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Feeding (On) Geopolitical Anxieties: Asian Appetites, News Media Framing and the 2007–2008 Food Crisis

2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 19; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14650045.2014.896789

1557-3028

Qian Gong, Philippe Le Billon,

Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development

AbstractThis paper analyses the role of news media in (re)producing geopolitical narratives of food insecurity in relation to the 2007–2008 global food price spike. News content and textual analysis suggests that the media's representation of the food price spike is partly framed by Western geopolitical anxieties of the 'threatening rise of Asia', and features 'fast growing' Asian appetites among the main culprits of the crisis. Seeking to explain the widespread circulation of such representation, this paper analyses media-source relationship within the context of market-driven journalism, and suggests that the changing role of news media has in turn contributed to a rapid and uncritical circulation of elite-based interpretation of, and neoliberal geopolitical approach to, food security. The paper points at the importance of critical enquiries into geopolitical representations of food insecurity and of opening media space for a 'counter-geopolitics of food security'. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThe authors would like to thank three anonymous reviewers, Jamey Essex and Peter Jackson for helpful comments and suggestions.Notes1. D. Johnson, 'Introduction to a Symposium on the 2007-08 World Food Crisis', Journal of Agrarian Change 10/1(2010) p. 69.2. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 'The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008', p. 4, available at , accessed 23 Sep. 2011.3. A. Faiola, 'A brutal Convergence of Events Has Hit an Unprepared Global Market, and Grain Prices Are Sky High. The World's Poor Suffer Most', Washington Post, 27 April 2008, available at , accessed 16 June 2013.4. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 'The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2010', available at , accessed 23 Sep. 2011; P. Rosset, 'Agrofuels, Food Sovereignty, and the Contemporary Food Crisis', Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 29/3 (2009) pp. 189–193; D. Heady, and S. Fan, 'Anatomy of a Crisis: The Causes and Consequences of Surging Food Prices', Agricultural Economics 39 (2008) pp. 375–391; E. Dowler, M. Kneafsey, H. Lambie, A. Inman, and R. Collier, 'Thinking about 'Food Security': Engaging with UK Consumers', Critical Public Health 21/4 (2011) pp. 403–416; J. Ingram, P. Ericksen, and D. Liverman, Food Security and Global Environmental Change (London and Washington, DC: Earthscan 2010); Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), 'The 2007/08 Agricultural Price Spikes: Causes and Policy Implications (2010)', available at , accessed 4 Feb. 2010; L. R. Brown, 'The New Geopolitics of Food', Foreign Policy, available at , accessed 2 July 2012; USDA Economic Research Service, 'Global Agricultural Supply and Demand: Factors Contributing to the Recent Increase in Food Commodity Prices', available at , accessed 5 March 2011; 'Global Food Crisis Series: More Wealth, More Meat. How China's Rise Spells Trouble', available at , accessed 22 Nov. 2009.5. J. D. van der Ploeg, 'The Food Crisis, Industrialized Farming and the Imperial Regime', Journal of Agrarian Change 10/1 (2010) p. 98; T. Lang, 'Crisis? What Crisis? The Normality of the Current Food Crisis', Journal of Agrarian Change 10/1(2010) pp. 87–97; J. Ghosh, 'The Unnatural Coupling: Food and Global Finance', Journal of Agrarian Change 10/1 (2010) pp. 72–86; M. Somerville, J. Essex, and P. Le Billon, 'The "Global Food Crisis" and the Geopolitics of Food Security', Geopolitics (this issue).6. Johnson (note 1) p. 71.7. See Somerville et al. (note 5).8. Ibid.9. Dowler et al. (note 4) p. 404; T. O'Brian, 'Food Riots as Representations of Insecurity: Examining the Relationship between Contentious Politics and human security', Conflict, Security & Development 12/1 (2012) p. 38.10. Statistic from the USAID quoted by Dustin Mulvaney, Green Food: An A-to-Z Guide (Thousand Oaks and London: Sage 2010) p. 200. See also Dowler et al. (note 4) p. 405; R. Huish, 'Human Security and Food Security in Geographical Study: Pragmatic Concepts of Elusive Theory?', Geography Compass 2/5 (2008) p. 1392. This conception which ignores food insecurity among the poor in industrialised nations, is being addressed by many policy initiatives and grassroots local food movements in recent years, for example, the Healthy Start programme and Foresight projects in the UK and Slow Food movement.11. See J. Essex, 'Sustainability, Food Security, and Development Aid after the Food Crisis: Assessing Aid Strategies across Donor Contexts', Sustainability 2/11 (2010) p. 3362; J. Essex, 'Idle Hands Are The Devil's Tools: The Geopolitics and Geoeconomics of Hunger', Annals of the Association of American Geographers 102/1 (2012) p. 192. The use of such geographical divides - such as north/south - (re)produce assumptions and prejudices, while obscuring diversities within these entities and the complexities of the 2007–08 food crisis.12. See J.E. Kodras, 'Shifting Global Strategies of US Foreign Food Aid, 1955–1990', Political Geography 12/3 (1993) pp. 232–246; For a qualification in the 1990s, see E. Neumayer, 'Is the Allocation of Food Aid Free from Donor Interest Bias?', Journal of Development Studies 41/3 (2005), pp. 394–411. Beyond the 'Global South' and prior to the advent of the 'international development' apparatus, see for example D.S. Foglesong, America's Secret War Against Bolshevism: U.S. Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1917–1920. UNC Press.13. See J. Essex 2010; 2012 (note 11) and C.B. Barrett and D.G. Maxwell, Food Aid After Fifty Years. (New York: Routledge 2005).14. See A. Boland, 'Feeding Fears: Competing Discourse of Interdependency, Sovereignty and China's Food Security', Political Geography 19/1 (2000) p. 61.15. Ibid.16. See I. Hofman and P. Ho, 'China's 'Development Outsourcing': A Critical Examination of Chinese Global 'Land Grabs' Discourse', The Journal of Peasant Studies 39/1 (2012) pp. 1–48. The geographical assumptions of the divides between the Global North and South, East and West discussed here are crude binaries, and the diversities within them need to be acknowledged. Such geographical assumptions obscure the complexities of the 2007–2008 food crisis as they ignore the food-insecure people in industrialised countries in the Global North.17. See Somerville et al. (note 5).18. See G. Ó Tuathail, 'The Postmodern Geopolitical Conditions: States, Statecraft and Security at the Millennium', Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90/1 (2000) p. 167.19. Many argue that food insecurity has not resulted from lack of food, but unequal relations between the Global North and South. Despite much criticism, the neoliberal geopolitical paradigm of food security emphasising trade and aid is still the main one, although developments for this paradigm (e.g., improving aid delivery) are being explored. See Mulvaney (note 10) p. 202; Huish (note 10) p. 1393; E. M. Young, 'Globalization and Food Security: Novel Questions in a Novel Context?', Progress in Development Studies 4/1 (2004) pp. 1–21.20. For instance, the questions of production and access were central to the food-insecure Global South in the past, but more recently the definition of food security has been broadened to the maintenance of access to nutritious, safe, sustainable, inexpensive and diverse food to 'all people, at all times' – a 'paradigm shift' motivated by health and justice concerns and food safety concerns ('food scares') in the Global North, and greater concerns for political-economic entitlement and cultural rights for the vulnerable in the Global South. The FAO defines food security as 'food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preference for an active and healthy life. See FAO, 'State of Food Insecurity 2010' (note 4). See also Dowler et al. (note 4) p. 405; P. Ericksen, 'Conceptualising Food Systems for Global Environmental Change Research', Global Environmental Change 18/1 (2008) pp. 234–245; See L. Jarosz, 'Defining World Hunger: Scale and Neoliberal Ideology in International Food Security Policy Discourse', Food, Culture & Society 14/1 (2011) p. 135; S. Maxwell, 'Food Security: A Post-Modern Perspective', Food Policy 21/2 (1996) p. 163.21. See Somerville et al. (note 5).22. P. McMichael and M. Schneider, 'Food Security Politics and the Millennium Development Goals', Third World Quarterly 32/1 (2011) pp. 119–139; see also Somerville et al. (note 5).23. See G. Ó Tuathail's discussion of formal and practical geopolitics ('geopolitical thought and the geopolitical tradition/the everyday practice of statecraft') and popular geopolitics ('popular culture, mass media and geographical understanding' in 'Understanding Critical Geopolitics: Geopolitics and Risk Society', Journal of Strategic Studies 22/2-3 (1999) p. 111.24. S. Carter, 'Mobilising Generosity, Framing Geopolitics: Narrating Crisis in the Homeland through Diasporic Media', Geoforum 38 (2007) pp. 1102–1112; S. Dalby, 'Reading Rio, Writing the World: The New York Times and the 'Earth Summit'', Political Geography 15/6-7 (1996) pp. 593–613; E. Mawdsley, 'Fu Manchu versus Dr Livingstone in the Dark Continent? Representing China, Africa and the West in British Broadsheet Newspapers', Political Geography 27/5 (2008) pp. 509–529; T. McFarlane and I. Hay, 'The Battle for Seattle: Protest and Popular Geopolitics in The Australian Newspaper', Political Geography 22/2 (2003) pp. 211–232; G. Myers, T. Klak, and T. Koehl, 'The Inscription of Difference: News Coverage of the Conflicts in Rwanda and Bosnia', Political Geography 15/1 (1996) pp. 21–46; G. Ó Tuathail, 'The Frustration of Geopolitics and the Pleasure of War: Behind Enemy Lines and American Geopolitical Culture', Geopolitics 10/2 (2005) pp. 356–377; J. P. Sharp, 'Hegemony, Popular Culture and Geopolitics: the Reader's Digest and the Construction of Danger', Political Geography 15/6-7 (1996) pp. 557–570.25. J. Sorenson, 'Mass Media and Discourse on Famine in the Horn of Africa', Discourse & Society 2/2 (1991) pp. 240–241.26. Sharp (note 24) p. 567.27. Mawdsley (note 24) p. 523.28. G.O. Tuathail, 'An Anti-geopolitical Eye: Maggie O'Kane in Bosnia, 1992–93', Gender, Place & Culture 3/2 (1996) pp. 171–186; A. Pinkerton, 'Journalists', in K. Dodds, M. Kuus and J. Sharp (eds.) Ashgate Research Companion to Geopolitics (London: Ashgate 2013) pp. 444. On anti/countergeopolitics, see S. Koopman, 'Alter-geopolitics: Other securities are happening', Geoforum, 42/3 (2011), pp. 274–284.29. D. Kelley and R. Donway, 'Liberalism and Free Speech', in Judith Lichtenberg (ed.), Democracy and the Mass Media (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990) pp. 66–101; K. Voltmer, 'The Mass Media and the Dynamics of Political Communication in Processes of Democratization', in K. Voltmer (ed.), Mass Media and Political Communication in New Democracies (London: Routledge 2006) pp. 1–20.30. G. Ó Tuathail and J. Agnew, 'Geopolitics and Discourse: Practical Geopolitical Reasoning in American Foreign Policy', Political Geography 11/2 (1992) p. 195.31. See P. Robinson, 'Theorizing the Influence of Media on World Politics', European Journal of Communication 16/4 (2001) pp. 523–543; B. Zelizer and S. Allen, 'Pool System' in Keywords in News & Journalism Studies (Maidenhead: Open University Press 2010) p. 115. Much uncritical media coverage of the 2003 Iraqi war was the result of military information management, e.g., the 'pool system', used by the allies' governments. The US government's news management system was proven to be successful in censoring news coverage across news organizations and suppressing critical voices towards (and largely during) the war. For an alternative perspective, see for example D. Gregory, The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq. Blackwell.32. McFarlane and Hay (note 24) p. 213. The political economy of the media also plays a major factor, see for example Herman and Chomsky's now classic Manufacturing Consent. Pantheon; A. Prat and D. Strömberg, 'The Political Economy of Mass Media', in Advances in Economics and Econometrics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010).33. R. Entman, 'Framing: Towards a Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm', Journal of Communication 43/4 1993 p. 52; S. Iyengar and A. Simon, 'News Coverage of the Gulf Crisis and Public Opinion. A Study of Agenda-Setting, Priming and Framing', Communication Research 20/3 (1993) pp. 365–383.34. J. Blumler and M. Gurevitch, The Crisis of Public Communication (London: Routledge 1995).35. Pinkerton and Sparke quoted by Pinkerton (note 28) p. 448.36. Sharp (note 24) pp. 561–562.37. Voltmer (note 29) p. 8.38. Desktop journalism describes journalists' desk-bound practice. This practice leads to the reduction of professionalism as individuals need to do everything. Churnalism involves 'rapid repackaging', unchecked second-hand material (e.g., public relations and news agency sources) which leads to the lack of investigative journalism. See M. Palmer, 'International News from Paris and London-Based Newsrooms', Journalism Studies 9/5 (2008) pp. 813–821; J. Lewis, A. Williams, and B. Franklin, 'A Compromised Fourth Estate? UK News Journalism, Public Relations and News Sources', Journalism Studies 9/1(2008) pp. 1–20.39. J. G. Blumler, 'Foreword: in Praise of Holistic Empiricism', in K. Brants and K. Voltmer (eds.), Political Communication in Postmodern Democracy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2011) p. x. 'Mediatization' is to be differentiated from 'mediation' which describes 'the concrete act of communication by means of a type of media in specific social context'. S. Hjarvard, The Mediatization of Culture and Society (London and New York: Routledge 2013) p. 19.40. E. Herman and N. Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media (London: Vintage 1994); S. Iyengar and R. D. Kinder, News That Matters. Television and American Opinion (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 1987); Robinson, 'Theorizing' (note 31); M. McCombs, Setting the Agenda: The Mass Media and Public Opinion (Oxford: Polity 2004); G. D. Lilleker, Key Concepts in Political Communication (London, Thousand Oaks, and New Delhi: Sage Publications 2006).41. The increasingly converged the political sphere and media sphere are conceptualised from international relations (CNN effect) and political communications (symbiotic relationship between politician and journalist in contemporary packaged or PR-ised politics) approach. See E. Gilboa, 'The CNN Effect: The Search for a Communication Theory of International Relations', Political Communication 22/1 (2005) pp. 27–44; B. Franklin, Packaging Politics (London: Arnold 1994); M. Gurevitch and J. Blumler, 'Political Communication Systems and Democratic Values', in Judith Lichtenberg (ed.), Democracy and the Mass Media (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990) pp. 269–289.42. D. Atkinson and K. and Dodds, 'Geopolitical Traditions: A Century of Geopolitical Thought', in K. Dodds and D. Atkinson (eds.), Geopolitical Traditions (London: Routledge 2000) p. 10; Ó Tuathail, 'Postmodern Geopolitical Conditions' (note 18) p. 172. The media power during humanitarian crisis however needs to be more carefully considered based on different scenarios of policy certainty and media coverage. See P. Robinson, 'The Policy-Media' Interaction Model: Measuring Media Power during Humanitarian Crisis', Journal of Peace Research 37/5 (2000) pp. 613–633.43. B. Berelson cited by A. Hansen, 'Content Analysis', in A. Hansen, S. Cottle, R. Negrine, and C. Newbold, Mass Communication Research Methods (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 1998) p. 91; J. W. Tankard, 'The Empirical Approach to the Study of Media Framing', in S. D. Reese, O. H. Gandy, and A. E. Grant (eds.), Framing Public Life (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum 2001) pp. 95–106; R. M. Entman, J. Matthes, and L. Pellicano, 'Nature, Sources and Effects of News Framing', in K. Wahl-Jorgensen and T. Hanitzsch (eds.), The Handbook of Journalism Studies (New York and London: Routledge 2009) pp. 175–190.44. Entman (note 33) pp. 51–58.45. According to LexisNexis, The Major World Newspapers group 'contains over 40 full-textnewspapers from around the world. These newspapers are generally regarded by the reading public as those giving the most comprehensive and reliable coverage of any topic, whether local, national, or international'. For a full list of these newspapers, see . Most of the newspapers (a few exceptions including the UK Daily Mirror were excluded in manual searches) in this group are 'broadsheets' which carry more serious and in-depth coverage of foreign news than 'tabloids' which feature more on simplification, sensation, personalisation, gossip and scandal. Most of these broadsheets have large circulations, e.g., the New York Times has a daily circulation of 1.8 million. See , accessed 4 June 2013; H. Ornebring and M. Johnson, 'Tabloid Journalism and the Public Sphere: A Historical Perspective on Tabloid Journalism', Journalism Studies 5/3 (2004) pp. 283–295. Although the Major World Newspapers group has included a few East Asia based newspapers such as the Korea Herald, other newspaper titles are predominately Anglo. The findings presented here must be interpreted against this backdrop.46. The search criterion for 'food crisis' was 'three or more mentions'. Other search criteria include 'anywhere', 'in the headline', 'at the start', 'in the indexing', and 'major mentions'.47. Letters to the editors, news briefs and abstracts, duplicates and stories from tabloids were excluded in manual searches.48. Based on the FAO statistics, available at , accessed 30 June 2012.49. Sorenson (note 25) p. 240; E. Devereux, Understanding the Media (London: Sage 2003) p. 46.50. Main event frame is determined by 'the headlines, opening paragraphs and information and details dominant in the story', a variable adopted from Z. Peng, 'Framing the Anti-War Protests in the Global Village', International Communication Gazette 70/5 (2013) p. 369.51. Many writers drew on the Malthusian fear, and warned about global food insecurity, e.g., Lester Brown's influential book Who will Feed China? Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet. See Boland (note 14) pp. 55–76; Somerville et al. (note 5).52. This is also part of the standard journalistic structure based on five Ws: Who, What, When, Where and Why.53. N(number), p(percentage). Based on variable Cul_all. This variable was created in the data analysis stage by combining Cul_1, Cul_2, Cul_3 and Pri_Cul. These percentages are read with more significance when taking into account the 'N/A' sub-frame (n = 680/p = 45.7%) which refers to no culprit identified.54. Here I focus on media blame on 'China and India' as this accusation was later refuted by authoritative institutions such as the FAO.55. There is a high level of similarity between the Toronto Star story and a story carried by the Guardian (UK) on 24 April 2008, especially how both stories start with the Reuters wire story about rice ration. The Guardian included more specific information ('four bags of rice'). Both added more information to make the story context-specific ('The global food crisis is hitting North American consumers' vs. 'The global food crisis reached the United States …'). The Guardian has not acknowledged its source (Reuters wire story), but readers can identify the same key facts edited by these two newspapers.56. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), 'The State of Agriculture Commodity Markets 2009', available at , accessed 15 Feb. 2010; Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), 'The 2007/08 Agricultural Price Spikes: Causes and Policy Implications (2010)', available at , accessed 4 Feb. 2010.57. Pri_Cul is used to code 'culprit/s' that are explicitly indicated by the news stories as 'main', 'most important' cause/s, or Pri_Cul is coded when there is only one factor discussed.58. Hofman and Ho (note 16).59. See 'Rich And Poor Will Both Pay a High Price for World Food Crisis', Daily Telegraph, 24 April 2008; 'From Riches to Rags', Washington Times, 7 May 2008; 'Year of Hungry', Independent, 28 Dec. 2008. Details vary in these stories. Some use 'SUV', others use '4 × 4'; some claim 'grain' is used for filling fuel tank, others specify that 'maize' is used.60. See 'Food Shortages Threaten Gains Against Poverty', Washington Times, 11 April 2008.61. The percentages again need to be interpreted against the backdrop of a high percentage of N/A (n = 846/p = 56.9%). This is because most news articles identified only one victim (Vic_1), and in the coding process, Vic_2 and Vic_3 were coded as 'N/A'. The 19% 'the poor from underdeveloped countries' and 11% 'world poor' identified are more significant when 'N/A' coded were taken into account.62. S. B. Cáceres and S. Ear, 'The Geopolitics of China's Global Resources Quest', Geopolitics 17/1 (2012) pp. 47–79; Mawdsley (note 24) pp. 509–529.63. China's partnership in Africa has been viewed as 'a threat to the international aid industry'. See M. Power and G. Mohan, 'Towards a Critical Geopolitics of China's Engagement with African Development', Geopolitics 15/3 (2010) pp. 462–495.64. See Cáceres and Ear (note 62) p. 73.65. Ibid., p. 71.66. Mawdsley argues that it would be wrong to assume that Western investors in Africa which are also driven by profit are completely different from the Chinese counterparts, although they are indeed better bound by their charters, public pressure and voluntary agreements. See Mawdsley (note 24) p. 520.67. The expenditure on protein-rich food such as meat and dairy by the middle-class Chinese have sharply risen in the past thirty years due to increasing disposable incomes, rapid urbanisation and status-related dietary changes. China's demand for staple, wheat, is also linked to rising global wheat prices which has repercussions in the wheat-importing country, Egypt. See H. L. Zhang and S. F. Song, 'Rural-Urban Migration and Urbanization in China: Evidence from Time-Series and Cross-section Analyses', China Economic Review 14 (2003) pp. 386–400; National Bureau of Statistics of China, 'China Statistics Yearbook 2008', available at ; ; , accessed 15 June 2010; Y Yan, 'McDonald's in Beijing: The Localization of Americana', in L. James Watson (ed.), Golden Arches East McDonald's in East Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press 2003) pp. 39–76; K. R. Curtis, J. J. Mccluskey, and T. I. Wahl, 'Consumer Preference for Western-style Convenience Foods in China', China Economic Review 18 (2007) pp. 1–14; and T. Sternberg, 'Chinese Drought, Bread and the Arab Spring', Applied Geography 34 (2012) pp. 519–524.68. Heady and Fan (note 4) p. 386; F. Tao, M. Yokozawa, J. Liu, and Z. Zhang, 'Climate Change, Land Use Change, and China's Food Security in the twenty-First Century: An Integrated Perspective', Climate Change 93 (2009) p. 443.69. It is argued that the impacts of China's deepened relationship with Africa are mixed. It can be beneficial as China brings direct investment and aid, but it can also be threatening as China's involvements undercut local manufacturing. The 'land grab' claim is poorly supported by empirical evidence. See Mawdsley (note 24) pp. 509–529; M. Obwona and E. Chirwa, 'Impact of Asian Drivers on SSA agriculture and food security 2006', available at , accessed 3 July 2012; Hofman and Ho (note 16); D. Brautigam's work on Western media's inaccurate coverage of China's aid money to Africa, 'China's African Aid: Transatlantic Challenges', 2008, available at , accessed 22 May 2013.70. D. A. Brautigam and X. Tang, 'China's Engagement in African Agriculture: 'Down to the Countryside'', China Quarterly 199 (2009) pp. 686–706.71. See Boland's (note 14) analysis.72. Dalby quoted by Boland (note 14) p. 61.73. T. Lang and E. Millstone, The Atlas of Food: Who Eats What, Where and Why (London and New York: Routledge 2008); H. Charles, J. Godfray, I. R. Crute, L. Haddad, D. Lawrence, J. F. Muir, N. Nisbett, et al., 'The Future of the Global System', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of Biological Sciences 365 (2010) pp. 2769–2777; Ericksen (note 20); Sternberg (note 67).74. Both Cáceres and Ear's and Mawdsley's papers argue for a more collaborative approach to China's world expansion. See Cáceres and Ear (note 62) pp. 72–74; Mawdsley (note 24) pp. 523–525.75. The term 'silent' may have come from Michael Watt's well-known book Silent Violence: Food, Famine, and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria (1983 UCA Press), though this was not confirmed with Josette Sheeran.76. E.g., 'Food Crisis is Depicted As "Silent Tsunami"', Washington Post, 23 April 2008.77. See 'Global Hunger Prods Nations; Outside Aid Proves Too Slow', Washington Times, 19 April 2008; '"Perfect Storm" Ravages Somalia; Global Food Crisis Meets Local Chaos', International Herald Tribune, 17 May 2008.78. 'The factors include population growth, changing dietary patterns, prosperity in countries like China and India, [diverting crops for] fuel and lower [food] reserves', Mr. Holmes said, quoted from a news report by B. Pisik, 'U.N. Fears Food Price "Crisis" Will Worsen; Seeks Solution for Long Term', Washington Times, 15 April 2008.79. J. H. Gans, Deciding What's News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time (New York: Pantheon 1979); Blumler and Gurevitch (note 34); M. Castells, Communication Power (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press 2009).80. , accessed 5 June 2013.81. T. Morris and S. Goldsworthy, PR – a Persuasive Industry? Spin, Public Relations, and the Shaping of the Modern Media (Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan 2008) p. 125; J. F. M. Swinnen, Pasquamaria Squicciarini and Thijs Vandemoortele, 'The Food Crisis, Mass Media and the Political Economy Of Policy Analysis and Communication', European Review of Agricultural Economics 38/3(2011) p. 410; Sorenson (note 25) pp. 224–225.82. See Pisik (note 78); D. Blair, 'World Food Crisis "Here To Stay"', Daily Telegraph (London), 19 May 2008.83. W. A. Gamson and A. Modigliani, 'Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach', American Journal of Sociology 95/1 (1989) pp. 1–37; see also Entman (note 33) p. 52.84. See A. Martin, 'One Country's Table Scraps, Another Country's Meal', New York Times, 18 May 2008.85. See quote from a journalist from a UK national newspaper: 'We've always been reliant on wire copy, but we use it a hell of a lot more these days – it's quite common for us to cut and paste a story off PA (Press Association), re-nose it a bit to mask where it's come from, and then put it out there as our own'. Lewis et al. (note 38) p. 42.86. Lewis and colleagues' research also found that news agency materials shaped news content, and their research found much higher percentages of news articles using agency and public relations (PR) materials. The difference in percentages found by this research and their research may be explained by the fact that this research did not attempt to identify unacknowledged PR materials. Due to limited resources, this research was unable to carry out a complex cross-checking of news stories with unacknowledged source materials, as this has been proven difficult even for a research team. However, this research did come across many news stories constructed with the same key ideas, comments and materials, even though there was no acknowledgement of the source. Lewis et al. (note 38) pp. 1–20.87. The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune often print similar/identical stories. The Sydney Morning Herald and the Age printed identical stories on 18 June 2008. On 6 December, these two newspapers again printed almost identical stories, listing China's meat consumption (80 million tons per year) as one of the factors pushing up food prices 2007–2008.88. 'Originality was not encouraged. Speed was… . In London Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondents rewrote Reuters' copy, as fast as they could, and the finished product ended up as part of the AFP news service. In Paris, we shamelessly rewrote Agence France Presse copy, serving it up as Reuters' fare.' Palmer (note 38) p. 814.89. See note 38.90. See Pinkerton's analysis of 'attachment journalism' (note 28) pp. 441–446; Somerville et al. (note 5).91. See T. Weis, 'The Meat of the Global Food Crisis', Journal of Peasant Studies 40/1 (2013) pp. 65–85.92. See K. Burnett, 'Trouble in the Fields: Governing after the Food Crisis and the Response of the Fair Trade and Food Sovereignty Movements', Geopolitics (2013).93. L. Bennet, 'Toward a Theory of Press-State Relations in the United States', Journal of Communication 40/2 (1990) pp. 103–125.94. See Brautigam (note 69) p. 5; former foreign correspondent Ed Behr's book titled Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English? reveals reductionist journalistic approach towards an African civil war. See D. Randall, The Universal Journalist, 2nd ed. (London: Pluto Press 2000) p. 55.95. The big Western news agencies (Agence France-Presse, Associated Press and Reuters) with hundreds of news bureaus and thousands of journalists worldwide dominate much of the information flow in the world communication system. Other media conglomerates such as CNN also play important roles in homogenising world news. See T. Rantanen and O. Boyd-Barrett, 'Global and National News Agencies: Threats and Opportunities in the Age of Convergence', in A. de Beer and J. C. Merrill (eds.), Global Journalism: Topical Issues and Media Systems (Boston: Allyn & Bacon 2008) pp. 33–47; D. Thussu, International Communication: Continuity and Change (London: Arnold 2000) pp. 150–166.96. See Pinkerton's analysis of 'attachment journalism' (note 28) pp. 441–446.97. See Somerville et al. (note 5).98. See Robinson, 'Theorizing' (note 31).99. See J. Dittmer and K. Dodds, 'Popular Geopolitics Past and Future: Fandom, Identities and Audiences', Geopolitics 13/3 (2008) pp. 437–457.