data we decided to exclude
weekend papers because of the variety of additional sections and layouts between papers. We
measured the number of pages in each paper which could potentially include environmental
reporting, the number of articles in each paper each day (as well as their respective page
space), the specific subjects of each article, and an estimate of the page space taken up by
advertising within our considered sections of each paper. By measuring advertising space and
subtracting it from total page numbers, we were able to more accurately determine the ratio
of potential environmental coverage to total news coverage.
Results and Data summary
The most obvious measurement of environmental coverage is that of total number of articles
in each paper. By this measurement, the Guardian had by far the most articles at first glance.
Much of this however, is attributable to the paper’s daily ‘country diary’ articles, which
comprise a total of 1.85 full Guardian pages over the course of four weeks. While we have
included them to be thorough, the reader may remove them from the finished tally if they
wish. As these are a daily feature, they can hardly be considered news, despite their worth in
1
2
This study was made possible by an internship at the St Andrews Sustainability Institute.
June 8 to July 3, 2009, excluding weekend (Saturday and Sunday) papers
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exposing the public to personal stories about interactions with nature. When removed from
contention, The Guardian, the Daily Mail, and the Times are all only a couple articles different
in their environmental coverage by total mentions of environmental issues. The Daily Mirror,
in contrast, contains drastically less coverage in this respect. This trend of the Daily Mirror
being an outlier continues through most of the categories, and is possibly attributable to its
layout and tabloid nature.
The next important measure of environmental coverage lies in the cumulative page space
taken up by all the articles in each paper. Using this measurement as a baseline also leaves
the Guardian as the clear leader, although closely followed by the Daily Mail, and then the
Times. As before, the Daily Mirror is again shown to be a clear outlier, with less than half the
page space displayed by the Guardian.
Although total page space implies the Daily Mirror as the least environmentally aware, the
page space devoted on average to each individual article tells a different story. In this case, the
Daily Mirror is again an outlier, but this time as the paper with the largest amount of page
space devoted on average to each article. The other three papers are display lower (but
similar to each other) amounts of page space for each article. This phenomena could be
explained by the often sensationalist nature of the Daily Mirror, which lends itself well to
larger articles with large photographs shown during this study.
While each of the three previously mentioned measurements of environmentally coverage are
useful, none of them do a particularly good job of comparing the ratio of environmental
coverage to the ratio of other news in each paper. This is an essential measurement, as each
paper varies in length, and can therefore be expected to have varying amounts of space
available for environmental coverage. For this ratio, however, the results are consistent with
those of the total number of articles and total article space. The Guardian leads the way, with
more than 7% of it’s coverage being environmental in nature. The Daily Mail and the Times
both follow with news coverage being around 3.5% environmental. Finally, the Daily Mirror
lags, as expected, with only around 2% of it’s coverage being environmental in nature.
Daily Mirror
Daily Mail
The Guardian
The Times
Number of
articles
30
80
102
78
Total article
space
13.232
28.029
31.658
23.513
Average space per
article
0.441
0.35
0.31
0.301
Total news
ratio
0.022
0.034
0.068
0.035
(Table 1)
While the above measurements are all useful in presenting a quantitative narrative of each
paper’s coverage, there are also important qualitative features of each paper’s respective
coverage. During the study, we kept track of the subject of each article and placed them into
general categories to make analysis more straightforward. Beginning with a total sum of
articles from all of the papers combined, we find that climate change is the most discussed
category of news, followed by human interactions with nature, animal interest stories and
species endangerment. This is not surprising, as global warming presents the largest threat to
the public. Species endangerment and animal interest stories are also predictable, as they play
on the emotions of the public, who are often touched by stories of species dying out, or even
stories as inconsequential as a hippo giving birth at the local zoo. The appeal of stories which
feature human interactions with nature is also unsurprising, as they are more likely to
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establish a connection with the reader. Table 2 shows the results of the remaining categories,
with the articles most directly connected to the perceived challenges faced by humans
mentioned most prominently.
Individually, each paper has its own specific focus. The Daily Mirror had more articles on
animal interest stories than any other category, followed by waste reduction/recycling,
unusual weather/climate, and climate change. Animal interest stories are to be expected, as
they are often featured solely for their ‘cute factor’ or ability to pull on reader’s heartstrings.
The presence of waste issues as a highly featured category is unexpected, however.
In contrast to the uniqueness of the Daily Mirror’s results in categorical analysis, the Daily
Mail’s top subjects of articles closely follow that of the total, with the exception of climate
change. Perhaps this low coverage is due to higher levels of scepticism about global warming
in lower income paper’s readers, but this study is unable to confirm or deny the truth of the
matter. Other studies would be needed to discover if this trend is significant. The Daily Mail
also had a number of stories about human interactions with nature, of which five included
coupons to visit national parks. Their journalistic value is therefore somewhat questionable,
but they have been included in the totals for the sake of transparency.
While the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror seem to have quite low levels of journalism in
regard to climate change, the Guardian serves as a surprising counterbalance, devoting almost
a third of its environmental coverage to the issue. The only other category which comes close
is that of human interactions with nature, but this category is almost entirely due to the daily
‘country diary’ articles mentioned earlier. Similarly to the Daily Mail and the overall total,
species endangerment and animal interest stories are the next most covered issues,
surprisingly along with green energy, which seems to further back the climate change-heavy
coverage of the paper.
Lastly, the Times exhibited a large number of climate change articles, closely followed by
animal interest articles, species endangerment articles, and articles on unusual weather,
specifically the heatwaves experienced during the time of data-gathering.
Daily Mirror
Climate change
4
Species endangerment
2
Human interactions with nature
1
Animal interest story
9
Environmental degradation
Waste reduction/recycling
7
Unusual climate/weather
4
Green energy
2
Green transport
Green products/inventions
Local creatures
1
Local food
Species endangerment/habitat destruction
Flora interest story/scientific research
Animal interest story/scientific research
Green new deal
Fishing problems
Green eating habits
Daily Mail
7
18
13
15
6
5
5
3
4
1
1
1
1
3
Guardian
32
8
22
7
4
1
2
15
2
3
Times
14
11
8
12
6
10
4
5
2
2
2
1
1
2
1
All papers combined
57
39
44
43
4
20
21
26
10
9
1
1
3
1
4
1
1
2
Resource scarcity
Green companies awards
Total articles per paper
30
80
102
2
1
2
1
78
290
(Table 2)
When evaluating the data, it seemed appropriate to look for the presence of three additional
trends. The first of these trends, the cascade effect, occurs when one paper breaks a story
which is then picked up by other papers and is elaborated on. While this effect is common for
political and celebrity journalism, it did not appear as often during our period of study,
although there were a number of cases where papers wrote about the same story on the same
day. Some stories did appear to follow the cascade effect, such as articles on the return of
ospreys to Northumberland, however these stories seemed to be smaller stories which editors
may have slipped in just before going to press, making other papers appear a day later in their
coverage. A more true example of the cascade effect would be in the case of a groundbreaking
story that was unique enough to make other papers rush to cover the issue the next day.
Nothing of that sort occurred during our period of study.
The second trend, the episodic effect, occurs when papers follow up on the same story over
the course of many days. While this effect is also common for political and celebrity
journalism, environmental stories are much less likely to be followed up. The only two
episodic effects during the four week period were that of ospreys returning to
Northumberland (in the Times) and that of the heat wave alert at the end of June, which all
four papers covered on multiple dates.
The last trend, news features, consist of multiple articles arranged together in a one or two
page spread based on an overarching theme. This type of reporting in regards to
environmental issues only occurred in the Guardian and the Times. While the Times had three
news features, the Guardian had four. This seems representative of their overall coverage,
with the Guardian slightly ahead in terms of coverage and dedication to environmental issues
Considering the results, what are the implications?
The original motivation behind this research was to address the sentiment that lower income
citizens were less aware of the environment and consequently, had less environmentally
friendly behaviours. Looking at the results of this study, it seems that lower income
newspaper readers looking for reporting in the form of the Daily Mail are not significantly less
informed than readers of either the Times or the Guardian. On the other hand, lower income
readers who are looking for less traditional news in the form of the Daily Mirror are likely to
be exposed to significantly less environmental news coverage. This difference may simply be
the result of newspapers publishing what they believe their audience is interested in reading.
The format and the focus of the Daily Mirror is quite different from the other three papers,
which makes it hard to conclusively state that lower income would result in less exposure. On
the other hand, the non-conventional format of papers like the Daily Mirror and the Sun do
rely mainly on readership from the lower socio-economic classes. Depending on the view of
the reader, our results may therefore show that exposure to environmental news coverage is
affected by income, or that our results are inconclusive.
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The significance of the conclusiveness of this paper relies on the premise that media coverage
can affect behaviour, but is this true? As Taylor and Sorenson(2002) point out, “the news
media has the unique ability to tell people what to think about and how to think about it—two
functions which can have a critical impact…” (pp. 121, emphasis original). While this
statement should not be taken as an absolute since people are able to obtain information from
other sources to an increasing degree with the advent of more recent inventions like the
internet, it does lend some credibility to the premise of media coverage at least affecting
views and beliefs, if not behavior. Taylor and Sorenson furthermore points to the fact that
many believed that US schools were unsafe in the 1990s because of the unprecedented level
of news coverage, despite the fact that the majority of children are safer in school than at
home or in their community, as an example of how greater visibility in the media leads to
public awareness and concern.
Additionally, Taylor and Sorenson identify the issue of newspaper coverage influencing public
policy, by noting that if violence is covered as episodic rather than thematic, it can lead to
policies focused on individual oriented solutions like punishment rather than broad, societal
based solutions. Similarly, environmental coverage could lead to governments dealing with
specific resource exploitation or natural disaster situations rather than focus on paradigmatic
shifts in how we treat our resources and the environment with our current consumer culture.
In addition to Taylor and Sorenson, Durrant et al. (2003) note that a wide range of other
studies have demonstrated the influence of the media on public opinion and policy. From a
public health perspective, they even go so far as to say that “media advocacy has proven to be
a valuable method in reframing issues in ways that promote specific changes in attitudes,
behavior, and public policy…” (pp. ii75, emphasis added). They also point out that media
coverage can increase the perceived risk of issues. This is essential to many environmental
issues, especially in the realm of Climate Change debates, because perceived risk levels are
central in changing behavior and planning for the future. Durrant et al. also point out that
media campaigns for certain issues, such as reducing tobacco use, are often expensive and
short lived. In contrast, they note that news coverage “is not only free, but also continuous,”
(pp. ii75) making it potentially more effective than mass media campaigns.
Durrant et al. also point out that various studies have shown that newspaper coverage does
not necessarily reflect the aspects of an issue that proponents deem most important, and that
papers also tend to have both positive and negative coverage on most issues. This is
important in the climate change debate, where businesses and other private interest often use
this fact to their advantage by trying to get equal coverage of climate change denial, which
ends up portraying issues as controversial, which then lessens newspaper coverage’s
potential positive influence on readers.
Lastly, Gerber et al. (2009) found that although the slant of a newspaper’s political reporting
did not make a difference in voting behaviours, the recipients of any paper were more likely
to vote for the Democratic candidate, suggesting that at least in politics, slant matters less
than media exposure. If this trend follows in environmental behaviour for newspaper
consumers, then increased media exposure of any kind to environmental ideas and issues
should lead to changes in behaviour.
Additional considerations for future research
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While our methods for this paper were sufficient in answering our research question, a much
deeper analysis using additional measurement techniques over a longer period of time would
lead to more robust insights. For example, Taylor and Sorenson(2002) believe that there are
two significant aspects in news coverage: prominence, and framing. Prominence is based on
qualities such as physical placement of the story on the page, length of the story, and
photographic content, while story framing relies more heavily on language used, sources and
opinions, and the background information in the piece. Durrant et al. (2003) used similar
variables in their study (prominence and content), as well as adding a category of slant for
analysis.
A longer research period would be helpful, as Durrant et al. (2003) found that coverage of
another issue, tobacco, varied considerably in different months over the course of the year,
from a low of 51 to a high of 180 articles per month. Similarly, there were quite large day-today fluctuations in environmental coverage during our research. A larger data set would
therefore be a significant step forward in evaluating this issue. Furthermore, Durrant et al.
recommend that future researchers interview journalists, as their “perspective is particularly
under researched, especially given their role as the “gatekeepers” of news stories…” (pp. ii80).
Further research may also want to construct an estimated figure for the number of individuals
who were potentially exposed to environmental articles during the studied time period. This
can be done reasonably easily by following the formula set out by Durrant et al. in their 2003
paper.
It may also be useful to further the work of George and Waldfogel (2002) in looking at the
degree to which readers of mainstream de-localised media become disconnected from their
local communities due to less local knowledge. This is particularly significant in
environmental issues, which often rely on a great deal of local support in the provision of
protection for specific areas or species.
References:
Durrant, R., Wakefield, M., McLeod, K., Clegg-Smith, K., and Chapman, S. (2003) Tobacco in the
news: an analysis of newspaper coverage of tobacco issues in Australia, 2001, Tobacco
Control, 12, pp. ii75-ii81
George, L., and Waldfogel, J. (2002) Does the New York Times spread ignorance and apathy?
working paper, July 5th edition
Gerber, A. S., Karlan, D., and Bergan, D. (2009) Does the Media Matter? A Field Experiment
Measuring the Effect of Newspapers on Voting Behavior and political Opinions, American
Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2009, 1:2, pp. 35-52
Glover, J. (2007) Riven by class and no social mobility - Britain in 2007, The Guardian,
published October 20th
Newspaper Marketing Agency (NMA) (2003) Facts and Figures,
http://www.nmauk.co.uk/nma/do/live/factsAndFigures, Accessed June 15, 2009
Taylor, C.A., and Sorenson, S.B. (2002) The nature of newspaper coverage of homicide, Injury
Prevention, 8, pp. 121-127
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Appendix A: NRS Social Grading Readership figures (reproduced from NMA, 2003)
Daily Mail
Daily Mirror
The Guardian
The Times
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