Press Association Research Articles

Minnesota city used anti‐crime laws against people with MI

Last year, a federal investigation found that Anoka, a suburb of Minneapolis, illegally discriminated against residents with mental health disabilities by giving landlords weekly reports, over five years, revealing personal medical information of renters who received multiple emergency calls to their homes, the Associated Press (AP) reported on Feb. 4. In at least 780 cases, the city also shared details about mental health crises and even how people had tried to kill themselves, all under the guise of enforcing an ordinance designed to deter crime and eliminate public nuisances, the U.S. Department of Justice said. City laws like those used in Anoka — among hundreds of ordinances enacted across the U.S. since the 1990s — have long drawn criticism for unfairly targeting poorer neighborhoods and communities of color, the AP reported. Now they are under scrutiny as sources of mental health discrimination. “It's horrific,” said Elizabeth Sauer, an attorney for Central Minnesota Legal Services, which serves low‐income people. “Can you imagine having the most intimate details of your life just broadcast to every landlord in the city you live in?” Anoka's “crime‐free” ordinance was enacted in 2016 and at the time, city council members said they were fighting crime and making neighborhoods safer. Reported crimes in Anoka dropped by 57% from 2016 through 2022, according to FBI statistics, though crime rates were falling before then. Last year, Maryland prohibited landlords from evicting tenants over the number of emergency calls to their addresses and prohibited cities and counties from penalizing landlords for emergency calls. A California law that took effect on Jan. 1 greatly limits cities' use of such ordinances and advocates expect a push for similar legislation in Illinois and Minnesota. While proponents of such ordinances have argued that they protect people who live in fear, critics have said that rethinking them is necessary to stem cycles of homelessness that many with mental illness face. Housing advocates point to tenant unions and tenant‐run housing cooperatives as ways to mitigate the issues that nuisance laws are intended to target.

Symbolic Annihilation: Analyzing Associated Press’s Erasure of Vanessa Nakate and Marginalization of Black Women Activists

This study examines the exclusion of Vanessa Nakate, a Ugandan climate activist, from a group photo published by the Associated Press (AP) during the 2020 World Economic Forum. Using the muted group theory, it explores the implications of Nakate’s omission as the sole Black individual in the image, shedding light on the broader issue of symbolic annihilation faced by Black women activists in Western media. Through visual and textual analysis, the study reveals the power dynamics and biases behind AP’s decision to crop Nakate, fueling subsequent controversy. Furthermore, the paper examines AP’s response to the backlash, analyzing their strategies to rebuild their reputation, including issuing an apology and releasing the original photograph.

Conversation in the News: Comparing News Coverage of Fukushima Water Dispute in AP and CGTN

This research paper examines and compares the coverage of the Fukushima water dispute by the Associated Press (AP) and China Global Television Network (CGTN). The study utilizes framing theory analysis to identify differences arising from biases and priorities in news reporting. The paper analyzes the framing used by both outlets and discusses variations in perspectives on Japan's plan and responsibility. It examines the attributions of different narratives and their impact on the audience in each country. Possible causes for these differences are explored, including geopolitical factors, political polarization, and cultural influences. The findings highlight the significant role of media in shaping public opinion and the importance of understanding the diverse influences that contribute to news coverage. The paper concludes that recognizing these influences and seeking diverse viewpoints is crucial for developing a comprehensive understanding of complex issues. However, it acknowledges the limitations of the analysis and highlights the need to consider editorial biases and commercial interests in news reporting.

Persuasion through Slanted Language: Evidence from the Media Coverage of Immigration

I study the persuasive effects of slanted language, exploiting a ban on the politically charged term “illegal immigrant” by the Associated Press (AP) news wire. My empirical strategy combines the timing of the ban with variation across media outlets in their baseline reliance on AP copy. I document sizable diffusion of the ban from AP copy to media outlets. Moreover, individuals exposed to the ban through local media show significantly lower support for restrictive immigration policies. This effect is more pronounced for moderates and in locations with fewer immigrants, and does not transfer to views on issues other than immigration. (JEL D72, L82, Z13)

Performativity in Politics: Understanding the Role of Affect in Political News Coverage

The United States Democratic primaries for the 2020 election kicked off with an incredibly diverse pool of candidates with regards to gender, race, age, and socioeconomic status. However, as the primaries progressed and the pool of candidates narrowed, voters elected to nominate Joe Biden—a white man in his late seventies—to take on Donald Trump in November, 2020. Given the similarity between Elizabeth Warren’s platform and Bernie Sanders’, the purpose of this paper is to explore how news-media coverage contributes to the role of gender in campaigns for president in the United States. Grounded in a theoretical understanding of gender performativity in politics, this study uses a quantitative sentiment analysis of newspaper articles about both candidates to understand whether reporters expressed underlying sentiments differing based on the candidates’ gender. Articles were selected from The New York Times (NYT), The Washington Post (WaPo), National Public Radio (NPR), The Associated Press (AP), and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) to represent the diversity of reputable, mainstream news outlets considered to have minimal partisan bias available to the American public. Though the sentiment analysis revealed no significant difference in reporting across the different sources by candidate, factors such as rules for news publications and the nuances in political orientation of the two candidates may have limited the role of sentiment in contributing to political gender bias in this case study. This research is of broad interest as it sheds light on the current gendered political landscape in the United States, where a female president has yet to be elected. Furthermore, this study explores the within-party gender dynamics in reporting, in contrast to the myriad studies published in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election in which Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump.

Their floods and Our floods: News values of flood photo galleries of Associated Press and Xinhua News Agency

This study investigates how floods are presented as newsworthy in the photo galleries of Associated Press (AP) and Xinhua News Agency (Xinhua), two news outlets with different cultural and political backgrounds. A distinction is made between international floods, that is, Their floods, and domestic floods, that is, Our floods. The data consists of around 1500 photo-caption complexes. The analysis adopts the framework of Discursive News Values Analysis. The findings show a similar tendency to highlight Negativity, Impact, Personalization and Superlativeness in presenting Their floods by AP and Xinhua, though the two differ in Proximity and Positivity. By contrast, Our floods are presented differently. Negativity, Impact and Personalization are foregrounded in AP’s presentation of floods in the United States, whereas Xinhua’s presentation of floods in China gives prominence to Negativity, Positivity, Personalization and Superlativeness. The study is significant for its attention to cross-cultural comparison and the genre of online photo galleries.

Quizzes or Editing Exercises? In Teaching AP Style, Both Methods Work Equally

Journalism educators train students on Associated Press (AP) style, helping them navigate grammar, accuracy, and ethical issues. However, there is little peer-reviewed research testing which methods are most effective. This article used a quasi-experimental pretest/posttest methodology over six semesters to test three common methods: timed, closed-book, in-class quizzes; timed, open-book, in-class editing exercises; and take-home exercises. No one method proved statistically superior. All types moved students from high Fs to Cs. This study showed that learning AP style needs constant reinforcement.

A Narrative Stylistic Analysis of Associated Press (AP) News

Although there have been various stylistic studies of news, the use of narrative stylistic approach in analysing news has not been common. The aim of this research is to analyse the stylistic domains and narrative components in the Associated Press (AP) news. It was carried out descriptive-qualitatively. Ten news were studied by using stylistic units of analysis based on model of narrative structure in Simpson (2004) and Jahn’s classification of narrative components (2005). After completing the analysis, it was found that news is one category of narrative and it contains the use of six stylistic domains and nine narrative components. The six stylistic domains are textual medium, sociolinguistic code, action and event, point of view, textual medium and intertextuality. In addition, there are also occurences of the nine narrative components: narration, focalization, narrative situation, action, story analysis, tellability, tense, time and narrative mode.

Understanding COVID-19 Vaccines and Their Development.

Understanding COVID-19 Vaccines and Their Development.

Radical Technology Meets Radical Application: An Interview with George Church.

Radical Technology Meets Radical Application: An Interview with George Church.

Corruption and environmental regulatory policy in the United States: Does trust matter?

This study shows that the level of trust matters for how corruption affects public policy outcomes in the long-run, in particular the stringency of environmental policies. We argue that the level of trust affects the relative strength of industry- and environmental lobby groups, and therefore the effect of corruption on the stringency of environmental policies. We use a novel index of the level of corruption in each state which uses Associated Press (AP) news wires. We find that higher corruption reduces the stringency of environmental policies when the level of trust is low, but the effect declines and even becomes positive at higher levels of trust.

From the Big Three to elite news sources: a shift in international news flow in three online newspapers TheNational.ae, Nst.com.my, and Nzherald.co.nz

ABSTRACTThe rise of international news agencies in the nineteenth century advanced the globalisation process, as news was one of the first media products to be commodified for international trade. The demand for international news provided opportunities for news agencies to become wholesalers of news; this function was dominated by a handful of transnational news agencies such as the Associated Press (AP), Reuters, and Agence France-Presse (AFP). As studies have shown that, in some countries, newspapers are relying more on diverse sources for world news coverage, this research examines whether and how the Big Three news agencies still dominate international news coverage in three online newspapers from the United Arab Emirates (TheNational.ae), Malaysia (Nst.com.my), and New Zealand (Nzherald.co.nz). It further investigates how news frames and geographic proximity of news affect the use of different news courses. The findings show that the three newspapers do differ in their use of the Big Three news agencies in covering international news with Nst.com.my using news from the Big Three in significantly higher proportions than both National.ae and NZherald.co.nz. In addition, a higher proportion of news from elite sources was covered in thematic rather than in episodic news frames. When covering regional news, the newspapers rely more on their own staff to provide more relevant content to their audience than using wholesaled news content from international news agencies.

‘Seafood from Slaves’: The Pulitzer Prize in the Light of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights

AbstractThe present paper aims at analysing the case ‘Seafood from Slaves’ – first published in March 2015 by The Associated Press (AP) – in light of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (hereinafter UNGPs), focusing on both the State duty to protect human rights (HR) and the corporate responsibility to respect HR. As regards the former aspect, the main domestic legal instruments recently adopted and the reaction of the international community to this case will be analysed. As regards the second aspect, according to the UNGPs, corporations have the responsibility to respect human rights throughout their operations and their value chains. Some lawsuits involving seafood suppliers especially in the US and UK will be considered, as well as the main actions carried out by all the relevant stakeholders, in order to comply with the UNGPs and the national provisions on a transparent and sustainable supply chain. Having focused on the most critical issues, the authors aim at assessing whether the measures taken by the involved corporations and States are either adequate or insufficient to grant consistency with the principles enshrined in the UNGPs. In this latter case the authors will submit suggestions and recommendations.

Capital market effects of media synthesis and dissemination: evidence from robo-journalism

In 2014, the Associated Press (AP) began using algorithms to write articles about firms’ earnings announcements. These “robo-journalism” articles synthesize information from firms’ press releases, analyst reports, and stock performance and are widely disseminated by major news outlets a few hours after the earnings release. The articles are available for thousands of firms on a quarterly basis, many of which previously received little or no media attention. We use AP’s staggered implementation of robo-journalism to examine the effects of media synthesis and dissemination, in a setting where the articles are devoid of private information and are largely exogenous to the firm’s earnings news and disclosure choices. We find compelling evidence that automated articles increase firms’ trading volume and liquidity. The effects are most likely driven by retail traders. We find no evidence that the articles improve or impede the speed of price discovery. Our study provides novel evidence on the impact of pure synthesis and dissemination of public information in capital markets and initial insights into the implications of automated journalism for market efficiency.

Fotografía de Natacha Pisarenko

La fotógrafa Natacha Pisarenko refleja, en los retratos de estas y otras víctimas de violencia de género, la fortaleza de las mujeres en Argentina que aceptaron contar sus terribles experiencias para alarmar e intentar prevenir futuros casos. Son mujeres que se levantaron luego de duros golpes con un objetivo en común: luchar por otras mujeres.En Argentina, las estadísticas señalan que una mujer muere cada 30 horas. Desde el movimiento “Ni una menos”, creado en 2015, muchas mujeres se movilizan para poner un freno a esta violencia, concientizar, acompañarse y visibilizar la problemática creciente de los feminicidios a través de marchas multitudinarias.Natacha Pisarenko es oriunda de Buenos Aires (Argentina) y se formó en la Escuela de Artes Fotográficas de esa ciudad. En 1988 comenzó su trabajo como fotógrafa, en el periódico La Nación. En 2002 se unió a The Associated Press (AP) donde trabaja hasta el día de hoy. En 2015 fue nombrada jefa de Fotografía de AP para el Cono Sur.

Inside the “Constitutional Revolution” of 1937

The nature and sources of the New Deal Constitutional Revolution are among the most discussed and debated subjects in constitutional historiography. Scholars have reached significantly divergent conclusions concerning how best to understand the meaning and the causes of constitutional decisions rendered by the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes. Though recent years have witnessed certain refinements in scholarly understandings of various dimensions of the phenomenon, the relevant documentary record seemed to have been rather thoroughly explored. Recently, however, a remarkably instructive set of primary sources has become available. For many years, the docket books kept by a number of the Hughes Court justices have been held by the Office of the Curator of the Supreme Court. These docket books supply a wealth of information concerning the internal deliberations of the justices. Justice Pierce Butler’s docket book in particular provides a remarkably rich set of notes on the Court’s discussions of cases in conference. Yet the existence of these docket books was not widely known, and access to them was highly restricted. As a consequence scholars knew very little about the Court’s internal deliberations in the landmark cases of its 1936 October Term. This article, which is based upon a review of all of the surviving docket books from that Term, considers what those sources can teach us about the cases comprising what some have called the “switch-in-time”: West Coast Hotel Co v Parrish, which upheld Washington State’s minimum wage law for women and overruled Adkins v Children’s Hospital; the Labor Board Cases, which upheld the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Act; and the Social Security Cases, which upheld the constitutionality of provisions of the Social Security Act establishing an old-age pension system and a federal-state cooperative plan of unemployment insurance, as well as corresponding state unemployment compensation statutes. Considered in concert with information previously known, the data revealed by these docket books shed considerable new light on the nature of the Court’s deliberations in each of these three sets of cases, on the reasons for its decisions, and on the contention that the justices wrought a “Constitutional Revolution” in the spring of 1937.

Construcción del discurso bélico desde las agencias internacionales de noticias: Estudio de Caso Atentados del 13 de noviembre de 2015

El presente estudio analiza la retórica belicista de las agencias internacionales Reuters, Al Arabiya, Al Jazeera y Associated Press (AP) sobre las informaciones relativas a los atentados de París del 13 de noviembre de 2015 durante 15 días posteriores al acontecimiento. Para ello, partimos de un análisis cuanti-cualitativo de 550 unidades informativas mediante la utilización del software MAXQDA (v. 11.0.11). A la muestra seleccionada le fue aplicada los criterios sintácticos del discurso mediático: funcionalidad, significación y direccionalidad de la meta. En los resultados prevalece la demonización del Islam, la exaltación del miedo y pánico en la construcción discursiva y la espectacularización de las informaciones, como estrategia comunicativa en el tratamiento retórico.

Data and Copyright

EDITOR'S SUMMARYRaw data is not open to copyright, but databases, as compilations of data, have been treated differently. Early legal interpretations respected the compiler's work under the “sweat of the brow” doctrine, until the Supreme Court ruled in 1991 that a modicum of creativity was required to earn copyright protection. The Court also ruled the International News Service infringed on the rights of the Associated Press (AP) by telegraphing news gathered by its competitor, and that the AP's work was protected under state law through the “misappropriation doctrine.” The case was the basis of a 1997 case in which the National Basketball Association sued Motorola for transmitting real time game data by pager, making the defendant a competitor in providing the service. Databases must select, coordinate and arrange data with some creativity to earn copyright protection, and database producers use carefully worded contracts to protect their works. Librarians must be aware of copyright and contract details for databases and the scholarly use of data therein.

The role of conference externalities and other factors in determining the annual recruiting rankings of football bowl subdivision (FBS) teams

ABSTRACTIn this article, we analyse the impact of school, head coach and conference characteristics on a college football team’s annual recruiting ranking. Utilizing panel data collected from various sources covering 2002–2014, we find that measures of recent school success such as having winning seasons and finishing seasons ranked in the Associated Press (AP) top 25 poll have a positive impact on a team’s recruiting ranking. Similarly, schools with more successful head coaches tend to earn better recruiting classes, while schools facing bowl bans, scholarship restrictions and probation tend to earn worse recruiting classes. Various measures of conference achievement indicate that conference externalities in recruiting may indeed be positive as is often suggested; however, there is much potential for a negative externality as well.

Robo-Journalism and Capital Markets

In 2014, the Associated Press (AP) began using algorithms to write media articles about firms’ earnings announcements. These “robo-journalism” articles synthesize information from firms’ press releases, analyst reports, and stock performance, and are widely disseminated by major news outlets a few hours after the earnings release. The articles are available for thousands of firms on a quarterly basis, many of which previously received little or no media attention. We use AP’s staggered implementation of robo-journalism to examine the effects of media synthesis and dissemination, in a setting where the articles are devoid of private information and are largely exogenous to the firm’s earnings news and disclosure choices. We find compelling evidence that automated articles increase firms’ trading volume and liquidity. We find no evidence that the articles improve or impede the speed of price discovery. Our study provides novel evidence on the impact of pure synthesis and dissemination of public information in capital markets, and initial insights on the implications of automated journalism for market efficiency.