National Press Coverage Research Articles

SELLING SCIENCE?

Over the last 20 years science news has been written by dwindling numbers of reporters, with higher workloads, and less time than previously to conduct tasks such as finding, researching, and checking news stories. Simultaneously, a growing science communication sector is developing more power to influence what, and how, such news is reported. This paper examines media coverage of animal–human hybrid embryos in the context of a highly efficient public relations campaign by a coalition of scientists and scientific organisations in the United Kingdom. It draws on the findings of a comprehensive content analysis of UK national press coverage of the issue, and 16 semi-structured interviews with specialist science journalists, key news sources, and press officers on both sides of a polarised media debate. We argue that while science communicators won a convincing media victory, the broad (and unintended) effects of such campaigns highlight concerns about media independence, and the openness and quality of public and scientific debate about controversial science.

Domestic Missionaries, Slaveholders, and Confronting the Morality of Slavery: Missouri v. James Burr, George Thompson, and Alanson Work, September, 1841

This article revisits the 1841 arrest, trial, and conviction of three U.S. abolitionist missionaries, James Burr, George Thompson, and Alanson Work, who were accused in Marion County, Missouri of attempting to “steal slaves.” All three were linked to the evangelical Quincy Institute across the Mississippi River in Illinois and were in Marion County to preach to enslaved persons and assist those who wished to run away to freedom. The article makes several linked arguments. First, local slave owners, who loaded the jury to assure a guilty verdict, spread the false story, which has previously been taken at face value, that the slaves themselves had voluntarily betrayed the abolitionists. Second, this story drew on a pro-slavery master narrative that depicted slavery as a benevolent, paternalistic institution and the enslaved as carefree children who loved their masters and spurned freedom. Further, the story enabled slaveholders to sidestep the moral condemnation of slavery on slave soil posed by the trial, national press coverage, abolitionist denunciations, and the Underground Railroad.

The demobilization of two illegal armed groups: analysis of the coverage by national press

Given the start of new peace talks between the FARC guerrillas and the Colombian government, it is crucial to understand the role of Colombian journalists in reporting peace and war.This article presents an analysis on the National Press coverage of the demobilizations of a paramilitary group (Bloque Cacique Nutibara) and a section of the FARC guerrillas (BloqueCacicaGaitana) within a frame that reflects over the ethical practice of journalism in the context of war. The results are consistent with literature arguing that ethical codes are not documents dictating how journalists should do their job, but rather they represent political acts of communication which allow journalists to reclaim their proffessional independence from sources and defend themselves from threats. The paper also discusses the apparent tension between journalism ethics, and the barriers imposed by the media´s informational needs and the strategic military aims of armed groups.

DE/CONSTRUCTING “SUSPECT” COMMUNITIES

Irish and Muslim communities in Britain are, or have often been, constructed negatively in public discourse, where they have been associated with terrorism and extremism. Despite similarities in the experiences of these communities, little comparative research has been conducted. We address this gap by implementing a critical discourse analysis of national and diaspora press coverage of events involving Irish and Muslim communities that occurred in Great Britain between 1974 and 2007. We identified a consensus within the press that “law-abiding” Irish and Muslim people must stand up against “extremists” within their ranks and defend what newsmakers perceive are British values; in this way Irish and Muslim communities are constructed as both inside and outside Britishness. We conclude that the construction of these communities as “suspect” happens mostly in the ambiguity of news discourse, which contributes to fostering a socio-political climate that has permitted civil liberties to be violated by the state security apparatus.

Finding a VOICE for UK clinical pharmacology

At a James Black Conference held in Oxford on 20-22 June 2011, a group of senior clinical pharmacologists and their junior colleagues, other medical specialists, and pharmacists discussed an agenda for UK clinical pharmacology for the next 5 years, addressing the following broad questions. How should UK clinical pharmacology be further developed and delivered as a discipline in universities, the NHS, pharmaceutical companies, and regulatory authorities? How should teaching and training in UK clinical pharmacology and therapeutics be delivered and assessed? What topics should be priorities for research in UK academic clinical pharmacology? How should clinical pharmacology contribute to UK drugs policy? How should pharmacology and clinical pharmacology be further integrated, to the benefit of both? Numerous recommendations emerged, under the collective acronym VOICE, standing for Visibility, Outreach, Integration, Coverage and Emissaries. VISIBILITY: The visibility of the discipline needs to be increased. This could be done, for example, by increased activities in acute general medicine/toxicology, through activities of Medicines and Therapeutics Committees, participation in grand rounds, teaching and training, and monitoring therapeutic interventions, and by offering bolt-on training for other specialists (for example, short courses, MSc courses, and training programmes). OUTREACH: Methods of increasing outreach include roadshows in schools/medical schools, national special study modules, public education, press coverage, and social marketing. INTEGRATION: Closer collaborations with pharmacologists, clinical pharmacists, other prescribers, and pharmaceutical companies (e.g. through joint training programmes) are desirable. COVERAGE: Attention to neglected areas, such as general practice, paediatrics, obstetrics, geriatrics, anaesthetics, cancer, and immunology. EMISSARIES: Trainees to spread the word.

‘Come All and Bring Your Spades’: England and Arbor Day, c.1880 – 1914

AbstractIn February 1897, villagers in the small Kentish town of Eynsford celebrated their first Arbor Day by planting a row of trees in acrostic form to spell out the proverb MY SON, BE WISE. By 1910 Arbor Day had featured in the discussions of a Parliamentary Select Committee and the House of Commons, and was enjoying national press coverage as the event spread under the auspices of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Garden City Movement. Proponents positioned the ceremony as a prism through which to address the pressing social and economic concerns of rural depopulation, unemployment and deforestation, and by promoting the event as part of the educational experience of children, offered it up as a contribution towards the amelioration of these ills. Although the establishment of the Forestry Commission in 1919 ushered in the increasingly inflexible belief that the state rather than individuals was the only competent custodian of English woodland, Arbor Day can tell us much about how humankind's affective response to nature was conditioned, shored up and survived this increasingly scientific approach from the late nineteenth century.

Right Nurse, Right Skills: campaign update

It was in October 2010 that national press coverage revealed the incident in which a paralysed man receiving nursing care at home suffered brain damage when his ventilator was accidentally turned off (Daily Mail, 2010). The agency nurse who had done so, in January 2009, did not know how to operate the machine, or to use the resuscitation equipment available. By the time paramedics arrived and turned the ventilator back on, Jamie Merrett had suffered irreversible brain damage. Ironically, the incident was well documented because of Mr Merrett’s concerns about the lack of skills in the nurses tending to him. He had installed a closed-circuit camera in his bedroom, and this had captured the moment when the mistake was made. By chance, the reporting on this tragic incident coincided with the launch of the QNI’s Right Nurse, Right Skills campaign, which is supported by the Mark Allen Group; publishers of BJCN and Independent Nurse. There could not have been a starker or more timely example of the problem that the campaign addresses: that patients must have nurses with the right skills when they require nursing at home, since none of the safeguards of a hospital ward are in place – and that, undoubtedly, this is not always the case. Patients are being put at risk every day by a lack of appropriate skills in the community nursing workforce. As one nurse put it to us: ‘Management are blind to the obvious, a disaster is around the corner.’

The Anchoring of Nanotechnology in the Spanish National Press

Studies on nanotechnology's media representations have focused mainly on UK and US, with little attention to other countries. In addition, most studies focused mainly on risk/benefits analytical frame to analyse media texts. This study is an analysis of Spanish national press coverage of nanotechnology to determine what issues are associated with nanotechnology, identifying their evolution across the past ten years. We based our analysis on the idea that in the public sphere there are competing definitions in what is a complex game played for control of semantics in the public sphere (Gaskell et al., 1998). We refer the notions of and objectification (Moscovici, 1988) to analyze this process. Similarly, we refer to the notion of mediascapes (Van Loon, 2002), the symbolic environment in which a technology is debated. This study is an attempt to operationalize the notion of anchoring using a mixed methodological approach has been used combining text mining and qualitative analysis techniques. Hence, our research questions were how nanotechnology has been anchored in the Spanish National Press? In addition we analysed more in detail how the nanotechnology risk discourse has been anchored. Our data includes more than 600 articles from the most important Spanish newspapers (El Pais, El Mundo and ABC) that include more than ten years of coverage (1997-2010). We applied text mining techniques (using multi-correspondence analysis and cluster analysis of elementary context) to identify longitudinal evolution of themes in the overall coverage and differences between newspapers. Findings suggest an overall positive coverage and a several clusters of meanings as predominant that relate to economic development and growth, national and European policies. Risk discourse, present in the early years become more and more marginal more recently.

“The press did you in”: the Poor People's Campaign and the mass media

Using the Poor People's Campaign of 1968 as a case study, this essay explores the considerable influence media framing had on the social justice movements of the time. While campaign organizers including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. sought the nation's rededication to the War on Poverty, national press coverage flattened out the campaign's complexities. A systematic examination of such reporting reveals that common media practices helped obscure many of the campaign's class‐based goals and the practical impact the experience had on those who participated.

Carbon Gold Rush and Carbon Cowboys: A New Chapter in Green Mythology?

Individual and collective efforts to mitigate climate change in the form of carbon offsetting and emissions trading schemes have recently become the focus of much media attention. In this paper we explore a subset of the UK national press coverage centered on such schemes. The articles, selected from general as well as specialized business and finance newspapers, make use of gold rush, Wild West, and cowboy imagery which is rooted in deeply entrenched myths and metaphors and allows readers to make sense of very complex environmental, political, ethical, and financial issues associated with carbon mitigation. They make what appears complicated and unfamiliar, namely carbon trading and offsetting, seem less complex and more familiar. A critical discussion of this type of imagery is necessary in order to uncover and question tacit assumptions and connotations which are built into it and which might otherwise go unnoticed and unchallenged in environmental communication.

Reconstructing the Narrative of Rape in the Kibbutz by the Israeli Press

The author proposes that national press coverage of sex crimes in Israeli kibbutzim is intended to restructure the public’s perception by showing that such crimes are a symptom of broader social problems. Articles about a rape incident in Kibbutz Shomrat published during 1991–1995 in the local kibbutz press are compared with a sample of articles dealing with the same subject in two of the largest daily Israeli newspapers during the same period. Coverage by both sources of a later story of rape in another kibbutz from 2005 is also examined. The author demonstrates that the national press used the rape incident to invalidate the presumed moral superiority of the kibbutz movement and presented the crime as a symptom of the broad ideological and social crisis faced by the kibbutz movement. The local kibbutz press used a “defensive attribution” mechanism to construct their narrative, allowing kibbutz members to distance themselves, and the values their community professes, from the rape case.

The Impact of National Press Coverage on Early Phase Clinical Trial Recruitment and Enrollment.

Abstract The American Society of Clinical Oncologists reports that only 5% of cancer patients ultimately enroll in a clinical trial. According to the National Cancer Institute, one key barrier to participation is a lack of knowledge about clinical trials, both on behalf of oncologists and the patients themselves. Unfortunately, many investigator-initiated and academic clinical trials simply do not have budgets that permit implementation of large-scale recruitment efforts. Recent experience by our group demonstrates that press coverage by national media is a particularly effective tool for generating public interest in clinical research, as well as increasing trial enrollment.In the third quarter of 2008, our academic translational research group was featured on a national news program. In the week following the broadcast, our group's website, which had been listed in the broadcast and accompanying web story, received an unprecedented number of hits. Not only did the broadcast generate interest in our group's research; more specifically, it translated to substantial increases in potential clinical trial candidates, and subsequently, increased trial enrollment. In the month following the broadcast, our group received 125 new clinical trial inquiries as a result of the feature. That number represented a seven-fold increase in new inquiries during the same period in 2007. Of those 125 contacts, more than half of patients were potentially eligible for one of our clinical trials based on an initial screening. From November 2008 to the present, nearly one-third of all clinical trial enrollments can be attributed to the news story. Enrollment to the vaccine trial specifically described in the news feature increased four fold in comparison to the same 6-month period in 2008-2009, with half of all new enrollments attributable to the news feature. Citation Information: Cancer Res 2009;69(24 Suppl):Abstract nr 6078.

Mega-Sporting Events and the Media in Attention Economies

AbstractThe present article examines the IAAF World Championships as a commercialized mega-sporting event and an expression of the contemporary experience industry. The focus of the empirical analysis is on the national and international press coverage of the World Championships in Helsinki, Finland, 2005. Eleven Finnish and six foreign newspapers were analysed. Finnish pre-Championship publicity saw the games mostly as a tool for achieving international media attention and economic profit. The coverage of the international press was strikingly similar. The newspapers focussed mainly on the sporting events and their perspective was strongly national – perfectly in line with traditional sports journalism. This finding challenges the belief expressed in Finnish newspapers and by proponents of theattention economythat mega-events are powerful tools for urban marketing.

WASHING DIRTY LINEN IN PUBLIC

The Edwardian years saw a range of dominion and colonial issues brought to the forefront of public attention by the British press, with the doyens of Fleet Street taking an active part in shaping the popular debate. This paper analyses the agency of the press in the imperial dramas involving the Indian empire, focusing upon leading aspects of the Viceroyalty of Lord Curzon. It provides, for the first time, an in-depth study of the national press coverage and its role in the controversy surrounding the downfall and resignation of Curzon in 1905, thereby shedding new light on media perceptions within the metropolis, and detailing the engagement of officials in press manipulation and propaganda. It is contended that it was the domestic context, and the consequences of attacking Curzon in public at Home, along with his failure to mount a successful defence, that were instrumental, though often overlooked, factors in determining his fate.

National clinical audit: lessons from cardiac surgery

Cardiac surgery has a long history of collecting and analysing clinical outcomes data. Initial systems for benchmarking mortality against pooled national data started in the 1970s. The initiative was given impetus by the Bristol Pubic Inquiry Report and the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act in 2005. Over recent years national data collection has been supported by funding from the National Clinical Audit Support Programme. All NHS hospitals in the UK now submit data to the national database. The Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery in Great Britain and Ireland (SCTS) in conjunction with Dendrite Clinical Systems have recently produced a major report, Demonstrating quality, the sixth national database report, which received significant national press coverage because it reported marked improvement in the quality of care for patients undergoing cardiac surgery over the last decade.

The Birth of an International Catholic Federation: a European Matter, 1905–11

This article seeks to investigate the circumstances surrounding the birth of an international Catholic sports federation during the Belle Epoque (1890–1914). Covering the mix of political and religious tendencies and the progressive institutionalization of the world of sport, this history of the Union Internationale des Oeuvres Catholiques d'Education Physique (the International Union for Catholic Physical Education Work) relies on the archives of French, Belgian and Italian federations, all three actively involved in its formation. The reference corpus is completed by the Vatican's archives, regional and national press coverage of events such as the competitions, and specialised sports papers. We will show that despite the unity sought by the Catholics faced with the broad secularization of Western society, the birth of this federation is a result of circumstances favourable to this assembly which are specific to each of the member countries. The competition of Nancy, originally scheduled for 1909 and eventually held in 1911, is particularly indicative of the sometimes paradoxical issues at stake at the time it was founded.

The ‘moral careers’ of microbes and the rise of the matrons: An analysis of UK national press coverage of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) 1995–2006

This paper examines similarities and differences in media discourses relating to methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) at three important points in the development of the bacterium and its perception by the public over the last decade. We analyse three increasingly large sets of texts from the national media using a variety of complementary qualitative and quantitative methods. As such this paper exploits, develops and empirically assesses an emerging methodological trend in applied linguistics, namely the convergence of critical metaphor analysis, with corpus linguistics and science and technology studies. Using this, the study identifies a shifting media narrative that involves changes in dramatis personae over the decade. First, personified forces of nature, doctors and hospitals are engaged in a battle of evil against good, but also intelligence over stupidity. Second, we are presented with victims of personified bacterial forces and doctors and hospitals cast as perpetrators of crimes of omission by not cleaning hands or wards. Third, the malignant forces of politics try to exploit the evil forces of nature for their own ends while a mediator between the doctors and the potential victims of MRSA emerges and is given political and symbolic power: the modern matron.

Provision of eye care: Commissioning change

Provision of eye care: Commissioning change

The ‘spectre of anti-Americanism’ in the British public debate over the 2003 invasion of Iraq

This paper draws upon insights from rhetorical and discursive psychology in order to attend to a particular dimension of the public debate in Britain surrounding the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It is concerned with discourse regarding the relevance of ‘anti-Americanism’, and the difficulty that circulation of such an accusation fostered for critics of the war.It uses examples drawn from British national press coverage, and the content of parliamentary debates, to describe some of the main responses made by critics of the war to the possibility that their arguments could be undermined if described as anti-American. The three techniques identified are the display of ‘pro-American credentials’, the discursive separation of the American government and its people, and the differentiation of the self from more extreme elements who are nevertheless on the same side.By focusing upon such responses, the paper attends to a gap in existing literature concerned with the alleged inhibiting effect that accusations of ‘anti-Americanism’ can have upon dissent, and argues that things are more complex than is often understood by accounts which stress how dissent is decided or regulated.

FROM HUNKY HEROES TO DANGEROUS DINOSAURS

Using the UK Fire Brigades Union dispute of 2002–3 as a case study, this paper assesses current union–journalism relations and briefly outlines the FBU's campaign to access the news agenda. Using quantitative methodology, it analyses the dispute coverage in the UK national press. While there are some opportunities that unions can exploit, such as 24-hour news and live broadcasts, newspaper analysis indicates that national press coverage generally favoured government and other elite sources as primary definers. While the FBU was given at least equal space to put its case in nearly half of all articles, certain sections of the press seemed impervious to any amount of public relations activity: five out of the nine papers analysed—the Mail, Express, Telegraph, The Times and the Sun—reveal coverage heavily loaded against the union, with the Times and Sun giving negligible space to the union viewpoint and choosing to use overwhelmingly hostile sources, narratives and opinions. It concludes that, in line with the findings of previous studies by the Glasgow University Media Group, public relations and media strategies have limited impact, at least in the UK press.