News Segments Research Articles

The Rise and Fall of Power Line EMFs: The Anatomy of a Magnetic Controversy

AbstractThe suggestion that power line electromagnetic fields (EMFs) cause diseases like cancer has generated dozens of popular articles and television news segments, hundreds of scientific studies, and numerous consensus reports; it has attracted the attention of epidemiologists, biologists, physicists, policymakers and lawyers. This article will examine the evolution of this controversy through a detailed analysis of the arguments that have been used for and against the hypothesis that power line EMFs have adverse health effects. This article argues that the power line EMF issue provides a classic case study for exploring the challenges citizens, scientists, and policymakers face in sorting out a complex science‐based controversy. This story not only brings together many different perspectives and—from popular notions of cancer clusters to complex epidemiological arguments, from to state‐of‐the‐art animal studies to policy instruments such as the precautionary principle—but also reveals the manner in which a heated controversy can be effectively resolved over time.

Cloud Formation

Cloud formation is crucial to the heritage of modern physics, and there is a rich literature on this important topic.1 In 1927, Charles T.R. Wilson was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for applications of the cloud chamber.2 Wilson was inspired to study cloud formation after working at a meteorological observatory on top of the highest mountain in Scotland, Ben Nevis, and testified near the end of his life, “The whole of my scientific work undoubtedly developed from the experiments I was led to make by what I saw during my fortnight on Ben Nevis in September 1894.”3 To form clouds, Wilson used the sudden expansion of humid air.4 Any structure the cloud may have is spoiled by turbulence in the sudden expansion, but in 1912 Wilson got ion tracks to show up by using strobe photography of the chamber immediately upon expansion.5 In the interim, Millikan's study in 1909 of the formation of cloud droplets around individual ions was the first in which the electron charge was isolated. This study led to his famous oil drop experiment.6 To Millikan, as to Wilson, meteorology and physics were professionally indistinct. With his meteorological physics expertise, in WWI Millikan commanded perhaps the first meteorological observation and forecasting team essential to military operation in history.7 But even during peacetime meteorology is so much of a concern to everyone that a regular news segment is dedicated to it. Weather is the universal conversation topic, and life on land could not exist as we know it without clouds. One wonders then, why cloud formation is never covered in physics texts.

Humor and Film in the Geography Classroom: Learning from Michael Moore's TV Nation

How can teachers use humor and film to convert geography classrooms into public spaces for thinking and talking about the world in a critical way? One useful resource for raising student consciousness and critical discussion is TV Nation-a satirical television newsmagazine show created, produced, and hosted by rebel-filmmaker Michael Moore in the mid 1990s. TV Nation not only serves as a potential instructional resource for geographers but also provides teacher and student a springboard for re-thinking humor and television news as analytical/educational objects. Moore challenges the popular notion that humor should not be taken seriously. By combining laughter with harsh reality, he questions the legitimacy of established ways of seeing the world and provides a unique way of discussing the socially constructed and contested nature of space and place. TV Nation also challenges the value traditionally placed on claims of neutrality and objectivity in conventional television news narratives. By making his own perspectives clearly known, Moore exposes the positionality inherent in all media representations of place. Included in this paper is an annotated list of TV Nation segments available on video and a description of how one of these news segments was used in a college-level classroom to teach about the complexities and contradictions of free trade and globalization.

Low Recall of Local Television Health Care News Segment Topics, Sponsors and Program Names

In an effort to examine the effectiveness of hospitals' sponsoring of local broadcast news health care segments, viewer recall of information presented in news reports, the program name of the reports, and the names of the hospital sponsors of those reports were analyzed. Despite the fact that telephone survey respondents said they place a higher value on televised health care information than they do for other mass media, recall was found to be generally poor. A majority of respondents could not name the topic of the televised health news report they had viewed, the program name or the program sponsor.

Cuidando su salud

In large urban areas, Hispanics are often dependent upon local Spanish-language broadcast and print media for news and entertainment. Since 1989, a radio show has provided daily disease prevention and health promotion messages to Hispanics on a Washington, DC area Spanish-language station. Cuidando su Salud (Taking Care of Your Health) lasts 2 minutes and is heard three times a day during news segments. By November 1997, 1543 different individual programs had been produced. Categorized according to Healthy People 2000 guidelines, these programs included 603 on health promotion (including programs on tobacco, alcohol, violence, and mental health), 162 on health protection (including programs on unintentional injuries, food and drug safety, and environmental health), and 733 on preventive services (acquired immune defeciency syndrome, cancer, infectious diseases, maternal and infant health, and policy issues affecting Hispanics). The show has been used successfully to recruit women for preventive health services and cancer clinical trials. Radio should be considered a tool for reaching special populations with health promotion and disease prevention messages. Cancer 1998;83:1805-1808. © 1998 American Cancer Society.

Marion Barry's road to redemption: A textual analysis of ABC's news story aired on 14 September 1994

Using a critical studies approach, a textual analysis was done to examine an ABC news story on Washington, DC, Mayor Marion Barry that was aired on 14 September 1994. Previous research findings indicate that network news coverage of African Americans is often biased and stereotypical. The purpose of this study was to examine a recent news story on Barry, who has been a subject of controversy, to see how he was portrayed by this network. A close textual analysis of both visual and verbal messages reveals that ABC's portrayal of Barry was rhetorical in nature. It is the author's view that the visual, verbal, presentational, and tonal codes in this news segment not only paint Barry in a negative way, but also convey a stereotypical image of African Americans.

The world according to pat: The telepolitical celebrity as purveyor of political medicine

The study examines Pat Robertson's use of The 700 Club television program to establish and sustain celebrity status and in turn to promote partisan politics through seemingly objective news accounts. The findings indicate that The 700 Club news segments consistently rely on narrative techniques that mask Robertson's intensely partisan content and provide what Kenneth Burke terms symbolic medicine for his particular audience.

A political linguistics analysis of network television news viewers' discourse

This study observes the linguistic processes of network television news viewers. It seeks to identify news viewers’ ability to resist news ideology. Fourteen viewers accompanied by a spouse, friend, or relative were surveyed about their news viewing habits. These twenty‐eight viewers were then shown television news segments in pairs and then in groups of six to eight, during which the viewers participated in dyadic and group conversations about the news and current political events. The findings indicate that news audiences often challenge newscasts on a surface level and, less often, on a deeper level regarding bias, news producer intentions, and truth claims. However, there is little evidence to suggest that these viewers resisted the ideological codes of the news. This does not mean that they did not have the ability to resist news ideology. Instead, it seems to be unusual for viewers to do so. A major obstacle to news viewer resistance seems to be lack of alternative significations from which to draw ...

Humanistic Application of Network News

ion that separates the politician's speech about the defense of freedom from the butchered bodies in the jungle . (Ignatieff 1986, p. 15). The example portrayed in a news segment grabs the otherwise parochial, complacent, and all too likely conservative student and thrusts Teaching Sociology, 1987, Vol. 15 (January:33-37) 33 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.75 on Sat, 03 Sep 2016 04:44:23 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Diabetes in the national TV news: 1971-1981.

Millions of Americans get virtually all their current events information from the national nightly television news programs. The purpose of this study was to learn what diabetes-related information had been broadcast over the last 11 years by the network news programs. Another objective was to learn how that coverage compared with that given other chronic diseases. The Vanderbilt Television News Archives (VTNA) has videotaped every ABC, NBC, and CBS nightly newscast since mid-1968. The contents of each telecast have been catalogued and indexed. Indexes were searched for every segment that had anything to do with diabetes from 1971 through 1981. In the last 11 years there have been 32 diabetes-related news segments. More than a third were about the controversial attempt to ban saccharin. Because each network may carry essentially the same story, the number of nonoverlapping reports was 20. The total time of the diabetes-related segments was 70 minutes. The topics covered by the news reports included oral agents (5 reports), artificial sweeteners (12), biosynthetic human insulin (BHI) (7), and an assortment of unique items. The 32 diabetes-related segments compare with 23 about arthritis, 215 about heart diseases, and 925 dealing with cancer. A compilation of the non-overlapping segments has been shown to health professionals, who felt the stories were generally accurate. Diabetes is not portrayed as a killer. Therefore, diabetes seems less serious, and therefore less newsworthy, than heart disease or cancer.

Television News and Political Socialization

Elementary school children frequently watch child-oriented news segments on Saturday morning television, and occasionally view network newscasts. News viewing is mildly associated with both political knowledge and public affairs interest for older children, but younger viewers learn little. Parent-child discussion of news is also related to newscast exposure.