Stephen J. Farnsworth

Scientific Assessments of Climate Change Information in News and Entertainment Media

An elite survey of members of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union conducted in 2007 reveals that the vast majority of climate scientists positively assess both national print news reports and Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth as informative, with lower grades being assessed on climate change content that appeared on network and cable television news as well as in Michael Crichton’s novel State of Fear. Multivariate analysis reveals that more positive scientific assessments are associated in most cases with the level of confidence scientists have in the research conducted by their colleagues as well the severity of the impact they anticipate from global warming in the years ahead.

The International Two- Step Flow in Foreign News: Canadian and U.S. Television News Coverage of U.S. Affairs

Content analysis of U.S. and Canadian television news from 2004 to 2006 reveals considerable similarities in the volume of news coverage of President George W. Bush and the Iraq War on both sides of the border. Indeed, these data suggest the possibility of an international two-step news flow, where changes in the volume of coverage on NBC frequently were reflected in the news coverage on CBC and CTV during the following days. It is suggested here that this may be attributable to the limitations faced by international reporters, resulting in a “two-step flow” that should be relevant not just for Canadian reporters in the United States, but also for many international reporters elsewhere.

No Small-Town Poll Public Attention to Network Coverage of the 1992 New Hampshire Primary

Content-coded network newscasts were used to determine the importance of news coverage to the poll standings of leading candidates in the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic Primary. It was found that “horse-race” coverage mattered much more than reporting on more substantive matters, such as a candidates capacity to be president. This was particularly true for Bill Clinton, who suffered an “antibandwagon” effect from the predominantly negative coverage he received. The findings here raise questions about whether there really is anything special about the New Hampshire primary. The states 1992 Democratic primary differed little from the television-dominated contests seen elsewhere in American electoral politics.

Network Television’s Coverage of the 2008 Presidential Election

Content analysis of network evening news coverage of the 2008 presidential election revealed a slight increase in the amount of coverage and a decline in the coverage of policy matters compared to 4 years earlier. Barack Obama received the most positive coverage recorded for any major party nominee on network television since the Center for Media and Public Affairs started analyzing election news content in 1988. The tonal gap between the Democratic and Republican nominees was also the largest recorded over the past six presidential elections. The one-sided coverage on ABC, CBS, and NBC was in sharp contrast to the more uniformly negative coverage of the two candidates during the evening newscasts on Fox News.

Book Review: Jim Willis The Media Effect: How the News Influences Politics and Government Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007. 162 pp. ISBN 0 275 99496 1:

Scheuer does not propose that newspaper-reading be required like after-school homework. Instead, he advocates beefing up non-profit journalism – ‘the love child of democracy and capitalism’ – as ‘a natural alternative to the contradiction that is commercial journalism’ (p. 158). This solution is less persuasive than Scheuer’s searing indictment of the status quo. After all, non-profit journalism, however high-quality or laudable, is too feeble to compete with deep-pocketed multinational media corporations or to pose a genuine challenge to the overweening power of the state; at best, such philanthropic endeavors seem destined to operate only at the margins of public influence. Besides, at the end of the day, like all other charities, non-profit news inevitably depends on the whims of its benefactors. The Big Picture has other weaknesses. It is occasionally redundant and meanders from its central thesis into discursions about truth, ideology, objectivity and media criticism. A chapter on journalism education, while absorbing, also diverts from the core argument. Scheuer wrongly attributes to New York Times columnist James Reston the aphorism that ‘journalism is the first rough draft of history’, which in fact was coined by Washington Post publisher Philip Graham. Similarly, the claim that America’s First Amendment enshrined press freedom in ‘absolutist language’ is historically inaccurate; the first Congress refused to pass unconditional protection for the press and scuttled Madison’s stronger language – ‘freedom of the press, as one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable’ – in favor of the more watered-down wording that remains today (Blanchard, 1991: 44). Still, these are small quibbles in what is otherwise a sharp, accessible, often funny book sprinkled with observations from Immanuel Kant and Jürgen Habermas to Hannah Arendt and John Dewey. Drawing on the work of a range of communications scholars – Robert McChesney, Herbert Gans, Michael Schudson, Robert Entman, Gaye Tuchman, Neil Postman, Todd Gitlin – Scheuer has produced a book suitable for scholars and graduate students alike. As both journalism and capitalism face their worst crisis in generations, the issues Scheuer examines are more critical – and timely – than ever.