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Stealing the Show: How Individual Issues Dominate the Nightly Network News
By Brad Love
University of Florida
College of Journalism and Communications
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PO Box 118400
Graduate Division
Gainesville, FL 32611-8400
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Home: (352) 376-3615
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**Manuscript submitted to the Radio-Television Journalism Division for consideration for presentation at the AEJMC annual conference in Phoenix, AZ, August 2000
**Love is a graduate student at the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida.
Abstract
As major stories develop, the media often overwhelm the audience with coverage. Certain issues can dominate and force other stories out of sight all together. This paper examines nightly network newscasts to see exactly what topics lose air time when a non-routine story takes over, as well as looking at the common contention that all three networks cover the same issues in the same proportions.
As O.J. Simpson's white Bronco rolled down the freeway, America's televisions switched priorities. Regularly scheduled programming went the way of radio soap operas, and a nation, regardless of its wishes, slid into a period of all O.J., all the time.
Following the trend, evening news broadcasts were dominated by this single issue and its morbid details. As if the live courtroom coverage wasn't enough, prominent news programs fell into the routine of constant analysis.
While the logic and motivation behind the reporting may be fascinating, a look at how the media's agenda changed during these times could be fascinating. Additionally, this examination could provide background to later match up this altered media agenda with the public's agenda.
This study will examine the media agenda during times when television news coverage is dominated by a single issue, also known as a "killer issue" for its ability to remove other stories. By examining which stories remain and which stories are discarded, numerous conclusions about the media's priorities should be evident. Considering the evening news has limited time and a typically rigid format, what is pushed aside for stories such as John F. Kennedy Jr.'s death? What reamins in a newscast containing mostly shots of the dark Parisian tunnel where Princess Diana's life ended?
Over the past several years, this domination has come into effect several times. Beginning with the Simpson case, the media have at times overrun themselves with coverage of Diana's death and Kennedy's demise off the coast of Massachusetts.
A content analysis of ABC, CBS and NBC nightly newscasts will reveal just how omnipresent these events were during their respective times and exactly what coverage disappeared to make room. Based on news values shared throughout the media world, the researcher expects large-scale stories on government and world happenings to remain unaffected while pieces that affect smaller segments of the population will suffer.
This closer look can not only tell us about how our media operate but also about what they can do better. Few scholars have studied how the media function when focused on a single topic and what this could mean to the public's knowledge. Information is essential to our form of government and our society. If something is standing in the way, how does this bode for media's role as public servant and watchdog?
Literature Review
While much research has been done examining how the media set issue priorities and how this affects people, little scholarship focuses on how this influences news coverage itself. Even the most intensive review of news values fails to explain how a single issue can monopolize media attention. Surely, there is more than one significant event happening around the globe at any given time.
Orenthal James Simpson was not the only person charged with murder in 1994, and Princess Diana was not the only famous person to die in 1997. In fact, she wasn't even the only famous person to die in a two-week period. Surely, Mother Teresa's passing was of great tragedy to mankind. Yet, Diana inspired everything from television movies to special issues of major newspapers.
As Stephen Reese et al.1 point out, any media organization falls under a hierarchy of influences that can control what makes it on the evening newscast. Beginning of course at the most basic level, any individual's personal views will necessarily influence the decision-making process. Close behind this will be the role of that particular media worker. The editor of any one segment will naturally play up his/her piece to get better placement in the newscast. As a matter of professional advancement, this is a regular occurrence.
Media routines also factor into what gets covered. Any story on an assigned beat is more likely to get picked up than one on a topic without a designated reporter. Due to time and labor limitations, this level of influence can eliminate stories outside the mainstream topics before those topics even get suggested.
Organization of a newsroom can additionally influence selected stories. Each editor required to approve a story has a chance to exert personal influence on the final result, whether it's through editing, re-writing or complete removal. Not all of the involved factors, however, are in the newsroom. Outside influences such as time, advertisers, public opinion, governmental restraint can change a story's outcome.
Finally, ideology remains as the final round of influence2. The opinions of those who hold sway over a newscast, the belief system of society and the pretenses under which the press operates serve as the most distant but potentially effective level of control.
David Manning White3 started this area of inquisition long ago with his seminal work on how editors cope with a limited amount of space. While it may have focused exclusively on print, his study nonetheless serves as a valuable lesson about how news workers handle limitations of their media.
Another outlook on how news organizations select stories focuses on the functional end of operations. News selection is a constant problem. Here, the primary factor involves determining what helps the organization carry out its objectives and adapt to the task at hand. For some, the objectives may include informing the public. Others may be more inclined to please advertisers or corporate ownership.
The very topics being examined in this study may not conveniently fall into the categories used in previous studies, however. By the very scope of the efforts directed at them, stories such as the Simpson trial must be considered "non-routine news," as Lee Harrington4 calls them. Primary characteristics of these stories include news workers' own surprise at the happenings, an ability to divert significant amounts of time and attention, networks having an acceptable amount of available resources and an open-ended style of reporting to allow for continuous developments.
Oddly enough, despite viewers' frequent displeasure with the dominating stories that fit into the non-routine category, research has shown people rarely complain about the way broadcasts are done5.
Potentially, this could signify approval of the way newscasts are handled. More likely, it stems from a general lack of concern and motivating factors. Additionally, the similarity between network news programs makes regular viewers comfortable with the formats and not too likely to clamor for change, typically a frightening event in and of itself.
Guido Stempel6 demonstrated exactly how similar the broadcasts are in his gatekeeping study from 1985. According to his results, the three networks typically devote the same amount of time to the same stories while maintaining proportionate coverage of similar issues. This may partially be a result of training providing "a general notion as to what makes a suitable news package...similar to the notion that nutrition experts have as to what makes up a suitable diet."
In a later study conducted to compare CNN and PBS to the big three networks, Stempel7 again concluded that the networks were statistically close in any examination of their coverage. Meanwhile, CNN and PBS both followed their own patterns.
Several earlier studies support Stempel's conclusion about the content of the network newscasts. In a 1974 work, James Lemert8 found a 57.7 percent duplication rate over a two-week period. When relating to special topics, the correlation can run even higher. The networks duplicated Watergate stories 74.6 percent of the time in 1972 and 84.3 percent in 19739. In a similar context, David Altheide10 examined eight months of coverage of the Iran crisis and found agreement in the number of reports, minutes and the mix of stories. The result, in a way, is a national news service, he contends.
Certainly, as Daniel Riffe11 states, it tells us about one aspect of what to expect when analyzing the issues that get removed for saturation coverage. Before even knowing specifically what gets bumped, it is logical to expect consistency across all three networks.
Some researchers have theorized that this should produce increased effects12 for the media's agenda. Since the content of three popular channels is so similar, the effects should be several times what one network could do. Max McCombs points out this could be a remarkable development for some issues. Overlapping coverage can encourage community consensus on some topics while influencing priorities,13 a contention handily demonstrating the practical implications of examining media coverage.
In fact, agreeing with Riffe's assertion, the researcher proposes to test the following hypothesis:
H1: Despite the dramatic programming changes during non-routine news, network broadcasting will still maintain its overlapping patterns.
As a necessity of this saturation coverage, however, some stories will disappear. News values tell us certain topics should be particularly affected. The stories an average viewer would deem essential will probably remain untouched, but the topics that lie more toward the fringe of news values will be cut, prompting us to examine the following hypothesis:
H2: As a non-routine event dominates news coverage, certain categories of issues will consistently be dropped from the nightly program
A large part of the concern surrounding this behavior stems from the amazing power held by network television. As George Gerbner14 explained, 200 million people watched as OJ Simpson's 266-day trial ended, ratings that easily surpass the Super Bowl, the first day of the Gulf War and the initial moon landing. All in all, over $1 billion was spent on media and merchandising sales15. He puts televisions influence in perspective, writing, "If all daily and weekly newspapers and all general-circulation magazines wrote about a case every day, their total exposure (generously figuring an average of two readers per copy reading for an hour) amounts to about one-tenth of what television brings to those readers."
As a result of this power, it becomes essential to know exactly what is being ignored when individual events control air time. As journalists, we must examine what is being left out of coverage. Only then can we examine our performance as the Fourth Estate.
Methodology
Time Frames
ABC, NBC and CBS network news programs were examined for 9 time periods relating to each of the following events: the O.J. Simpson criminal trial, the death of Princess Diana and the death of John Kennedy Jr.
The researcher looked at coverage for one week before the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson. Then as a saturation period, the first week of the criminal trial was coded. The week after coverage of the verdict subsided was subsequently used to provide further comparison to a normal period. Since coverage of Diana's and Kennedy's deaths only lasted one week, the respective weeks before, during and after each event were selected.
These time periods were chosen for several reasons. First, the three events can all be classified as news-dominating. Regularly scheduled programming was pre-empted in all cases, and news media applied special efforts to covering all possible angles. Second, by examining time periods before and after each event, it is possible to gain a better perspective of what coverage was like prior to the happenings and following its conclusion. In other words, it becomes possible to see what "normal" coverage looks like. In the end, this should allow us to have a more informed and intelligent look at story selection on network news.
All three networks were selected because television introduces an interesting variable into news selection-time. Because each program has only half an hour, only certain stories can be covered. Newspapers have almost unlimited space. They can print as many pages as they can afford. Online media have truly unlimited space. They are held back only by what staff can produce. Television, however, falls into a set format, one that typically varies little evening to evening, something easily discovered by looking at the Vanderbilt Archives.
Other similar newscasts on stations such as CNN and PBS were excluded for not fitting into the set pattern and because their small audiences could limit their societal influence. CNN has the advantage of being a full-time news station with limits more resembling those of the newspapers in that it is restrained only by the financial considerations of what advertising will cover. PBS, on the other hand, has a set format of one hour, but differs so markedly from network news that it can't truly be lumped into the same category.
Also, by using all three networks, there is the chance to see if Stempel's and Lemert's conclusions about story duplication will apply under abnormal circumstances. Under normal conditions, it has been handily demonstrated that network programs show the same stories for the same periods of time. Exactly what occurs under selected abnormal conditions remains to be seen.
By examining the broadcasts for story topics, the researcher can break down the content into distinct, easily quantified pieces.
Issue topics
This study divided network news stories in to 14 categories borrowed from Stempel's 1988 Journalism Quarterly study on story selection and network newscasts. His categories are re-used here because of their mutually exclusive and exhaustive nature. A brief explanation of how they were used in this study follows each topic. The groupings are:
* Politics and government: any story relating to government debate or the behavior of a public official
* War and defense: stories relevant to military operations directly concerning action
* Diplomacy and foreign relations: discussions between nations with a focus on relations
* Economic activity: issues directly affecting businesses or individual wealth
* Agriculture: any story concerning farming or food production
* Transportation and travel: pieces concerned with voyages or the safety of traveling, as well as advice stories
* Crime: issues involving law enforcement or reports on current cases
* Public moral problems: stories aired to inform viewers about public debates or current national concerns
* Accidents and disasters: coverage of unexpected tragic events around the globe
* Science: reports on developments in technology or knowledge from any sector
* Public health: stories run to advise the mass audience about behaviors or recent medical discoveries
* Education and classical arts: issues about learning or stories involved with artistic endeavors
* Popular amusement: pieces on leisure activities such as sports or amusement parks
* General human interest: stories often done to point out a personal element of society or to recognize an individual for a specific achievement
Among these 14 categories is a place for every type of story that crosses the news desk and even some categories for those that typically don't.
Limitations
Ideally, the structure of every newscast would be examined. Then the exact format of the nightly news would be truly evident. However, for obvious reasons, that remains a physical impossibility.
As far as the dominant issues are concerned, not all of them played out equally. Some were longer than others, and some garnered more coverage than others. Intense, prolonged coverage could influence the media's agenda, for better or for worse, as well as how a story is covered. After the initial facts are presented, side stories spring up. Potentially, these also could affect coverage.
Intercoder reliability was 80 percent using a randomly constructed sample week making up 11 percent of the total content.
Results
Examining television news coverage across nine time periods showed us some of the issues that disappear from the media's agenda when a particular event dominates coverage. Additionally, our examination demonstrated how three major networks rarely differ in the stories they air.
During the weeks of Princess Diana's death, John F. Kennedy Jr.'s death and the beginning of O.J. Simpson's criminal trial, ABC, CBS and NBC dramatically changed their coverage patterns from periods immediately before and after these events (Table 1). Specifically, the networks devoted at least one-third of their broadcasts to the developing issues. This means the topics that typically would fill that space were dropped, a product of television's half-hour format (Tables 2.1, 2.2, 2.3).
Human interest stories experienced the largest decline in coverage across the three networks. Considering the smallest decline for any individual network was 50 percent, these stories suffered the brunt of the change in priorities.
Also dropping across all three networks was coverage of stories involving politics and government. While the drop-off was not as precipitous as the one for human interest stories, the decline is noteworthy because of its consistency across the channels.
ABC and NBC reduced their crime coverage for the weeks the major events took over. In contrast to the two networks' pattern, CBS' coverage actually rose a small percentage.
Diplomacy and foreign relations coverage dropped on all three networks during the dramatic events. However, the topic never witnessed a resurgence to pre-event levels on NBC.
Other unexpected patterns emerged, also.
Public health and public moral problems both experienced across-the-board declines as the dominating events took over, but they then failed to rise to their pre-event levels, remaining closer to the lows present during the major event coverage.
Oddly enough, coverage of war and defense issues rose as the dominating events took over. All three networks increased their coverage in this area during the week the major event took over.
Some categories continued seemingly unaffected by the dominating issues. Economic activity maintained its portion of the broadcast, as did science. While their portions were consistently minor, their behavior is still noteworthy because of its consistency during these periods of change.
As part of the examinations of these issues, it becomes apparent that the three networks follow similar patterns of coverage (Table 3). Even during the upheaval of the dominating events, all three nightly newscasts remained parallel (Table 4). In fact, several topics account for almost the exact same percentages in each program.
Discussion
Our purpose in examining television news coverage around the deaths of Princess Diana and John Kennedy Jr. along with the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson was to search for the effects these dominating stories had on nightly newscasts. A major goal was to see what story topics were removed to make way for these killer issues. Additionally, the researcher wanted to know just how similar the nightly newscasts were.
The first hypothesis was supported by the study. It proposed that network programming would maintain its overlapping patterns despite programming changes to accommodate non-routine news. Table 4 demonstrates this point quite well. The statistics strongly show that all three networks maintained their coverage similarities despite the changing story priorities. An examination of Table 3 shows the similarities during normal coverage periods, affirming previous research insisting on the parallel structure of network newscasts.
This pattern exists for many reasons. One prominent factor could be the socialization of the newsroom. Journalism students learn the same news values at school after school. The result is the same criteria being used to assign significance to stories. If every editor views the world with the same perspective, every channel will show the same version of the news.
Another possibility is the availability of news. Public relations professionals have become quite adept at squeezing issues into the national spotlight. An effective campaign could quite possibly have prominently placed a story on each producer's agenda. By taking advantage Reese et al.'s hierarchy of newsroom influences and the regular media routines, public relations operations can be remarkably effective.
As a matter of competition, each network examines what the competition is doing. This could potentially lead to pressure to run a certain story. If only one channel runs a certain story, viewers may think it beat the other two to the issue when in fact, the producers just decided it wasn't important enough to air. Considering the fierce competition for ad dollars, each network must appear to provide more complete coverage than the other two.
Our second hypothesis was that certain categories of news stories would be reduced more than others as non-routine events took over nightly newscasts. This hypothesis was also supported by the research.
Human interest stories almost evaporated from the news landscape when a major event dominated coverage. Potentially, this could be because it is deemed the least newsworthy category in the taught values mentioned earlier. This, however, would not explain the decline in stories on public moral problems.
According to news values, information on dilemmas facing the nation should be among the most important topics. On the other hand, these stories also require the most time, thought and research-all of which were probably spread thin because of the dominating stories.
The loss of air time for other categories included serious drops in public health stories and crime stories on ABC and NBC. Many of these topics are covered almost as a public service, a warning to individuals about specific behaviors or attitudes. Since the killer issues took up one-third of the newscasts, some categories had to endure more significant drops to maintain room for topics typically awarded lead story status.
An expectation that went unmet was the idea that prominent political stories would be unaffected by the dominant issue. While the decline for this category was not overwhleming, its consistency across all three networks disproves the original contention.
One implication of this study could be what it means for the media's agenda. If one issue can dominate coverage for a period of time, what happens to the stories being ignored? They certainly won't appear after the large issue disappears. Their timeliness will have evaporated by then. This process raises questions about news selection priorities and what is getting left behind. As the Fourth Estate, the media have a responsibility to inform the public. However, one story dictating an entire broadcast may get in the way.
Along similar lines, future examination could look at how covering fewer topics affects agenda setting. When the media lack an agenda because of one issue, the public's priorities must come from somewhere. Future research could try to figure out just where.
Overall, the research found amazing similarities between nightly newscasts and a consistent pattern of what was left out to accommodate non-routine events. Television news programs operate under a broad and well-documented set of influences that can potentially have a larger effect on society by controlling available information. Since it is quite obvious that networks tend to run the same stories, it becomes increasingly essential that producers closely examine what they opt not to run. As a society that depends on information, what television tells us is essential. The key lies in making sure television gives us the whole picture of our environment, not just one version of one event.
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Stealing the Show: How Individual Issues Dominate the Nightly Network News
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