Presented to: International Communication Association Annual ConferenceChicago, Illinois, USA May 1996
W. Joseph Campbell
Freedom Forum Ph.D. Fellow
The collapse of the communism in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union hastened the decline of the once-vigorous international debate about creating a "new world information and communication order."1 Still, issues that figured in the ill-fated, sometimes-intemperate NWICO debate endure. Among them: the prominence violent and disruptive events command in day-to-day flow of international news, 2and the extent to which domestic perspectives influence news media gatekeepers in preparing international news budgets3
The continuing debate surrounding those and other issues in international journalism helped give rise an ambitious, collaborative, and ongoing multinational analysis of the variety and nature of international news in the closing years of the twentieth century. This analysis -- the Cooperative Study of Foreign News and International News Flow in the 1990s -- was organized by international communication scholars in the United States and Britain, and includes contributors from nearly seventy countries in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
The study is intended by its originators 4to expand on earlier investigations, notably the 1978 UNESCO Foreign Images study, and to produce a detailed and up-to-date portrait of foreign and international news, and the flow of foreign news. The study's centerpiece is a quantitative content analysis of foreign and international news published or broadcast during two weeks in September 1995. The analysis included leading print and broadcast media in more than seventy countries. The two-week sample was preceded in May 1995 by a two-day trial, to test methods and coding procedures. In the May 1995 trial, the foreign and international news content of more than 120 print and broadcast media in forty-one countries was examined.
Results from the extensive analysis of September 1995 are being compiled. Data from the May 1995 trial -- which coincided with events in Europe and elsewhere that commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II in Europe -- are available, however. This paper is an exploratory study that draws on data collected in the May 1995 trial.
Specifically, the paper seeks to address the extent to which disruptive events comprise foreign and international news content, and the degree to which domestic elements -- the local angles, in a sense -- are reflected in foreign and international news. Previous research suggests that international news, particularly that reported by broadcast media, is oriented toward disruptive events, and that domestic content is a vital determinant in how news media prepare their budgets of foreign and international news.
It must be noted, however, that a two-day sample of foreign and international news allows for only exploratory analyses. The data are unstable and lack power to generalize. Nonetheless, patterns detected even in a limited sample can be valuable in developing hypotheses that can be tested against the much larger, and more stable, data set collected in September 1995.
Units of analysis in this study were individual print and broadcast media in the May 1995 trial. This study included 125 separate media from thirty-seven countries.5 Data from four countries were insufficient6 to warrant inclusion in this paper.
Aspects of each medium (print or broadcast) and of each country (level of press freedom7) were coded as independent variables in this study. Measures of media content (percent of foreign and international news stories containing disruptive events; percent of foreign and international news reports containing a domestic angle) were coded as dependent variables. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to assess relationships among the variables. A covariate, the United Nations index that compares levels of human development,8 was incorporated in the ANOVA routines.
Results of the study indicate that print media are more likely than broadcast media to carry reports that lack domestic elements in their foreign and international news columns. Put another way, broadcast media appear more inclined to search foreign and international news for reports that contain domestic content. Notably, it appears that broadcast media in "free" press systems are most likely to seek domestic content in their reports.
Results of the ANOVA are shown in Table 1. Cell means are shown in Table 2.
Table 1. No domestic involvement by media type and level of press freedom, with human development as covariate. |
|||||
Experimental sums of squares. Covariate entered with main effects. |
|||||
Source of variation |
Sum of Squares |
DF |
Mean Square |
F |
Significance of F |
Main effects |
5621.198 |
4 |
1405.300 |
3.788 |
.006 |
Press freedom |
528.342 |
2 |
264.171 |
.712 |
.493 |
2-Way interactions |
989.542 |
2 |
494.771 |
1.334 |
.268 |
Press Freedom/Type |
989.542 |
2 |
494.771 |
1.334 |
.268 |
Explained | 6610.740 |
6 |
1101.790 |
||
Residual | 38594.520 |
105 |
370.995 |
||
Total | 45565.260 |
111 |
410.498 |
||
Table 2. Cell means. No domestic angle in foreign news. | ||||
Total Population |
||||
64.05 |
||||
Media type | ||||
Broadcast |
||||
69.88 |
56.27 |
|||
Press freedom | ||||
Free |
Partly Free |
Not Free |
||
61.87 |
67.07 |
65.76 |
||
Media type |
||||
Press freedom |
Broadcast |
|||
Free |
70.52 |
51.99 |
||
Interestingly, the study noted that nearly two-thirds of foreign and international reports lack disruptive content. Analysis of variance, however, did not indicate that disruptive news content in foreign and international news varied significantly by media type. That is, broadcast media appeared no more likely than print media to carry foreign or international news reports that contain disruptive elements.
Moreover, the tendency to publish or broadcast international or foreign news featuring disruption was not associated with national press freedom ratings. Results of the analysis of variance is shown on Table 3. Cell means are given in Table 4.
Table 3. Disruptive events in foreign and international news, by media type and level of press freedom, with human development as covariate. |
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Experimental sums of squares. Covariate entered with main effects. |
|||||
Source of variation |
Sum of Squares |
DF |
Mean Square |
F |
Significance of F |
Main effects |
783.635 |
4 |
195.909 |
.788 |
.548 |
Press freedom |
722.652 |
2 |
361.326 |
1.417 |
.247 |
2-Way interactions |
265.523 |
2 |
132.761 |
.521 |
.596 |
Press Freedom/Type |
265.523 |
2 |
132.761 |
.521 |
.596 |
Explained | 1049.158 |
6 |
174.860 |
.686 |
.661 |
Residual | 26766.551 |
105 |
254.920 |
||
Total | 27815.709 |
111 |
250.592 |
||
Table 4. Cell means. Disruptive events in foreign news. | ||||
Total Population |
||||
64.05 |
||||
Media type | ||||
Broadcast |
||||
25.31 |
26.70 |
|||
Press freedom ranking | ||||
Free |
Partly Free |
Not Free |
||
25.04 |
29.59 |
22.58 |
||
Media type |
||||
Press freedom |
Broadcast |
|||
Free |
23.09 |
27.28 |
||
The two-day sample drawn in May 1995 allows for limited generalizability of results. Even so, the results can be treated as exploratory, as suggesting interesting hypotheses that can be explored further, and in more detail, in larger data set from the September 1995 sampling.
Notably, the quantity of disruptive news in foreign and international reporting merits invite additional attention. Results of this study suggest that disruptive news represents just 25 percent of the total foreign and international news budget -- a figure certainly smaller than might be anticipated, judging from previously reported content analyses of newspapers and television news programs.
Another element of this study that merits detailed assessment is whether, or to what extent, differences do exist between print and broadcast media in carrying reports about disruptive foreign and international news. This study suggests that the differences may be minimal, that television and radio are no more likely than newspapers to report disruptive foreign and international news. Such a finding would suggest that the reputation of the broadcast media for emphasizing disruptive side of the news may be misplaced.
Interestingly, this study detected no differences among countries with varying levels of press freedom in their media's use of disruptive content. Press freedom rankings appeared not to be significant, either, in whether media preferred reports that contain a domestic angle. The Human Development Index -- a covariate in both ANOVA routines -- was not found to be a significant influencing factor, either.
Also meriting additional attention is the indication that newspapers are more inclined than broadcast media to look beyond the domestic angle in constructing their foreign and international news budget. Such a finding may not be altogether surprising, however, because the volume of foreign and international news is typically greater in newspapers than in broadcast media. Even so, the finding is intriguing, especially because broadcast media in "free" press systems appear most likely to seek out the domestic angle.
If patterns suggested by this study are supported by the similarly drawn, and much more stable, data set that was compiled in September 1995, important notions about foreign and international news then may require revisiting. Notably, a finding confirming that most foreign and international news is non-disruptive -- that it is instead largely routine -- would be particularly important. So would confirmation that broadcast media carry only a small portion of foreign or international news that has disruptive content.
Endnotes
2See, among others, Pamela J. Shoemaker, Lucig H. Danielian, and Nancy Brendlinger, "Deviant Acts, Ricky Business and U.S. Interests: The Newsworthiness of World Events," Journalism Quarterly 68 4 (Winter 1991), 781-95.
3See, among others, Johan Galtung and Richard C. Vincent Global Glasnost: Toward a New World Information and Communication Order? (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1992), 50.
4They are: Robert L. Stevenson, Kenan professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the United States, and Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi of the University of Leicester in Britain.
5Media from the following countries were included in this study: the United States and Mexico in North America; Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, Peru, and Venezuela in Central and South America; Austria, Finland, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Spain in Western Europe; Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia, and Ukraine in Central and Eastern Europe; Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa in sub-Saharan Africa; Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, and United Arab Emirates in the Middle East; China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, New Zealand, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand in Asia and the Pacific Rim.
6That is, fewer than ten cases.
7The 1995 comparative ratings of press freedom, compiled by Freedom House, were applied. Countries were ranked as "free," "partly free," or "not free." The annual Freedom House ratings are derived from analysis of political and economic pressures on national news media, of national measures to harass, intimidate, and jail journalists, and of legal restrictions on national news flow. See, Leonard R. Sussman, "The Press: Pressed and Oppressed," Freedom House report, 15 April 1995, 7.
8The Human Development Index compiled by the United Nations Development Program was used to assess levels of human development in the countries included in this study. The Human Development Index, comprised of measures such as life expectancy at birth and adult literacy rates, is plotted on a scale of 0 to 1. The greater the value, the greater the level of human development.