Nikolay Kochurov, Analyzing News in the Media

Student Workbook

October 2010

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF NEWS COVERAGE

Useful linking expressions for comparison and contrast

Exercise 1. Note the way words are combined in these extracts from academic articles.

Sample 1.Iraq Dominates PEJ’s First Quarterly NCI Report (Cable NewsMay 25, 2007)

Looking more closely at the cable universe itself—among the three channels as well as across day parts—PEJ found distinct differences between the three channels, far more than discerned between the three commercial network channels or newspapers.

As an example, we found that coverage of the three biggest stories of the quarter—Iraq policy debate, the 2008 campaign and Anna Nicole Smith differed greatly across the three channels and day parts.

Overall, MSNBC and CNN were much more consumed with the war in Iraq than was Fox. MSNBC, for instance, devoted nearly a third of the time studied to the war (26% on the policy debate, 3% on events on the ground and 2% the homefront). Fox, by contrast, spent less than half that much time on the war—15% in all, (10% on the policy debate, 3% on events in Iraq and 1% on the homefront).

On CNN, Iraq coverage totaled 25%, again mostly focused on policy debate (14%). Events on the ground received 7% of the coverage (coming in second overall) while the homefront trailed at 3%.

MSNBC also spent more time on the presidential campaign than its rivals (14%), compared with 9% on Fox and 7% on CNN.

If Fox was less focused on the Iraq War, what took its place? Mostly—according to the numbers—Anna Nicole Smith. Coverage of her death trailed just barely the airtime spent on the Iraq policy debate, accounting for 9.6% of all the Fox content studied (versus 10.1% for the Iraq policy debate). Fox also stood out for its lack of coverage on the firings of the U.S. attorneys, compared with the other channels. The story, which gained real momentum in mid March, consumed a mere 2% of Fox’s total airtime. CNN devoted twice that percent (4%) and MSNBC four times (8%).

Another interesting comparison is the percent of time devoted to just a few big stories. On MSNBC, more than half of its programming consisted of just four stories. On CNN and Fox, it wasn’t until the 9th and 11th stories respectively that we reached 49%.

Moreover, MSNBC’s four top stories reveal something about the network’s identity. The perennial third-place finisher in the cable news ratings race sometimes seemed to struggle in trying to create a coherent identity and niche. Officials recently stated their intention to focus on Washington politics and policy. The study demonstrates that strategy.

The network’s top four stories—the Iraq policy debate, the 2008 campaign, the fired U.S. attorneys, and the Valerie Plame leak/Scooter Libby trial—are all, at their core, about Washington and politics. When added together, they accounted for 55% of MSNBC’s total coverage. (The same four stories filled 26% of the Fox News Channel’s airtime and 27% of CNN’s newshole.)That emphasis on Beltway topics is even more obvious in a prime-time MSNBC lineup of hosts that includes former Jimmy Carter speechwriter Chris Matthews, outspoken liberal Keith Olbermann, veteran conservative host Tucker Carlson, and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of MSNBC’s prime time airtime was consumed by those four stories in the first part of 2007. When it comes to the Fox News Channel, there has long been a debate in media circles about whether the cable ratings leader has a clear conservative tilt or whether it is an antidote to a media landscape dominated by liberals. That argument is beyond of the scope of this report, but Fox gave considerably less coverage than its rivals to two subjects that were largely bad news for the Bush administration—the war in Iraq and the U.S. attorneys scandal.

Aside from its high level of interest in the Anna Nicole Smith saga, one of Fox’s other top-10 stories (that did not make either CNN’s or MSNBC’s list) was a sensational crime tale. The network devoted 2% of its total airtime to the January tale of two Missouri teenage boys who were abducted and ultimately rescued from a man now charged with kidnapping, sodomy and attempted murder.

It is harder to characterize CNN—which fell in the first quarter of 2007 somewhere in between the Fox News Channel and MSNBC in its story selection. The one area of obvious distinction was the network’s emphasis on the immigration debate, which was its sixth biggest story at 4%. The subject was not among MSNBC’s top-10 story list and Fox devoted only 2% of its coverage to the topic. CNN’s attention to the issue stems from the relentless coverage by Lou Dobbs, the host of the network’s 6 pm show, and an outspoken advocate for stricter enforcement of immigration laws. More than one-third (35%) of all immigrations stories—across all the media studied—appeared on the Lou Dobbs’ show.

Cable Differences by Daypart

There are also noticeable differences in cable news depending on the time of day.

Overall, the three channels were much more distinct from each other in the daytime hours. Each had a different top story in the first quarter of the year. Fox viewers were most likely to learn about Anna Nicole (17%), while MSNBC talked primarily about the upcoming elections (16%) and CNN spent most time on Iraq policy debate (11%).

Again, MSNBC stood out here for spending more time on just a few stories, a narrower or more focused or targeted agenda. The top three stories—the campaign, Iraq policy and Anna Nicole Smith—amounted to 41% of all the daytime programming studied, versus about 25% devoted to the top three stories on Fox and CNN.

In the later programs, the biggest difference was in the degree of emphasis, rather than in the selection of stories themselves. All three channels led with the Iraq policy debate, but MSNBC spent more than twice as much of its airtime (30%) on the subject than Fox (12%) or CNN (15%). The second story was also the same across channels—the 2008 elections—again with MSNBC devoting a greater percent to the topic than the other two (13% versus 10% for Fox and 8% for CNN). After that, the three channels diverged. Fox continued it primetime focus on Anna Nicole (8%), while CNN moved to events in Iraq (7%) and MSNBC talked about the fired U.S. attorneys (10%).

Sample 2.New Media, Old Media

How Blogs And Social Media Agendas Relate And Differ From The Traditional Press (Pew Research Center’s Project For Excellence In Journalism, May 23, 2010)

News today is increasingly a shared, social experience. Half of Americans say they rely on the people around them to find out at least some of the news they need to know. [1] Some 44% of online news users get news at least a few times a week through emails, automatic updates or posts from social networking sites. In 2009, Twitter’s monthly audience increased by 200%. [2]

While most original reporting still comes from traditional journalists, technology makes it increasingly possible for the actions of citizens to influence a story’s total impact.

What types of news stories do consumers share and discuss the most? What issues do they have less interest in? What is the interplay of the various new media platforms? And how do their agendas compare with that of the mainstream press?

To answer these questions, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has gathered a year of data on the top news stories discussed and linked to on blogs and social media pages and seven months’ worth on Twitter. We also have analyzed a year of the most viewed news-related videos on YouTube. Several clear trends emerge.

Most broadly, the stories and issues that gain traction in social media differ substantially from those that lead in the mainstream press. But they also differ greatly from each other.  Of the 29 weeks that we tracked all three social platforms, blogs, Twitter and YouTube shared the same top story just once. That was the week of June 15-19, when the protests that followed the Iranian elections led on all three.

Each social media platform also seems to have its own personality and function. In the year studied, bloggers gravitated toward stories that elicited emotion, concerned individual or group rights or triggered ideological passion. Often these were stories that people could personalize and then share in the social forum – at times in highly partisan language. And unlike in some other types of media, the partisanship here does not lean strongly to one side or the other. Even on stories like the Tea Party protests, Sarah Palin and public support for Obama both conservative and liberal voices come through strongly.

On Twitter, by contrast, technology is a major focus – with a heavy prominence on Twitter itself – while politics plays a much smaller role. The mission is primarily about passing along important – often breaking – information in a way that unifies or assumes shared values within the Twitter community. And the breaking news that trumped all else across Twitter in 2009 focused on the protests following the Iranian election. It led as the top news story on Twitter for seven weeks in a row – a feat not reached by any other news story on any of the platforms studied.

YouTube has still other characteristics that set it apart. Here, users don’t often add comments or additional insights but instead take part by selecting from millions of videos and sharing. Partly as a result, the most watched videos have a strong sense of serendipity. They pique interest and curiosity with a strong visual appeal. The “Hey you’ve got to see this,” mentality rings strong.  Users also gravitate toward a much broader international mix here as videos transcend language barriers in a way that written text cannot.

Across all three social platforms, though, attention spans are brief. Just as news consumers don’t stay long on any website, social media doesn’t stay long on any one story. On blogs, 53% of the lead stories in a given week stay on the list no more than three days. On Twitter that is true of 72% of lead stories, and more than half (52%) are on the list for just 24 hours.

And most of those top weekly stories differ dramatically from what is receiving attention in the traditional press. Blogs overlap more than Twitter, but even there only about a quarter of the top stories in any given week were the same as in the “MSM.” 

Instead, social media tend to home in on stories that get much less attention in the mainstream press. And there is little evidence, at least at this point, of the traditional press then picking up on those stories in response. Across the entire year studied, just one particular story or event – the controversy over emails relating to global research that came to be known as “Climate-gate” –  became a major item in the blogosphere and then, a week later, gaining more traction in traditional media.  

These are some conclusions drawn from one of the first comprehensive empirical assessments of the relationships between social media and the more traditional press.

The study examined the blogosphere and social media by tracking the news linked to on millions of blogs and social media pages tracked by Icerocket and Technorati from January 19, 2009, through January 15, 2010. [3] It also tracked the videos on YouTube’s news channel for the same period. It measured Twitter by tracking news stories linked to within tweets as monitored by Tweetmeme from June 15, 2009, through January 15, 2010. [4]

Among the specific findings:

• Social media and the mainstream press clearly embrace different agendas. Blogs shared the same lead story with traditional media in just 13 of the 49 weeks studied. Twitter was even less likely to share the traditional media agenda – the lead story matched that of the mainstream press in just four weeks of the 29 weeks studied. On YouTube, the top stories overlapped with traditional media eight out of 49 weeks. 

• The stories that gain traction in social media do so quickly, often within hours of initial reports, and leave quickly as well. Just 5% of the top five stories on Twitter remained among the top stories the following week. This was true of 13% of the top stories on blogs and 9% on YouTube. In the mainstream press, on the other hand, fully 50% of the top five stories one week remained a top story a week later.

• Politics, so much a focus of cable and radio talk programming, has found a place in blogs and on YouTube. On blogs, 17% of the top five linked-to stories in a given week were about U.S. government or politics, often accompanied by emphatic personal analysis or evaluations. These topics were even more prevalent among news videos on YouTube, where they accounted for 21% of all top stories. On Twitter, however, technology stories were linked to far more than anything else, accounting for 43% of the top five stories in a given week and 41% of the lead items. By contrast, technology filled 1% of the newshole in the mainstream press during the same period.

• While social media players espouse a different agenda than the mainstream media, blogs still heavily rely on the traditional press – and primarily just a few outlets within that – for their information. More than 99% of the stories linked to in blogs came from legacy outlets such as newspapers and broadcast networks. And just four – the BBC, CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post accounted for fully 80% of all links.

• Twitter, by contrast, was less tied to traditional media. Here half (50%) of the links were to legacy outlets; 40% went to web-only news sources such as Mashable and CNET. The remaining 10% went to wire stories or non-news sources on the Web such as a blog known as “Green Briefs,” which summarized daily developments during the June protests in Iran.

• The most popular news videos on YouTube, meanwhile, stood out for having a broader international mix. A quarter, 26%, of the top watched news videos were of non-U.S. events, primarily those with a strong visual appeal such as raw footage of Pope Benedict XVI getting knocked over during Mass on Christmas Eve or a clip of a veteran Brazilian news anchor getting caught insulting some janitors without realizing his microphone was still live. Celebrity and media-focused videos were also given significant prominence.

In producing PEJ’s New Media Index, the basis for this study, there are some challenges posed by the breath of potential outlets. There are literally millions of blogs and tweets produced each day. To make that prospect manageable, the study observes the “news” interests of those people utilizing social media, as classified by the tracking websites. PEJ did not make a determination as to what constitutes a news story as opposed to some other topic, but generally, areas outside the traditional notion of news such as gardening, sports or other hobbies are not in the purview of content.  

By focusing on this type of subject matter, the study creates a close comparison between the news agenda of users of social media and of the more traditional news media. This approach could  tend to make the agendas of the mainstream and new media platforms appear even more similar than they would be if a wider array of subject matter were practicable to capture. Thus the divergent agendas found here, if anything, are even more striking.

Sample 3. Media Metric: Obama's 100 Days of Press (Pew Research Center Publications, April 28, 2009)

More Positive Coverage than Clinton or Bush

As he marks his 100th day in office, President Barack Obama has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush during their first months in the White House, according to a new study of press coverage.

Overall, roughly four out of ten stories, editorials and op-ed columns about Obama have been clearly positive in tone, compared with 22% for Bush and 27% for Clinton in the same mix of seven national media outlets during their first two months in office, according to a study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The study found positive stories about Obama have outweighed negative by two-to-one (42% vs. 20%) while 38% of stories have been neutral or mixed.

When a broader universe of media -- one that includes 49 outlets and reflects the more modern media culture of 2009 -- is examined, the numbers for Obama's coverage are similar, though, somewhat less positive and somewhat more negative. In this expanded universe of media -- which includes news websites, additional regional and local newspapers, cable news, network morning news and National Public Radio -- 37% of Obama's coverage has been positive, 40% neutral and 23% negative.

Several factors may be at play in the favorable tone Obama has received during these first months. One element is the pace and sweep of Obama's activities. Bush and Clinton both started their presidencies pursuing policy agendas much more of their own making than Obama has. But the data suggest the current president has managed the media narrative anyway by responding to the economic crisis with so many new proposals and doing so many events that it has been hard for both his critics and the media to keep up.

Another factor may be the media reflecting, and in turn, influencing public opinion. According to Pew Research surveys, President Obama is more popular at this point in his presidency than were either Bush or Clinton. Past studies have shown a recurring pattern of press coverage tending to follow favorability ratings.

Obama also entered office with a stronger popular mandate than either of his two predecessors. He is the first president since George H.W. Bush in 1988 to be elected to his first term with more than 50% of the popular vote. He also succeeded a president leaving office with historically low favorability ratings.

Finally, those who see the press as ideologically motivated toward liberals will likely see that phenomenon as a factor here as well.

Among other differences, the tone of Obama's coverage has also proven to be more consistent over time than his predecessors'. Sixteen years ago, Bill Clinton stumbled badly his first month in office and then began to recover. George Bush started well in the press and then began to see his coverage become more skeptical as his policy agenda rolled out, often to substantial controversy. Obama, by contrast, while he has had good weeks and bad in the media, has shown a capacity to recover from the rough ones by changing tactics and redirecting the narrative.

These are a few of the findings of the new study, which compared coverage of the first 60 days of the Obama administration to coverage in the same outlets during the same time period in the first days of the Bush administration and the Clinton administration. The comparative component of the study includes an examination of 1,261 stories in two national newspapers, the three commercial network evening newscasts, a prominent newsweekly and the NewsHour on PBS.

The new study also looked at an expanded universe of media outlets that more fully reflects the new media culture. That larger universe also includes the three cable news channels, the three commercial network morning news programs, National Public Radio, 12 news websites and 11 additional newspapers.

Among the findings in the study:

In contrast with Clinton and Bush, Obama's treatment was more favorable than skeptical both in news coverage and on newspaper opinion pages. For Clinton, on the other hand, news coverage tilted toward the negative, while newspaper op-eds and editorials offered favor. The treatment went the other way for Bush, with news coverage leaning positive, while op-eds and editorials studied were decidedly negative.

The topics covered have also been different for Obama compared with his predecessors. Roughly twice as much of the coverage of Obama (44%) has concerned his personal and leadership qualities than was the case for Bush (22%) or Clinton (26%). Less of the coverage, meanwhile, has focused on his policy agenda.

Thanks in part to Obama's getting out of Washington and meeting directly with the public, far more of the coverage has dealt with his relationship with the American people (31% of all stories) than was the case with Clinton (16%) or Bush (8%). Much more of Bush's coverage centered on his relations with Congress and ways in which he wanted to change the reputation of the office of the president -- largely institutional issues --  while Clinton's coverage scattered in many directions. This focus on the public has also been a factor in the positive tone of the coverage, both because it plays to one of Obama's political strengths and because the citizen voices have often been so favorable.

There are significant variations in how the different media sectors have covered the Obama presidency. Newspapers and evening network television were most positive in their treatment of Obama. Online news sites were more neutral. Within the cable news universe, MSNBC and Fox News offered strikingly different portrayals of the young presidency, while CNN more closely reflected the tone of the media overall. Meanwhile, NPR and PBS offered the highest percentage of neutral stories of any outlets studied.

This study was designed to examine how the press assessed the new president, to break down the basis of those assessments and to compare this early period with both Clinton and Bush.

Sample 4. Attitude Factors in the Search for Israeli-Palestinian Peace: A Comprehensive Review of Recent Polls (World Public Opinion, September 2, 2010)

By Alvin Richman Both the Israeli and Palestinian publics want to reach a peace agreement, but both sides deeply distrust the other and are pessimistic that negotiations will soon resolve their conflict. Negotiators on both sides also are constrained by extremists opposed to major Israeli-Palestinian compromises - Hamas which favors a posture of "resistance" to Israel, and the Israeli settler movement which opposes yielding territory or settlements to the Palestinians. One of the most telling measures of the Israeli and Palestinian publics' mutual desire for an accord - besides both sides predominant support of the Middle East peace process - are their attitudes toward a U.S. mediating role. Both Israelis and Palestinians mainly favor a stronger U.S. role in the peace process, because the U.S. is seen as a key to reaching an agreement, even though each side perceives the U.S. as partial to the other. There is a growing consensus among Middle East observers that the United States will have to present Israeli and Palestinian negotiators with a two-state peace plan, including at least the basic parameters for resolving the most critical issues - borders/settlements, Jerusalem/Holy Sites, security arrangements and refugees/compensation. Among the various issues dividing Israelis and Palestinians, the future of Jerusalem appears to be the most difficult to resolve: Not only is the issue of Jerusalem ranked a high priority by both publics - and therefore relatively difficult ground on which to make concessions - but also each proposal tested to resolve this issue was predominantly opposed by both Israelis and Palestinians. These findings are based on analyses of several sets of simultaneous, dual-sample surveys of the Israeli and Palestinian publics taken in 2009 and 2010 which measured support for more than two dozen specific proposals covering eight major issues.

TEXTS FOR COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Exercise 1. Compare separate interpretations by the media of the same event (texts A, B, and C) and point out the similarities and differences among them. Develop an understanding of how coverage of an event by the media can vary depending on the type of media and its source.

Text A.

Two top men lay markers for 2012 election (The Financial Times, September 30, 2010)

By Charles Clover

A noisy media campaign in September to oust Yuri Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow, was the first public power struggle to rock Russia’s airwaves in nearly 10 years. In a sense, it was the exception that proved the rule, reminding people just how boring political life has become over the past decade.

Not since the “information wars” between rival oligarch groups in the 1990s has there been such a public mudslinging.

In what some have labelled revenge for criticism from Mr Luzhkov, President Dmitry Medvedev deployed a fearsome armada of state TV channels, accusing the mayor of everything from corruption to being a bad beekeeper in a two-week airwave blitz.

Mr Luzhkov’s fate was decided on September 28 when Mr Medvedev sacked him. Most political analysts agree that, with the departure of one of Russia’s last independent figures, politics might now be even less interesting, if this is possible.

Political pluralism has never been Russia’s strong suit, but the era of Vladimir Putin, former president, now prime minister, has brought political monism to a new level: the press is muzzled; the once proud state Duma, or parliament, now exists more as a lobbying body.

The single vexing political question of the day, meanwhile, is whether power belongs to one man, or, in the best case scenario, two.

That conundrum – the relationship between Mr Medvedev and his mentor Mr Putin – represents the only unpredictable, or at least unknown, element left in Russian politics, the sum total of the allowable spectrum for musing about the future.

Moscow political junkies have precious little to feed their addiction and their pastime now evokes the Kremlinology of the Cold War, when teams of CIA researchers scanned the back pages of Pravda or the May Day parade stand for clues as to who was in the ascendant. Today’s Kremlinologists tend to grasp any hint of competition between Mr Medvedev and Mr Putin as evidence that something interesting is going on.

Mr Medvedev, for example, talks about democratic reform, while Mr Putin does not; Mr Medvedev says dependence on oil exports is “primitive”, while Mr Putin has referred to the country as the “energy superpower”; Mr Medvedev says the economy needs to be overhauled, Mr Putin says it is “healthy”.

Whether these differences amount to stylistic ones, or a looming split in the political “tandem”, is hotly debated.

Many believe Mr Putin is the master string-puller. Mr Medvedev is merely keeping the seat warm for his mentor, and any evidence of competition between the two is for show. Others believe that while Mr Putin is the more powerful of the two, Mr Medvedev may yet be able to mount a challenge to Mr Putin’s dominance.

Yevgenia Albats, chief editor of The New Times, a news magazine, is one of those who sees real competition. She likens Mr Medvedev’s position to that of Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s, when the latter faced down communist party hardliners, using economic and political reforms to create a constituency of the liberal-minded intelligentsia.

“Mr Medvedev is playing to a specific section of the elite, who share his views on society” she says. Without entering into direct confrontation with Mr Putin, she believes Mr Medvedev is trying to make life uncomfortable for the hardliners, by creating debate on sensitive issues, such as police reform and official corruption.

The 2012 presidential election is likely to put the various Putin-Medvedev theories to a test.

Mr Putin stood down in 2008 after his constitutionally allowed two-term maximum, but it is unknown whether he plans to return to the presidency, and it is unlikely the two would run against each other.

If one of the two does not announce his withdrawal from the presidential election in the months before March 2012, the ensuing political struggle could make the Medvedev-Luzhkov brawl look like a kindergarten spat.

Kremlin watchers note that Mr Putin has made an effort to appear more in the media over the past two months, and on September 18, announced that pensions would be increased next year, a sure sign he has an eye on voters.

In a September meeting with the Valdai Club, a group of western academics and journalists, he compared himself to former US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was elected to four terms in office.

But Mr Medvedev also clearly wants a second term, and the signs are there that he is placing markers.

In September, his press secretary, Natalia Timakova, told a TV interviewer: “The modernisation agenda proposed by the head of state is shared by a large section of society and the government. Therefore achieving these goals goes beyond the term of one presidential mandate.”

Konstantin Remchukov, editor of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, the Moscow daily newspaper, said Mr Medvedev’s aim in forcing out Moscow’s mayor might have been to prove he is a political heavyweight.

“To be taken seriously in our hierarchical society, you need to demolish someone powerful,” he says.

He drew a parallel with Mr Putin’s arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oil tycoon, in 2004, which confirmed him as the all-powerful leader.

Gleb Pavlovsky, a spin doctor who works for the Kremlin, says neither man wants conflict: “They are hoping the choice will be obvious.” However, he added, it increasingly looks like it may not be.

Which means the political scene might yet get interesting once again.