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Constructing Class & Race in Local TV News
"Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy . . .as if they were in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets_" Benjamin Disraeli
Class, as a concept in American culture, doesn't seem to carry very far. It's not a term that comes up all that often in day-to-day conversation. That is perhaps because many Americans are convinced they live in an egalitarian society, a place where all people have equal opportunities.
There are some behavioral indicators that seem to suggest the overall decline of social classes in advanced capitalist societies. For instance, Clark and Lipset discovered the declining trend of class voting, operationalized as a difference in voting for a party between two traditional classes, in all western democracies including the United States from 1940s to 1980s. They emphasize the fundamental power of capitalism, technological changes, and other sociopolitical factors to continually raise the living standard of the entire society, which caused the weakening of hierarchical class stratification and the furthering of fragmentation and individualism.[1]
Yet despite this, it is clear that in America, as in other countries, there are economic discrepancies between people. America is composed of a wide range of people from the very rich to the very poor. Yet, it is often those who identify themselves with the middle classes that have most difficulty engaging ideas about class. As Benjamin DeMott explained about people in the middle class: "The people in question sometimes speak of themselves as men or women of the 'middle class' only with an effort of will-only by contrivance-can they imagine themselves to be members of a class. Normally they feel themselves to be solid individual achievers in an essentially classes society composed of human beings engaged in bettering themselves."[2]
Whether one is aware of class or not, the question remains: What exactly do we mean by class? Class is one of those terms we rarely define. It is much like the term "race." We use both, but if pressed might not be able to provide an exact set of operational definitions for either. Yet, we lead our lives based upon certain assumptions about both. We seem to have innate and often unspoken beliefs about what it means to be Black or what it means to be middle class.
What role do media play in what we come to believe about class, and more specifically how does news influence these beliefs? That is starting point of this study. More specifically, we are asking what role class and race play in decisions made about what news is covered. The media in general and news media in particular may have influence upon our ideas about what class is, therefore media also may provide an appropriate site at which we could examine how the idea of class is constructed and how class is covered in news. As we analyze class as a construct, it also became clear we could not do so without also considering carefully what role race plays in the equation. Often people link the two concepts, even though they are distinctly different. But as we found, when class is considered, the race question is never far behind.
For this study, the decision was made to enter into a local television newsroom to begin examining the way in which class was discussed and covered by broadcast journalists in one community. As well, during the study period, newscasts were taped and researchers completed a content analysis of those newscasts to help triangulate findings. The results offer some initial insight specifically into local news and the coverage of class.
Constructing Class
Let's start here: "Any social system that involves economic inequality will generate social classes."[3] In fact, there is ample evidence of economic inequality in the United States, especially given that this society is based upon an economic system that does not espouse any principle of fiscal equality. Further evidence points out that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening in the United States. Between 1970 and 1990, average income for families in the bottom fifth of the income scale dropped 5 percent. Meanwhile income among the top fifth shot up 33 percent. The median value of assets owned by families with incomes less than $25,000 fell between 1995 and 1998, while those families with higher incomes saw assets soar.[4] In addition, the increased size of clerical, sales, and service workers cannot be automatically construed as an expansion of the middle class, because they have been subjected to the same "deskilling" process that metamorphosed traditional craftsworkers into blue-collar workers. The average income of lower-level white-collar workers is much less than that of blue-collar factory workers, which indicates a further proletarianization of the working class in general. Even the so-called "new middle class," including managers and professionals, may be in the same predicament as the working class, as we can see in the fact that the abundance of unemployed Ph.D.s has changed the hiring policy in academia, forcing them to accept low pay and heavy course loads.[5]
So if class distinctions exist, then how does one go about defining a social class? Marx and Weber both set forth models of how class systems work; each has been widely debated. Suffice it to say that each time a theorist tries to set forth qualifications to define boundaries for different class groups, such as the ownership of land, life chances, or income levels, exceptions to those qualifications can be found. Therefore the boundaries are almost always imperfect. For the purpose of this study, we will not attempt to talk about social classes as if they are rigid and well-defined groups. Instead in this case it may be helpful to think of class as the way in which people make distinctions between themselves and others, based primarily on perceptions about income, inherited wealth, status and vocation.
Even though most people may not know or agree on what exactly distinguishes one class from the next, it remains clear that each of us lives with beliefs about class, which social class we fall into, and where others fall as well. "Social classes and class structure are the most decisive forces that affect us in most everything we do in our lives," argues Berch Berberoglu.[6]
According to research since the 1940s Americans have consistently identified themselves strongly with a social class.[7]
It should be noted, however, that underlying Americans' class identification are various lines of both visible and invisible class struggles, such as race, gender, age. Demands for pay equity, anti-discrimination in employment opportunities and workplace, and government support for affirmative action all point to economic infrastructural deficiencies of the society.[8]
Furthermore, as Patricia Hill Collins argues, these divisive lines of struggles intersect to engender more subtle systems of oppression: "Race, class, and gender constitute axes of oppression that characterize Black women's experiences within a more generalized matrix of domination."[9]
In general, these are ideas we spend time thinking about more than talking about. "Class is not discussed or debated in public because class identity has been stripped from popular culture," writes Gregory Mantsios.[10]
There are, however, ways in which news media do refer to class. For instance, there are news stories, often in print media, about the poor. But researchers have found this coverage is not always fair and accurate. A. Scott Henderson found in a review of media coverage of the poor and public housing in poplar periodicals since 1965 that the press presented a distorted image of public housing, portraying an underclass made up of young African Americans who were most often socially dysfunctional: "In this respect, by associating public housing with poverty, crime, racial homogeneity, the popular press conveyed unambiguous messages to its readers, most of whom were white, middle-class, and suburban."[11]
Another way of dealing with class in an indirect manner is to talk about hunger. When it comes to media coverage of this issue, McMurray has written that coverage has been extremely uneven, from periods of great attention to periods where the subject disappears from view. McMurray contends that political climate, rather than the seriousness of the issue, is responsible for varied interest in the topic.[12]
Homelessness is a topic that has received more coverage in recent years than have others related to class. Blasi wrote that "images and issues relating to 'the homeless' seemed to have a power that issues of 'poverty' or 'housing the poor' did not." In looking at New York Times' coverage of homelessness, Blasi observed that after early articles revealed the horrors of homelessness, stories began detailing efforts to provide assistance, then coverage shifted to deficiencies of the assistance programs and of the persons expected to use them, and finally more recent stories focused on subgroups of homeless such as mentally disordered and substance abusers, and on backlash against the homeless.[13]
In other words, as time passed coverage became more cynical.
Welfare is a program that also symbolizes class. Martin Gilens has taken a detailed look at Americans' perception of welfare, which he concludes is often negative in no small part due to media coverage. In analysis of photographs used by leading news magazines, Gilens discovered that African Americans were consistently and hugely over-represented in photographs accompanying stories about welfare.[14]
Gilens concludes that because of Americans' persistent stereotypes of African Americans as lazy, there continues to be negative perceptions about welfare.
Another way of alluding to class may be through the way news stories refer to neighborhoods or sections of a city. Ettema and Peer found by studying newspaper coverage of two Chicago neighborhoods that the coverage of an affluent neighborhood was much more extensive than that of a poorer neighborhood. In addition, when it came to topics of stories, the poorer neighborhood had twice the amount of crime stories than the affluent neighborhood, despite a lower overall crime rate. Even when good news was reported in the poorer neighborhood, the story was reported as a response to some bigger, ongoing pathology.[15]
Though few U.S. media studies have dealt precisely with class, these studies do provide insight as to problems in regard to coverage of poverty, homelessness, and welfare.
Method
As mentioned earlier, both qualitative and quantitative methods were employed in this study. A researcher traveled to Denver, Colorado, a top-25 media market, and spent one month in a television station newsroom as a participant observer. The researcher who visited the newsroom had spent ten years working in television newsrooms, therefore negotiating the setting was a relatively easy task. The researcher sat in on all weekday news meetings, observed behavior and conversations in the newsroom, went out on stories with reporters and photographers and conducted 19 in-depth interviews with news workers. "Qualitative interviewers listen to people as they describe how they understand the worlds in which they live and work."[16]
For each interview, a basic set of questions was used as a starting point, but as much as was possible the interview was conducted in a manner constructed to simulate a conversation. This allowed the news worker the greatest amount of flexibility in speaking about what was important to them in regard to news coverage, news decision-making and class. Anonymity was guaranteed to those interviewed as well as others observed in the newsroom.
To examine how the issue of class permeated in news stories, the researchers taped 5 and 10 p.m. newscasts aired on this Denver station in July 1998. This content analysis included newscasts that are considered to be the station's primary news products: 5:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. newscasts that aired Monday through Friday. It is these newscasts that receive the most resources and scrutiny from station personnel. In short, we analyzed what the station itself considers its best news programs. Weekday newscasts were examined that aired between July 6 and July 28. All news stories in a newscast were examined and coded by two trained graduate students.
This content analysis placed a primary focus on the relationships between story topic, story location, demographic characteristics of a person covered in a news story, and the tone of his or her portrayal. Story topics included crime, disaster, human rights, the needy, the environment, education, politics/government, consumer, health, economics/business, weather, feature, and sports. A particular attention was paid to crime, the needy, and economics/business news stories, because those story topics were expected to relate to class issues.
Up to four people mentioned in a story were investigated regarding their race (Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, or others), estimated age (less than 10 years old, 10s, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, or 60s and over), gender (male or female), occupation (government, business, education, homeowner, professional, manual labor, clergy, or unemployed), and the tone of their portrayals (positive, neutral or negative). In addition to basic demographic differences, the study also focused on the target-audience age categories (20s, 30s, and 40s), and white- vs. blue-collar workers.
Other variables included newscast time (5 or 10 p.m.), geographic level of story topic (national or regional), running time in seconds, reference to class (yes or no), and reference to residence (yes or no).
The intercoder reliability ranged from .71 (story topic) to 1.00 (newscast time and reference to class). The average intercoder reliability was .91.
Because the original dataset (Dataset 1) allowed multiple people and locations to be coded in a story, three additional datasets were created. The first new dataset (Dataset 2) is based on characteristics of a person covered in a story, the second (Dataset 3) based on a geographic location, and finally the third (Dataset 4) based on both a person and geographic location. In total, there were 672 stories, 660 people who appeared in news, 807 locations dealt with, and 859 combinations of a person and location. Then univariate characteristics and bivariate relationships were examined. This study, though exploratory, reported inferential statistics to observe strengths of such relationships.
Results
From spending time listening to conversations in the newsroom and discussions in news meetings it became clear early on that class is a topic, as discussed earlier, that is almost never mentioned. That does not mean however, that there are not ways in which class is implied through more covert means. One such way is through the editorial process of how news decisions are made.
Story Selection. One of the most obvious ways of examining how a news operation deals with the idea of class is to examine closely story selection and the story selection process. This newsroom, like others observed, had a structure wherein news decision-making power resided in the hands of a few managers. In any television newsroom, the news director generally sits atop the organizational chart. In this newsroom the news director had a set of managers directly under him, with four most directly affecting news decision-making: the Assistant News Director, the Executive Producer, the night-side Executive Producer, and the Assignments Manager. These four, in consultation with the News Director, controlled most of the content on a day-to-day basis. Two or three of these four would most often attend two daily news meetings, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Attending these meetings along with the managers were the newscast producers. Each producer was responsible for a particular news program--for instance the noon show, or the 5:00 p.m. or 10:00 p.m. news. These producers had some decision-making power in regard to the content of their particular program. The managers would select the big stories of the day with input from others in the meetings, and it was often up to the show producers to fill in other, shorter, less significant stories that would make up the remainder of their newscasts.
Targeted Story Selection. In regard to class, there were stories that often fit into one of two classifications: those that were deemed worthy because of audience appeal and those that were not. It became clear that the news workers in this newsroom had a very specific idea of an audience. In other words, stories were often not selected with regard to a broad, wide-ranging and diverse viewership (which is, in fact, the audience of most local television affiliates with the major networks). Instead news workers had a very specific sense of a particular audience they were trying to appeal to. This first became apparent in listening to discussions like the following in news meetings.:
Producer: "I've got another Beanie Baby story off the feed."
Executive Producer: "Perfect. That's your demo."
Assistant News Director: "Get those women watching."
What was meant by demo was demographic, a particular viewer profile composed of basic information like age and gender. In the 19 interviews with station personnel that were conducted, 17 were with people who worked in the newsroom. Of those 17, 15 identified, when asked, a particular demographic profile of viewers they were trying to attract. The majority said women, though not all agreed on the age.
"Women 18 to 49 is the target." (Producer)
"It's women in the 25 to 45 bracket or 30 to 50 or something." (Reporter)
"Women my age - 25 to 54." (Producer)
Women were perceived to be important because of a belief that they controlled decision-making when it came to household spending. Several of those interviewed also mentioned characteristics that indicated that there were class elements also involved in why this audience group was desirable.
It's females, often young professionals, who make a pretty good living, who live in the suburbs. (Assignment Editor)
Primarily adults 18 to 54 with a socioeconomic level that has been stressed to us. They want families with an income I guess of $30,000 and above and with 2.1 kids and 4-wheel drive in the garage. You know stations will boast about how much better their demographics are and how they have the higher demographics and the higher income. (Producer)
Suburban, basically, people who are fairly young and have disposable income and children. (Assignment Editor)
The language here points to a fairly specific class profile. It points to a middle- or upper-middle income level family, who are home-owners, live in the suburbs and have disposable income. Many of those interviewed also had an idea of why this was considered to be an important part of the audience.
I guess it is always the 18 to 44 year-old women, because they tend to buy everything and it's what people sell the advertisers. (Producer)
Women 25 to 54. It's the demo to bring in dollars. One; for sales and two; to raise the ratings. It's the business side of things. We make personnel changes for that reason; we select stories for that reason. (Managing Editor)
The purpose of targeting this particular group is clear as this is perceived as the "demo to bring in dollars." Television stations have traditionally tried to not only convince advertisers that they have the highest ratings - the most viewers in their market - but also that those viewers are an attractive group of potential customers. In other words the pitch from station sales people to advertisers is: if you buy a spot in our local news, this group of people with this profile will see the spot and buy your product or service. The problem lies in whether stations can really deliver audiences that are that specific. Television was traditionally attractive to advertisers because it offered one of the widest and largest markets available. But with the advent of cable, the market became more segmented, especially as cable channels sought to target specific audiences to make up for a lack of sheer audience numbers.
Now it seems, in at least this one newsroom, having a target market audience has become part and parcel of how a newscast will be put together. This is at odds with the traditional view of the purpose of national and local broadcast news. Broadcast news in television was offered initially as a public service, specifically to help stations meet the FCC requirement that stations, since they were broadcasting over public airwaves, serve the public interest. Early on, norms of traditional print journalism were adopted. Eventually broadcast journalists developed their own codes of ethics, one version was codified by the Radio and Television News Director's Association. Under that code it states that broadcast journalists "will evaluate information solely on its merits as news, rejecting sensationalism or misleading emphasis in any form."[17] Yet given what news workers reported here and what was observed in the daily news meetings, there is ample evidence each and every story is not evaluated on its merits primarily as news. Once you introduce the idea of a target audience, that becomes a filter through which decisions are made.
The news director defended this practice, arguing that the major news of the day remained untainted: "I would say that doesn't affect the basic coverage plan of the day." He argued that demographic considerations only came into play into the less important news of the day.
Every day there's a series of stories that are elective. You know: do you want to do this, or do you want to do that? And I think from a business standpoint we have gotten people to think about running those stories through a filter - is this story interesting to people who we would like to watch our news more often?
But at least one news staffer disagreed with the news director's assessment. An assignment editor felt identifying a target audience was not in line with journalistic principals.
I think sometimes in catering to target audiences you fail to present a fair and accurate portrayal of news. And let me say I don't think it is primarily a crime of culmination. It is a crime of omission. I think that a lot of times there is bias and it's not that the stories that aired are that stories are aired that should not be aired.
An example of this during the period studied was a number of stories and live shots that were done on an event called "The Parade of Homes." This was an annual event in Denver (as it is in many cities) that centers upon the promotion and sales of new homes. The only possible news value to the story was that the parade was taking place at an area that had been a military base, but now had opened up to new development. None of the homes featured in the parade were under $150,000, so it would be hard to argue that this was a story that was of interest to each and every viewer. Each day when producers and managers dedicated resources and news time to covering the home show, that was taking away resources and time that could have been spent on other news stories. But it was easily rationalized because the marketing of attractive new homes fit easily into the idea of what was believed would be interesting to the stations target demographic--well-to-do professionals.
There were two separate, but not necessarily unrelated phenomenon taking place in news decision-making that affected news coverage with regard to class. The first, discussed above, demonstrates how news managers and producers often actively selected stories on the basis of whether they believed the story would appeal to a certain demographic profile of a viewer. We call this targeted story selection. The news staff has a target audience in mind, and news decisions are made in an effort to target those audience members in an effort to increase ratings and to allow advertisers to sell this more attractive audience to advertisers. The second phenomenon taking place comes in looking at not what stories are selected, but also what stories are not selected.
Story Avoidance. As was discussed earlier, class is not a topic that often comes up in daily conversations, let alone in news meetings. As other researchers have described, one way in which class manifests itself is in the way we think and talk about the poor. Therefore, it became interesting to note what attention was given to lower socioeconomic areas in Denver, or how much attention was given to topics that would directly impact poor people.
During the four weeks of the study several stories were discussed that directly impacted what would be considered economically lower class people in the station's viewing area. In each case, news workers opted not to cover the story. One particularly illuminating example came when the Environmental Protection Agency announced it was holding a meeting to discuss the results of some soil testing with residents of a Denver neighborhood. The testing had taken place in a part of Denver called Swansea, known to locals as an area that had a high crime rate and was populated by the very poor. There was also recent historical significance to the story. In another area, Globeville, soil sampling had revealed high levels of contamination, and through litigation the American Smelting and Refining Company had eventually paid out $38 million for a clean-up.
When the EPA event was discussed at the morning news meeting, several of the younger producers in the room did not know where Swansea was. The Executive Producer asked: "Does anyone even speak English down there?" There was scattered laughter. This was a reference to the belief that the population was in the area was made up primarily of recent Spanish-speaking immigrants to the area. In regard to the story one producer said: "It doesn't blow my hair back." No one was assigned to the story and it was not covered. As a result, what was never reported by this station was that results from 3,550 soil samples showed in some properties in that area levels of arsenic and lead high enough to prompt the EPA to promise an extensive clean-up. By almost any journalistic standard, this event constituted a news story. About 75 neighbors attending the meeting and had at times, heated questions about their safety and their children's safety. The story was timely, it had conflict, it reflected impact on people, and it took place within the proximity of stations' coverage area. But this story did not fit one criterion: it might not have been appealing to an upper-class demographic. On another level, the Executive Producer's comments also reflected that he was concerned about the racial-ethnic make-up of the neighborhood. What was implied in his comment was a question of whether anyone in their viewing audience would care about Mexicans or Mexican-Americans.
As well, this story did not occur in an area that impacted the news workers making this decision. In other words, no one in that meeting, let alone in the station's newsroom, lived in Swansea. Therefore, there was not a sense of urgency or fear among those making the coverage decision. The story did not impact them directly and seemed far removed from the locations of their own homes, which they perhaps assumed were not built on soil full of contaminants. We call this phenomenon story avoidance, wherein a story comes up that by a number of different traditionally held news values should be covered but is not.
Another example came not in the form of a story that was not covered, but in the way in which a story was covered. During the study period Denver suffered a long streak of days where the temperature was over 100 degrees. For this area, that was a fairly unusual occurrence. The station did extensive coverage, especially in regard to energy use. That much heat for that many days meant that energy use was breaking records. During the heat wave, each day in the morning meeting producers, managers and reporters would try to brainstorm what new angles they could cover. Because of the forecast and the presence of meteorologists at the station, they knew in advance what the daily temperature was likely to be. During this period, only one story done on a weekend - about how firefighters were distributing free fans to anyone who needed them - touched indirectly on how poor people were affected by the heat. Day after day, the station would cover different aspects of the story without ever considering the impact on the group arguably most directly impacted by dangerously high temperatures: people who were living without air-conditioning.
One of the station's two parking lots was located a short distance from the building. That meant each day many of the news employees had to walk a half a block from their cars to the station. In the short walk, they passed directly in front of two apartment buildings, neither of which had central air conditioning. During the heat wave, residents were often sitting on the front steps of the building, apparently trying to escape the heat inside the apartments. Despite the fact that journalists walked past these people daily, it was never suggested in a news meeting that talking to some of these people or others so directly affected by the heat would be newsworthy. The station at one point did a live shot and reporter story about how the local zoo was taking care of animals in light of the high temperatures. This seemed particularly ironic, considering many zoo animals come from hot and arid regions of the world.
It would be difficult to argue that how poor people were impacted by a heat wave is not a newsworthy story. Yet the story was never discussed in a weekday news meeting and was as a result, never covered. This is another example of story avoidance, wherein an important aspect to a news story is overlooked, in this case, repeatedly.
News Content. Our content analysis conducted of the newscasts during the study period provides additional evidence of the lack of coverage of the poor.
Class in News Stories (Dataset 1). Regional-level news accounted for 65.2% (N=438), about twice as many as national-level stories. The average broadcast time was 69.5 seconds, but 59.2% of news stories were less than one minute long. Its median was 45 seconds.
Table 1 shows the distribution of TV news stories according to topics. One of our focal topics - crime - was the top news topic, representing more than one-fifth of news stories. Economics/business came the fourth, which was dealt with in more than 10% of stories. "The needy," however, had the second smallest share of news stories, accounting for only 1.9%. Furthermore, only nine (1.3%) out of 672 stories made direct references to class. None of the nine stories, however, mentioned people's residences. These results seem to substantiate our qualitative findings of newsroom decision-making processes to avoid class stories in general.
Class in Demographics of People (Dataset 2). Three hundred fifty-two news stories referred to at least one person, containing 660 people in total. Table 2 shows distributions of demographic characteristics of those people. They were predominantly white and male. The largest age category was the 30s, and professional occupation represented more than a half of people in news. Their portrayals were mostly positive. These characteristics represented the most "typical" combination of attributes of people mentioned in news stories, accounting for 7.6% (n=50). Regarding age, the TV station's target audiences, who were in their 20s, 30s, or 40s, accounted for approximately three quarters (72.4%, n=451), although the percentage of people in their 20s was quite small. Also manual laborers constituted a small portion of people in news (4.7%, n=18), which reflects the diminution of traditional blue-collar workers in our society.
Due to a small frequency of each non-white category, the variable race was dichotomized into Whites and non-Whites. Contrary to our expectation, minority members were not strongly associated with such "class" topics as crime, "the needy," and economics/business.
However, older white males seemed to occupy the focal attention in the TV representation of the world, which signifies their high status in the hierarchical class ladder. As Table 3 shows, Whites tended to be old while non-Whites were more likely young. The largest racial difference was among people of age less than 20. In addition, the mean broadcast time was longer for Whites than non-Whites. See Table 4. Similarly, males received the longer mean broadcast time than females, although the difference was not as great as that of race.
Yet, gender did affect which age category one would be in. As Table 5 shows, males tended to be older, the largest difference observed among people of ages less than 20. Although less than 10% of males were younger than 20, approximately one quarter of females were in this age category. The majority of women in the stories fall into what was perceived as the station's target demographic. One could account for the higher number of men as subjects in stories by noting than traditionally in television news white men are over-represented, especially as official sources and experts.
Contrary to our expectation, manual laborers were not associated with "class" news topics. Whereas only one (5.6%) out of 18 manual laborers appeared in these types of news, 140 (38.2%) our of 367 white-collar workers were included. The largest news topic was human rights (33.3%, n=6) for manual laborers, and crime (27.3%, n=100) for white-collar workers. Also only two (11.1%) of manual laborers appeared in news stories that made direct references to class. The vast majority of those blue-collar workers were white (94.4%, n=17) and male (83.3%, n=15), who received positive coverage (77.8%, n=14).
In order to delve into bivariate demographic relationships for "class" news topics, people who appeared in crime, "the needy," and economics/business stories were examined (N=283). Table 6 shows the relationship between age and race. Compared to Table 3 that exhibited for all news topics the largest racial difference in the youngest age category, it was the oldest age category that had a disproportionately higher percentage of minorities than Whites (27.3% vs. 11.8%). On the other hand, the category of people of ages between 20 and 49 showed a much higher percentage of Whites than minorities (71.8% vs. 54.6%).
Table 7 shows the relationship between age and gender in "class" news topics. Similar to Table 5, males tended to be older than females in "class" topics. Differences in news topics did not seem to affect this bivariate relationship.
These findings alone might not have been very telling, but linked with the observations made in the newsroom, they tend to confirm that, as least at this station during the study period, stories on the poor are avoided and coverage of whites is disproportionately strong.
Class and News. This brings us to consider why and how news decisions were made in regard to class. As discussed earlier, it was clear that some decisions were made based upon the emphasis of trying to appeal to a certain part of the audience. But even when a target demographic did not enter into the spoken discussion of a story idea, there was another dynamic at work. In morning and afternoon editorial meetings, in discussions in the newsroom, in management meetings, there was consistently one group never represented: the poor. One reporter put it this way: "It's just not a view that's represented at our editorial meetings. It just isn't something we consciously forget or actively ignore. It's just sometimes it can be a very difficult viewpoint to get advanced." This newsroom, like many newsrooms, was staffed by people who could easily be classified by almost any method as middle- or upper-middle class. Every person interviewed was college-educated, and an analysis of home addressees of news employees revealed the vast majority lived in the suburbs in areas identified by census figures as middle- and upper-middle income neighborhoods. One producer said this:
A lot of us don't come from poor backgrounds. A lot of us don't understand that and don't think those people watch. You know, we do homeless stories when the weather gets cold and so forth because it is something we can feel compassion for. But on a day-to-day basis we aren't going to do a lot of those stories.
When questioned about it, news workers themselves were aware of the coverage deficit.
As a general rule no, I don't think we cover poor people very well. Since none of us are poor we don't think of them. We don't think of what they are doing in the heat or in cold weather, for example. (Assignment editor)
It comes down to whether each day, as managers and other newsroom personnel consider what might be covered, they are concerned with people who are from different class backgrounds, who live different experiences, who face a different set of daily realities especially economically. The station's Managing Editor was forthright:
I don't think we run from it but I don't think we think about it. It's not like we're committed to helping them improve their lives or get the assistance they need. If a story comes up and fits into our day where we can go and cover it we might pick it up. But I can't even tell you the last package we've done on it.
What became evident in observing the newsroom, from sitting in on news meetings, and from interviews with station workers, was a consistent lack of knowledge and in some cases care about people from what could be considered lower class economic backgrounds.
Also consistently under-represented in these meetings were people of color. Of the five top news managers, four were Anglo. Both the station's primary newscasts were produced by Anglos, and the vast majority of the newsroom was white, as well. In Denver, like many metropolitan areas, people of color are disproportionately represented in lower socio-economic ranks. About this issue, economist Thomas Boston writes: "Historically racial subjugation has created a unique class stratification, reflecting the inferior economic positions blacks have been forced to occupy. This inferior status is constantly regenerated not only by economic dynamics, but also by legal, cultural, political and social apparatuses which support it."[18]
What was observed in this market was very little coverage of stories that would concern either poor people, people of color or both. A lack of good information, solid news reporting that might inform people in lower economic ranks might be considered one of the apparatuses that perpetuate existing economic conditions. A young African-American news writer at the station seemed to have a full understanding of the problem:
It strikes me as we just don't know. Or some of us do know but aren't at the morning meetings to say anything which is a mistake. Somehow we've got to get that knowledge or get our hands on that knowledge of we don't know it and that knowledge comes in various ways. It comes culturally, it comes through various contacts whether environmentally or politically or whatever. You can never have enough people who have that knowledge, and that's something we have to work on.
Conclusion
In 1979 Herbert Gans published a seminal study of news decision making titled Deciding What's News. Gans studied two networks news programs and two national news magazines. He found that "the news especially values the order of the upper-class and middle-class sectors of society."[19]
Because of journalists' own position, inhabiting positions in the middle- and upper-middle classes, Gans wrote that they represent best their own perspective, and not those of the lower classes.
In this study we found evidence to support Gans' contention on a local television news level. Because of phenomena such as targeted story selection and story avoidance, we contend that news coverage of the poor specifically and of the lower classes in general in this one market was sorely lacking. One could argue as well that because many of these news workers had worked in other stations in other markets and reported similar attitudes and philosophies, this may not be an isolated case to this one station in this one city.
Other scholars have written about the impact of economic considerations upon news. Smythe wrote about how viewers' attention was being sold to advertisers.[20]
Altschull has written about how, in general, news coverage often reflects the ideology of station ownership[21]
, and McManus found evidence that economic considerations, like the cost of covering certain stories, may be more important that other news values in news decision-making.[22]
Bagdikian first[23]
, then McChesney[24]
, looked at how corporate media ownership has resulted in a homogenized news product, with less and less coverage of serious issues. This study builds on that work, but adds a significant new element. In our look at the news process we found evidence of how news workers themselves now are evaluating and making decisions about news, based upon what they perceive to be a particularly attractive audience for advertising. As well, because of their own blind spots--due to their own class standing--news workers often do not consider stories that could be crucial to certain parts of the audience.
We began this paper from a quote from Disraeli, talking about two nations who know nothing of each other. The two nations of which he speaks are the rich and the poor. Toward the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st, the American economy was enjoying record gains. Whether those gains were helping America's poor, or whether this era meant a larger disparity between the haves and the have-nots, the public might have difficulty knowing, if what was found in Denver is replicated in other television news operations around the country. Goldsmith and Blakely, in writing about inequalities in American cities wrote:
We find it unsettling how often Americans (and we include ourselves) unconsciously allow the use of segmentation, inequality, and isolation to hide poor people, objectify them, and rationalize their condition. As the poor are separated, they become more distant from the nonpoor. This distance itself naturally makes inequality more palatable to those who are better, off and the separation increases. [25]
In other words, the less we see the poor, the less we know about them, the more likely we are to forget about them. In this market, at this station, news was constructed as a product, aimed at being of interest to primarily those who had disposable income, lived in the suburbs, and had significant purchasing power. It was not targeted with people of color or people from diverse social classes in mind. In light of this it seems appropriate to ask whether news media, by pandering to the tastes of middle and upper classes, are participating in the continued subjugation of the poor and of people of color? At the least, more research of more news organizations is warranted.
TABLE 1
Frequencies of Story Topics
TOPIC
Number of Stories
(N=672)
Percentage
Crime
147
21.9%
Sports
80
11.9%
Weather
75
11.2%
Economics/Business
69
10.3%
Consumer
59
8.8%
Feature
53
7.9%
Politics/Government
51
7.6%
Disaster
39
5.8%
Health
35
5.2%
The Environment
32
4.8%
Human Rights
13
1.9%
"The Needy"
13
1.9%
Education
6
0.9%
TABLE 2
Demographic Characteristics of People Who Appeared in News
RACE
(N=655)
AGE
(N=623)
GENDER
(N=653)
OCCUPATION
(N=387)
PORTRAYAL
(N=629)
Whites
81.5%
>10
1.6%
Male
72.7%
Professional
56.1%
Positive
61.5%
Blacks
11.0%
10s
10.6%
Female
27.3%
Government
28.9%
Neutral
22.4%
Hispanics
5.8%
20s
5.0%
Manual Labor
4.7%
Negative
16.1%
Asians
1.2%
30s
41.3%
Business
4.4%
Native Am.
0.5%
40s
26.2%
Education
2.1%
Others
0%
50s
12.7%
Homeowner
2.1%
60s & over
2.7%
Clergy
1.3%
Unemployed
0.5%
TABLE 3
Crosstabulation of Age by Race
AGE
Whites
n=510
Non-Whites
n=109
Younger than 20
10.4%
(n=53)
21.1%
(n=23)
Between 20 and 49
73.5%
(n=375)
67.0%
(n=73)
50 and Older
16.1%
(n=82)
12.0%
(n=13)
(2(Pearson)=9.930, d.f.=2, p=.007; total N=619
TABLE 4
Mean Broadcast Time by Race and Gender
RACE
Mean Air Time in Seconds
(Standard Deviation)
T-value
Whites (n=534)
Non-Whites (n=121)
110.5 (66.6)
89.5 (63.5)
3.16, d.f.=653, p=.002
GENDER
Male (n=475)
Female (n=178)
109.1 (69.9)
99.2 (57.6)
1.83, d.f.=382.6, p=.069
TABLE 5
Crosstabulation of Age by Gender
AGE
Male
n=446
Female
n=171
Younger than 20
7.9%
(n=35)
23.4%
(n=40)
Between 20 and 49
74.0%
(n=330)
68.4%
(n=117)
50 and Older
18.2%
(n=81)
8.2%
(n=14)
(2(Pearson)=33.086, d.f.=2, p=.001; total N=617
TABLE 6
Crosstabulation of Age by Race in "Class" News
AGE
Whites
n=220
Non-Whites
n=44
Younger than 20
16.4%
(n=36)
18.2%
(n=8)
Between 20 and 49
71.8%
(n=158)
54.6%
(n=24)
50 and Older
11.8%
(n=26)
27.3%
(n=12)
(2(Pearson)=7.744, d.f.=2, p=.021; total N=264
TABLE 7
Crosstabulation of Age by Gender in "Class" News
AGE
Male
n=193
Female
n=72
Younger than 20
11.9%
(n=23)
29.2%
(n=21)
Between 20 and 49
70.5%
(n=136)
65.3%
(n=47)
50 and Older
17.6%
(n=34)
5.6%
(n=4)
(2(Pearson)=14.921, d.f.=2, p=.001; total N=265
[1] Terry Nichols Clark and Seymour Martin Lipset, "Are Social Class Dying?" International Sociology 6 (December 1991): 397-410.
[2] Benjamin DeMott, The Imperial Middle: Why Americans Can't Think Straight About Class (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992) 43.
[3] Mary R. Jackman and Robert W. Jackman, Class Awareness in the United States (Berkeley: University of California, 1983), 8.
[4] "The Nation in a Time of Plenty, the Poor are Still Poor," New York Times, 23 January 2000, 3.
[5] Alvin Y. So, "Recent Developments in Marxist Class Analysis: A Critical Appraisal," Sociological Inquiry 65 (November 1995): 322-323.
[6] Berch Berberoglu, Class Structure and Social Transformation, (Wesport: Praeger, 1994), vii.
[7] Mary R. Jackman and Robert W. Jackman, Class Awareness in the United States (Berkeley: University of California, 1983), 40, 69.
[8] Alan J. Spector, "Class Structure and Social Change: The Contradictions of Class Relations in Advanced Capitalist Society," Sociological Inquiry 65 (November 1995): 334-337.
[9] Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990), 226.
[10] Gregory Mantsios, "Class in America: Myths and Realities," in Race, Class and Gender in the United States: An Integrated Study, ed. Paula S. Rothenberg (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998), 202.
[11] A. Scott Henderson, "'Tarred with the Exceptional Image':Public Housing and Popular Discourse, 1950-1990, in American Studies, 36 (spring 1995): 31-52.
[12] Dan McMurray, "The Several Faces of Hunger: A Review of the Amount and Types of Information Available to the Public on Domestic Hunger, 1967-1990, in National Journal of Sociology, 5::2 (winter 1991): 92-109.
[13] Gary Blasi, "And We Are Not Seen: Ideological and Political Barriers to Understanding Homelessness," in American Behavioral Scientist, 37 (February 1994): 563-586.
[14] Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
[15] James Ettema and Limor Peer, "Good News from a Bad Neighborhood: Toward an Alternative to the Discourse of Urban Pathology, in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 73 (winter 1996): 835-856
[16] Herbert J. Rubin and Irene S. Rubin, Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data, (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995) .
[17] RTNDA Code of Ethics, unanimously adopted by the RTNDA Board of Directors on August 31, 1987.
[18] Thomas D. Boston, Race, Class & Conservatism (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988) 4.
[19] Herbert Gans, Deciding What's News: A study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time. (New York: Pantheon, 1990).
[20] Dallas W. Smythe, Dependency Road: Communications, Capitalism, Consciousness and Canada, (Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing, 1981).
[21] J. Herbert Altschull, J. H. , Agents of Power, (New York: Longman, 1984).
[22] John H. McManus, Market-Driven Journalism: Let the Citizen Beware? (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1994).
[23] Bagdikian, B. (1983). The Media Monopoly. Boston: Beacon.
[24] Robert W. McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times, (Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
[25] William W. Goldsmith and Edward J. Blakely, Separate Societies: Poverty and Inequality in U.S. Cities (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992) 3.